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Author Topic: Plusnet customers may not be receiving some of their emails  (Read 18233 times)

kitz

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Plusnet customers may not be receiving some of their emails
« on: March 01, 2019, 10:40:08 PM »

Please note that forum members who use Plusnet email services may not be receiving email notifications from this site.  The problem appears to be intermittent and has been going on for a few months.   It only came to my attention today as I have also been unable to send personal mail to a Plusnet user, which is how & when I discovered it has also been affecting mail notifications for the forum mail (which is not usually monitored). 

We are not the only site who is affected.  Plusnet users should be aware that they may not be receiving all their mail as it is being bounced incorrectly marked as "domain does not exist". 

Plusnet are aware of the issue but seem in no hurry to resolve this - See here.


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Edited topic title to show that this is a long unresolved issue affecting Plusnet customers who may not be getting emails from various companies.  :(
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Plusnet mail users not receiving e-mail notifications from this site.
« Reply #1 on: March 01, 2019, 11:14:21 PM »

This may be completely irrelevant, but I’ll mention it anyway. Apols, I’ve not read the entire linked thread, it’s late, I’m tired.

I recently subjected my home IP address to a “blacklist check”.   I did so out of curiousity, but found to my surprise it was indeed blacklisted, by an organisation at dnsbl.spfbl.net.

So far as I can see, that blacklist regards any IP that is dynamically assigned as dodgy, so should not be allowed to originate mail.  But all Domestic ISPs are apparently tarred by the same brush, even if their policy/contract is to assign static IP, on the basis that their policy/contract might change.

My own IP does originate mail, as I have a Linux server that sends various administrative reports to my own gmail hosted address, using Linux’s in built SMTP, on a daily basis.   I have a static Zen IP address, and my home-originated email has always been delivered to my gmail hosts but from what I can see, there is a possibility it may be blocked by other hosts (or even by gmail) owing to that blacklisting.

The blacklist “checker” I used was at...

https://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-check
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kitz

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Re: Plusnet mail users not receiving e-mail notifications from this site.
« Reply #2 on: March 01, 2019, 11:50:17 PM »

Thanks 7LM, but I'm clean on all of them.

>> blacklist regards any IP that is dynamically assigned as dodgy, so should not be allowed to originate mail.

It's coming from a server with its own dedicated IP and not shared with anyone else.   
The forum has its own mail address but that is not monitored.   
When I said personal email, it was an admin email in respect of the site coming from web @, but I meant I personally had composed the email rather than it being automated by the forum software which uses forum @

The error message is

Code: [Select]
Domain of sender address <xxxx kitz.co.uk> does not exist
which as someone else in the plusnet thread says

Quote from: thunderbird6
It isn't an issue of mail being treated as spam, it is a very specific rejection of the mail due to a failure of the Plusnet systems to successfully validate a perfectly valid and correct domain name.
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jelv

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Re: Plusnet mail users not receiving e-mail notifications from this site.
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2019, 09:59:49 AM »

So far as I can see, that blacklist regards any IP that is dynamically assigned as dodgy, so should not be allowed to originate mail.  But all Domestic ISPs are apparently tarred by the same brush, even if their policy/contract is to assign static IP, on the basis that their policy/contract might change.

My own IP does originate mail, as I have a Linux server that sends various administrative reports to my own gmail hosted address, using Linux’s in built SMTP, on a daily basis.   I have a static Zen IP address, and my home-originated email has always been delivered to my gmail hosts but from what I can see, there is a possibility it may be blocked by other hosts (or even by gmail) owing to that blacklisting.

Plusnet say that you should relay through their mail server as that avoids that issue. Can you not do the same with Zen?
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d2d4j

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Re: Plusnet mail users not receiving e-mail notifications from this site.
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2019, 10:47:48 AM »

Hi

@kitz - I had a quick read and the issue seems to be related to mx.avasin.plus.net if I understand correctly

Plus net should have multiple mx records (most likely round robin), so I would think a quick fix from your server would be to hard set 2 mx records for plus net where it is not an issue

Your server should then not do a live dns lookup for mx as it would be pulled from host file, and use a good mx server

It would not fix plus net issue, just simply act as a short term workaround for you

Sorry if I am wrong

Many thanks

John
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Plusnet mail users not receiving e-mail notifications from this site.
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2019, 12:28:39 PM »

Plusnet say that you should relay through their mail server as that avoids that issue. Can you not do the same with Zen?

I maybe could, but why bother?  It only affects admin reports sent by mail generated from scripts I run on my own server, so if it fails to arrive I only have to ssh over and check all is ok.  And even then, failure is only in theory, in practice it works.   I’d also rather avoid doing anything that is ISP-specific as, at my age, I’d probably forget to undo it if I were to switch ISP. :D

But all this is a little off-topic, happy to start a new thread if anybody interested in discussing. :)
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kitz

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Re: Plusnet mail users not receiving e-mail notifications from this site.
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2019, 01:07:07 PM »

@kitz - I had a quick read and the issue seems to be related to mx.avasin.plus.net if I understand correctly

Plus net should have multiple mx records (most likely round robin), so I would think a quick fix from your server would be to hard set 2 mx records for plus net where it is not an issue

Your server should then not do a live dns lookup for mx as it would be pulled from host file, and use a good mx server


Sorry not quite sure if I understand, as I never touch anything to do with the domain name records.     
I have just checked in WHM and my MX record is set to kitz.servers.eqx.misp.co.uk  which I believe is correct.

afaik, there is nothing wrong with my server (which has nothing to do with Plusnet), but rather its Plusnet's mail servers that are randomly failing to look up domains correctly.   I don't use Plusnet mail aside from obviously they send my broadband billing to a PN address.

