My first thoughts on this.
1. from the smtp server sending the emails can you do an NSLOOKUP (set
type=mx) of company.com and see what it resolves to.
2. once you have the IP address can you TELNET to that ip address on port 25
(you should get a banner of some type).
Almost willing to bet you won't get a banner at this stage.
in most case REMOTE SYSTEM is no longer responding errors mean exactly that,
the server did not respond to the original request for connection.
in the case of a server not responding because of precevied bad MX records,
or REVERSE DNS issues, the error message generally states that.
I noticed from your header that you are using Notes as your mail client. Is
the Sending SMTP server a Domino server? if so you can turn up the SMTP
logging level on outbound mail to show the entire process from the DNS query
for the MX record, to the handshake, to the message being delivered, and
that should point you in the right direction as to where to look.
(if you are using domino as the smtp server let me know, there are several
other things you can check also).
-Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "NT System Admin Issues" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 3:39 PM
Subject: Perhaps a bit OT - mail bouncing
Greetings!
We are the mid-west office of the ASPCA (Illinois). Our HQ is in NYC. Our
wires, DNS, etc are via AT&T. Their wires, DNS, etc are through
QualityTech. As NY is the parent office (to say nothing of older and
bigger), the QualityTech system is the SOA for ASPCA.ORG. For the
Illinois public addresses (including the IP address stamped onto all our
outgoing email), we have NS records on the QualityTech system pointing our
network (mwro.aspca.org) to the AT&T name servers. All had been well the
past several months...
Last week, attempts to send mail to various corporations and educational
institutions has been bouncing. The headers of our bounce notices say
simply "Failed to connect to SMTP host COMPANY.COM because: Remote system
no longer responding"
One company told us it is because the IP address is not resolving
properly...
I have checked the DNS tables for QualityTech, and they do show "mwro"
being delegated to a pair of AT&T DNS servers. I have checked the DNS
tables for AT&T, and we do have records in both forward and reverse lookup
zones (br.mwro.aspca.org <-> 12.15.29.130).
Any ideas (while I wait and wait and wait to talk to AT&T)? The Boss
suggests the "fix" for last month's "DNS Poisoning" might have "fixed"
things so that anything claiming to be from [anything].aspca.org must
resolve to a QualityTech address and not to an AT&T address. Still, I
don't see that we can do much to fix this...
We are considering using a VPN tunnel to try to use a NY machine as an
outgoing SMTP server. What else might we try?
Other folks experiencing this?
Thanks!!!!!
--------------------------------------
Richard McClary, Systems Administrator
ASPCA Knowledge Management
1717 S Philo Rd, Ste 36, Urbana, IL 61802
217-337-9761
http://www.aspca.org
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
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