Email blocked to verizon.net and bellatlantic.net

[eWebtricity]

All of my ROOT III servers are unable to deliver mail to verizon.net and bellatlantic.net .

I'm able to ping the MX servers for both domains, but i think port 25 is being blocked. From my Internet connection i can successfully traceroute to the relay.verizon.net and relay.bellatlantic.net but I cannot successfully traceroute from any of my ROOT III servers. The path they take is similar, the only difference is my Internet connection hits the same last hop router but is coming in on a different interface.

I contacted 1and1 support, their answer was I that I had to complain to the Verizon mail admins and then they would contact 1and1 mail admins to work the problem out......does this sound lame to anyone else but me?

1and1 owns the IP ranges so they should be responsible for ensuring connectivity to their peer ISP's.

[dhodge]

I had a similar problem once and found it had to do with additional IP addresses I was using in my Plesk control panel under IP aliases. Once I removed the additional IP addresses (becuase I didn't need them anyway) the problem dissapeared. Not sure why it was affecting it.

[eWebtricity]

I'm also using additional IP's, seems as though the IP ranges assigned to 1and1 are being blocked by Verizon for some reason. I can't remove them, becuase i need them for my customer.

[Anonymous]

So you're having this issue with all of your 1and1 servers?

Have you assigned the IP's to a specific domain in the 1and1 control panel?

It may have something to do with the reverse lookup settings in the 1and1 control panel for the particular domains. It's just a hunch but I get the feeling its a 1and1 configuration issue.

Are you using 1and1 DNS servers or your own?

[Anonymous]

I'm using 1and1 DNS servers and reverse lookup is configured correctly for each domain. But that's a good point. MX records indicate that domain.com is the MX server for my domain. But the reverse lookup is configured as www.domain.com

I'll update one of the domain reverse records to reflect domain.com instead of www.domain.com

[brucew]

This problem isn't only with 1&1.

See the following articles:

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,12116645~mode=flat
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20396
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20435
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20474

Hope this helps!

[eWebtricity]

Thanks, I found this in the thread from http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,12116645~mode=flat~days=9999~start=100

--------------------------------------------------
HERE'S WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HAVE THE BLOCK REMOVED:
Contact the Customer Relations Office that is attached to the Office of the President at Verizon corporate headquarters.... call 1-800-483-7988 and select option #3. I called this morning and by 3 pm all blocks had been removed from my account.
-----------------------------------------------------

I'll be calling in the morning since they are currently closed (i called already)

[eWebtricity]

Response from my email to 1and1 tech support:

----------------------------------------------------

Thank you for contacting 1&1

We are in communication with Verizon about this, and they are helping to remove us, however we have not done anything with those ips to make them be added to their list, and as such it is up to you to speak to anyone blocking your ip address.

Some issues were related to the ownership of the ip addresses not been set to 1&1 in the US, to this extent all the US IPs are now set to US details, and this will help.

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.

--
Sincerely,
Melissa Chavez
Technical Support
1&1 Internet Inc

[eWebtricity]

While I was on the phone today with 1and1 tech support, i inquired again about the Verizon issue and they said they knew about it and were still in communications with Verizon about the issue. They also said that I could relay through their smtp.1and1.com mail server in the meantime.

[eWebtricity]

After repeated emails and phone calls to 1and1 tech support, i finally get the problem acknowledged.

##########################################

Thank you for contacting 1&1

1&1 are at present added to a private blacklist and as such this is resulting in emails that are been sent by our servers been returned, we are working to remove ourselves from these lists and become whitelisted.

Pleae note that it is automatic to blacklist ip addresses, but to remove ourselves / whitelist ourselves, we have to manually ask them and liase with them to do this.

1&1 does not tolerate the sending of unsolicitated emails through our servers, we require username / password authentification to send emails using our mail servers.

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.

--
Sincerely,
Melissa Chavez
Technical Support
1&1 Internet Inc

[eWebtricity]

Still blocked ......

##################################

Jan 20 09:49:52 server2 qmail: 1106232592.761264 status: local 0/10 remote 4/20
Jan 20 09:49:52 server2 qmail: 1106232592.815004 starting delivery 95842: msg 17025922 to remote removedforspampurposes@verizon.net
Jan 20 09:49:52 server2 qmail: 1106232592.815085 status: local 0/10 remote 5/20
Jan 20 09:49:52 server2 qmail: 1106232592.836724 delivery 95842: deferral: Sorry,_I_wasn't_able_to_establish_an_SMTP_connecti on._(#4.4.1)/
Jan 20 09:49:52 server2 qmail: 1106232592.836823 status: local 0/10 remote 4/20

[NeverPanic]

Yup, and e-mail to security@verizon.net get no response.