From what I can gather if their servers are failing to look up the DNS correctly for valid domains and if it can't find the domain it is returning the mail to sender marked the domain doesn't exist...  when it fact it does. 

In that thread the people notifying Plusnet are companies who have their own domains and mailservers for whom PN are incorrectly rejecting mail.   There's a post in there from someone who said they are a large insurance company and their mail isn't getting through to people who are using PN for their email. 

The problem is at Plusnet's end and Plusnet customers need to be aware that they may not be getting all their mail if they use PN mail services.  :(


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The only reason I spotted it was because I had sent email to someone who has a PN email address.  Plusnet mail servers rejected that mail saying kitz.co.uk does not exist.   
Then when I looked further into what was happening I noticed I have a pile of returned emails for members of this forum who use PN mail which were sent from the forum email addresses.   These were mostly notifications of PMs or subscribed threads sent out automatically by the forum software.  Some of these dated back months.    For example there were about a dozen or so notifications to just one of our regular members saying he had PMs to read.   He will never have gotten those emails because PN mail servers think there is no such domain as kitz.co.uk and so have rejected and returned them.

It's not just my domain..  as Townman says  "This is not an issue specific to any individual domain. It is quite random.:(

     

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d2d4j

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Re: Plusnet mail users not receiving e-mail notifications from this site.
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2019, 01:14:37 PM »

Hi kitz

I am sorry if I have not explained too well sorry

My suggestion is not for you to change any of your server/domain details/dns

What you do is look up additional mx records plus net use, other then mx.avison (or whatever it was called sorry), as that appears to be the mx with the issues on. So say plus net mx.secondary.plus.net, this is what you would put into host file on server as mx.secondary.plus.net 111.222.333.444

Now when your server sends email to plus net, it no longer does a live dns mx lookup, it would use mx.secondary.plus.net every time

Once plus net have resolved fully their issue, you could then delete the host file entry or hash it out

I hope that makes more sense sorry

Many thanks

John
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d2d4j

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Re: Plusnet mail users not receiving e-mail notifications from this site.
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2019, 01:19:58 PM »

Hi

Sorry kitz, the host file I am talking about is not a domain zone file, it is a file called host on your server (not in whm).

I would ask your server support if they could complete the above for you, as you need to SSH into server

I hope that helps a little

Many thanks

John
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kitz

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Re: Plusnet mail users not receiving e-mail notifications from this site
« Reply #9 on: March 02, 2019, 01:59:30 PM »

Thanks John.

I'd not read the whole PN thread myself earlier and have only just done so.    TBH I think its pretty bad that Plusnet were made well aware of this situation over a year ago and Plusnet are still no further to rolling out a fix.    This is impacting mail from several sources and I believe that Plusnet users need to be aware that they may well not be receiving a portion of their email from numerous sources.  :o
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jelv

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Sounds like a story for el Reg!
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grumpy old man

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I am a plusnet user and don't know if this is a related issue but emails I send to a friend never arrive.  I have checked junk folders etc at his isp post box but no mail.  I also have an intermittent issue with emails taking a long time to arrive.

gom
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renluop

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What concerns me is uncertainty about Plusnet's email. The number of threads in their forum is not encouraging. one needs reliability FGS!

As a moderate user of Plusnet's email, I should probably carry on, but for others might it be better to set up their own addresses and hosts, dealing with whatever hassle met, as it comes?
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Alex Atkin UK

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I'm surprised anyone uses ISP mail considering the deals you can get to keep switching ISPs.

I rarely ever switch but moved to hosting my own e-mail a long long time ago.
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Chrysalis

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kitz I see this from one of your reports.

Code: [Select]
xxxxxxx@xxxxxx.plus.com
    host mx.avasin.plus.net [212.159.9.200]
    SMTP error from remote mail server after MAIL FROM:<xxxxx kitz.co.uk> SIZE=8090:
    550 #5.1.8 Domain of sender address <xxxx kitz.co.uk> does not exist

I would say highly likely plusnet have a dns reliability problem, likely doing some kind of spf check or something, dns lookup is failing and then they have a configuration that cannot deal with that fail condition so it rejects the mail.  550 is an internal error code, meaning its caused by server configuration fail condition.

You welcome to quote my reply on there if you want.

To any plusnet customers (or any isp customers really), I will say it again, its a bad idea to use broadband provided email solutions.  Even something like gmail is much much better.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2019, 02:43:08 PM by Chrysalis »
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