On 22/01/2010 16:58, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
My venting should be aimed at Spamhaus. What they've done here is the opposite of transparency. In the case of Google DNS, Spamhaus has pulled something a bit underhanded in my estimation. They don't want people using Google DNS to query Spamhaus zones. That's fine. I have no problem with that. But the way in which they have blocked access creates a silent discard on mail servers using Google DNS, or at least Postfix (I can't speak for other MTAs in this regard).
They're not doing anything underhand. What they're doing to Google is exactly the same as they do to any other DNS server which exceeds the rate limit for the free lookup. This is documented on the Spamhaus website, along with a note explicitly warning users of free public DNS resolvers that they shouldn't use Spamhaus as it probably won't work. And, after all, why should it? if something is being provided for free, such as an open public DNS resolver, then the operators aren't going to want to pay for commercial access to something that they can't recoup money on by charging their own users.
If you're going to use a PBL, such as those provided by Spamhaus, then you really ought to read the documentation first in order to avoid obvious bear traps like the one you fell into. It's not the fault of Spamhaus, Google or Postfix if people don't RTFM.
Mark