[eWebtricity]

Response from 1and1 support on my status inquiry on the SMTP issues

########################################

Thank you for contacting 1&1

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we have caused you. This is still due to some server failures. But no reason to worry. We are working on it. We assure you that this is just a temporary and unusual thing to happen with our systems and everything will be up and running normally very soon.

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.

--
Sincerely,
Aileen Ungos
Technical Support
1&1 Internet Inc

[NeverPanic]

What? Server failure? Temporary? Very soon?

It's been broken since Verizon introduced its examination of inbound mail headers.

Sigh.

[NeverPanic]

Re Verizon anti-spam barriers:

1. You all are correct that 1and1 is clueless about these problems with root servers. The technical people at Verizon aren't much better; every single one of my roughly 15 calls to them over the last few weeks got a different response. However: for those of you still experiencing connect failures with Verizon's SMTP servers might try using:

http://www2.verizon.net/micro/whitelist/?promotion_code=&variant=

I'm still within the 72-hour window, but their e-mail response says the problem will be fixed.

February 1st brought an additional wrinkle on the Verison front: their DSL customers can no longer send with other than @verizon.net e-mail addresses, without a static IP--an additional $30/month (at least around here). This change, of course, was made without informing their customers, so we had a flurry of calls from people who have been using me@mydomain.com with no problems, and now it won't work. I absolutely hated to turn them all over to our SMTP servers, but there's no choice--I'm certainly not recommending the $30/month solution.

[eWebtricity]

Excellent link, the interesting part in the form is the last question.

"Do you have SPF records? Yes or No"

I'm looking into setting up SPF records for all our customers.

[eWebtricity]

Results of the Verizon website link I submitted earlier (names changed for the obvious reasons)

########################################


-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@verizon.net [mailto:xxxxx@verizon.net]
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 3:21 PM
To: xxxx@ewebtricity.net
Subject: Re: Whitelist Request Form (KMM5704676I7211L0KM)

Dear xxxxxxxx,

Thank you for contacting Verizon Online Security. After a thorough
investigation of your issue, Verizon Online Security has determined that
normal e-mail delivery should be restored within 72 hours.

Sincerely,

Verizon Online Security
http://www2.verizon.net/policies
xxxxxx@verizon.net

[eWebtricity]

After I demanded more detail, here's what i got ......still no detail on what's going on or why it's taking so long to resolve. How hard is it to communicate the /16 or /24 subnets that you own and operate to another provider to whitelist?

#########################################

Thank you for contacting 1&1

Some of the other email servers like AOL or verizon is blicking our email servers. This issue is on the highest priority and our admins are doing the best that they can to resolve this issue.

What you can do is you can also use your ISP's server for the meantime, so you may send email.
Again, we sincerely apologize.

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.

--
Sincerely,
Sasha Valero
Technical Support
1&1 Internet Inc

[NeverPanic]

Any info on setting up SPF records would be appreciated.

It appears as if Verizon.net really DID whitelist all our IP addresses; I haven't received a fail-to-connect since yesterday--oh, yes, qmail defaults to 7-day queuelifetime. I changed ours to 24-hours. I find it strange that qmail treats ALL failed deliveries as deserving of additional tries, even invalid remote e-mail addresses.

Re 1and1: I think it took about 6 calls to them before I gave up in frustration; basically, I got tired re-explaining the e-mail problem anew every time I called. This is a major issue for 1and1, but they don't seem to be at all responsive. Root server problems are that server's administrators responsibility to fix, and, no, they have no contact points within Verizon.

[eWebtricity]

Finally ! After contacting Verizon via the link on their website and informing them of all our Root III server IP's they seem to be whitelisted now. Email is now flowing to Verizon customers from watching a tail of the maillog.

You can start here for SPF record setup information.

http://spf.pobox.com/

[NeverPanic]

I hate to bring this up, but we are using 1and1's name servers. Any remote idea of how to add spf records there?

[eWebtricity]

We're using 1and1's name servers as well and it's a limitation we're facing. So we're working on moving our domains back to our registrar who supports SPF records.

I think we ran into an obstacle when we needed to register our Root III server as the root nameserver for the domain last time. We're going to try and work it out this time and support SPF records at the same time.

I can't even imagine broaching this topic with 1and1 support.