What to do about email rejected by AOL, earthlink, comcast?

My outgoing mail server is smtp.comcast.net. At home, I run sendmail
and an imap server. Email sent to some domains is rejected.

- AOL:

(reason: 554- (RTR:BB) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rtrbb.html
)
...
Final-Recipient: RFC822; cataikman1@aol.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 554- (RTR:BB) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rtrbb.html
Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:42:09 -0400

- comcast.net:

(reason: 550-yy.yy.yy.yy blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net)
...
Final-Recipient: RFC822; xxxx@comcast.net
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550-yy.yy.yy.yy blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net
Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:42:12 -0400

- earthlink.net:

(reason: 550 Dynamic IPs/open relays blocked. Contact .)
...
Final-Recipient: RFC822; xxxx@earthlink.net
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 Dynamic IPs/open relays blocked. Contact .
Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:42:13 -0400

(yy.yy.yy.yy is my IP address.)

My outgoing mail is going through smtp.comcast.net so I'm not sure
what the problem is. The mail originates from zzzz@geophile.com, where
geophile.com is my domain. A naming service maps this to my IP
address, which is dynamically assigned by comcast.net -- is that
somehow the cause of the problem?

Any advice on how to avoid these problems while still sending from a
geophile.com address would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Jack Orenstein

Re: What to do about email rejected by AOL, earthlink, comcast?

Jack Orenstein wrote:
> My outgoing mail server is smtp.comcast.net. At home, I run sendmail
> and an imap server. Email sent to some domains is rejected.
>
> - AOL:
>
> (reason: 554- (RTR:BB) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rtrbb.html
> )
> ...
> Final-Recipient: RFC822; cataikman1@aol.com
> Action: failed
> Status: 5.5.0
> Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 554- (RTR:BB) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rtrbb.html
> Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:42:09 -0400
>
> - comcast.net:
>
> (reason: 550-yy.yy.yy.yy blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net)
> ...
> Final-Recipient: RFC822; xxxx@comcast.net
> Action: failed
> Status: 5.0.0
> Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550-yy.yy.yy.yy blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net
> Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:42:12 -0400
>
> - earthlink.net:
>
> (reason: 550 Dynamic IPs/open relays blocked. Contact .)
> ...
> Final-Recipient: RFC822; xxxx@earthlink.net
> Action: failed
> Status: 5.0.0
> Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 Dynamic IPs/open relays blocked. Contact .
> Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:42:13 -0400
>
> (yy.yy.yy.yy is my IP address.)
>
> My outgoing mail is going through smtp.comcast.net so I'm not sure
> what the problem is. The mail originates from zzzz@geophile.com, where
> geophile.com is my domain. A naming service maps this to my IP
> address, which is dynamically assigned by comcast.net -- is that
> somehow the cause of the problem?
>
> Any advice on how to avoid these problems while still sending from a
> geophile.com address would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jack Orenstein
>
>
Well lets see:

host -t mx geophile.com
geophile.com mail is handled by 0 mail.geophile.com.

This says that your mail exchanger for inbound mail is mail.geophile.com

Now, looking up the IP address for that:
host -t a mail.geophile.com.
mail.geophile.com has address 24.91.49.146

This says that the IP address assigned to that mail exchanger is
24.91.49.146

Ok, now looking up the pointer record for that IP:
host -t ptr 24.91.49.146
146.49.91.24.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer
c-24-91-49-146.hsd1.ma.comcast.net.

We get a comcast hostname.

Looking up that Comcast hostname we get the IP address again so at this
point the forward and reverse DNS match.

host -t a c-24-91-49-146.hsd1.ma.comcast.net.
c-24-91-49-146.hsd1.ma.comcast.net has address 24.91.49.146

However, because of the nature of the naming scheme used by Comcast,
this looks like a dynamic IP address, which are blocked by default by
some postmasters.

Suggestion: Get a static IP to run your mail server on, then have the
ISP that you buy it from set the reverse DNS as a name server record
that points to your name server so that you can control both the forward
and reverse DNS resolution. That should fix the problem of being blocked
due to being on a dynamic IP, though it may not resolve other issues if any.

In comcast's case all they would need to do is drop the ptr record and
replace it with an NS record pointing at your DNS server. Then you
would need to create an SOA zone file to handle that IP address which
will let you set your own ptr record for it.

--
Garen

Re: What to do about email rejected by AOL, earthlink, comcast?

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Jack Orenstein writes:

> My outgoing mail server is smtp.comcast.net. At home, I run sendmail
> and an imap server. Email sent to some domains is rejected.
>
> - AOL:
>
> (reason: 554- (RTR:BB) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rtrbb.html
> )
> ...
> Final-Recipient: RFC822; cataikman1@aol.com
> Action: failed
> Status: 5.5.0
> Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 554- (RTR:BB) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rtrbb.html
> Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:42:09 -0400
>
> - comcast.net:
>
> (reason: 550-yy.yy.yy.yy blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net)
> ...
> Final-Recipient: RFC822; xxxx@comcast.net
> Action: failed
> Status: 5.0.0
> Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550-yy.yy.yy.yy blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net
> Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:42:12 -0400
>
> - earthlink.net:
>
> (reason: 550 Dynamic IPs/open relays blocked. Contact .)
> ...
> Final-Recipient: RFC822; xxxx@earthlink.net
> Action: failed
> Status: 5.0.0
> Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 Dynamic IPs/open relays blocked. Contact .
> Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 12:42:13 -0400
>
> (yy.yy.yy.yy is my IP address.)
>
> My outgoing mail is going through smtp.comcast.net so I'm not sure
> what the problem is.

The second error strongly suggests that you did not configure your sendmail
to use smtp.comcast.net as your outgoing mail server. You think you did,
but you didn't.



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Re: What to do about email rejected by AOL, earthlink, comcast?

"Jack Orenstein" wrote in message
news:pan.2006.06.02.01.24.34.787098@geophile.com

> My outgoing mail server is smtp.comcast.net. At home, I run sendmail
> and an imap server. Email sent to some domains is rejected.
>
> - AOL:
>
> (reason: 554- (RTR:BB)
> http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rtrbb.html )
....
> - earthlink.net:
>
> (reason: 550 Dynamic IPs/open relays blocked. ...
....
> My outgoing mail is going through smtp.comcast.net so I'm not sure
> what the problem is.

If one folows the above URL the message and 550 error are quite plain in the
matter as to the cause.

> Any advice on how to avoid these problems while still sending from a
> geophile.com address would be appreciated.

The domain isn't the problem, it's the IP address of your sendmail client.
Configure SMART_HOST to use your ISP's outgoing mail server.