[ale] Fun with BellSouth, AOL and SMTP

James CE Johnson jcej at tragus.org
Sun Jun 29 18:36:05 EDT 2003


Michael Still wrote:

> What relay are you using specifically?

mail.bellsouth.net

I've been using that for six months or more.

A bit ago I found a workaround that works (I guess that's redundant) but 
I have no idea *why* it works.  I run redir thusly:

        redir --laddr=127.0.0.1 --lport=10027 \
              --cport=25 --caddr=mail.bellsouth.net \
              --timeout 15 \
              --syslog --name='mail.bellsouth.net ' \
              &

Then I tell postfix that the relayhost is [localhost]:10027

Now everything is working just fine.

mail.bellsouth.net resolves to 205.152.59.16 and 205.152.59.17. redir is 
currently attached to ...17. I wonder if it'll all break if I restart it 
and it attaches to ...16 instead.

In any case, I'm still going to try to find some kind soul outside of 
HellSouth that would be willing to relay if things get funky again.

> I can reproduce the problem when
> I use mx01.mail.bellsouth.net, but not when I use mail.bellsouth.net.
> Those are different systems for different purposes.  Usually for big
> internet companies the MX for mail outside its network will not be the
> same machine as the relay for the internal users.  This is the case with
> Bellsouth.
>
> I don't have any aol people to try to send to so I might be off base
> here, but here's what I've done:
>
> [user at localhost ~]$ telnet mx01.mail.bellsouth.net 25
> Trying 205.152.59.33...
> Connected to mx01.mail.bellsouth.net.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> 220 mail.bellsouth.net ESMTP server (InterMail vM.5.01.05.27
> 201-253-122-126-127-20021220) ready Sun, 29 Jun 2003 16:05:05 -0400
> helo
> 250 imf11aec.bellsouth.net
> mail from: michaelstill at tmail.om
> 250 Sender <michaelstill at tmail.om> Ok
> rcpt to: michaelstill at tmail.com
> 550 .net 022: Your current IP address is not allowed to relay to
> tmail.com Solution: Connect using BellSouth Internet Service.
> Connection closed by foreign host.
>
> [user at localhost ~]$ telnet mail.bellsouth.net 25
> Trying 205.152.59.17...
> Connected to mail.bellsouth.net.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> 220 mail.bellsouth.net ESMTP server (InterMail vM.5.01.05.27
> 201-253-122-126-127-20021220) ready Sun, 29 Jun 2003 16:31:48 -0400
> helo
> 250 imf18aec.bellsouth.net
> mail from: michaelstill at tmail.com
> 250 Sender <michaelstill at tmail.com> Ok
> rcpt to: michaelstill at tmail.com
> 250 Recipient <michaelstill at tmail.com> Ok
> data
> 354 Ok Send data ending with <CRLF>.<CRLF>
> From: michaelstill at tmail.com
> To: michaelstill at tmail.com
> Subject: Testing...
> This is a test message.
> .
> 250 Message received:
> 20030629203207.HTV18528.imf18aec.bellsouth.net@[68.158.20.9]
> quit
> 221 imf18aec.bellsouth.net ESMTP server closing connection
> Connection closed by foreign host.
>
>
> On 06/29/03 at 10:33 AM you wrote:
>
>>  David Corbin wrote:
>>
>>  >Good try, but incorrect.  James has had that setup for many
>>  >months.
>>  Yes. Forgive me for my late-night and incomplete post :-)
>>
>>  Sometime yesterday I started seeing things like this in my postfix 
>> logs:
>>
>>  Jun 28 23:14:08 geek postfix/smtp[19031]: 57EE023302:
>
> to=<MySelf at my.work.address>,
> relay=mx01.mail.bellsouth.net[205.152.59.33], delay=0, status=bounced
> (host mx01.mail.bellsouth.net[205.152.59.33] said: 550 .net 022: Your
> current IP address is not allowed to relay to equifax.com Solution:
> Connect using BellSouth Internet Service.)
>
>>
>>  This is with 'relayhost=mail.bellsouth.net' in /etc/postfix/main.cf.
>>
>>  Since that meant *no* email is going out, I removed the relayhost
>
> entry and now I can send mail to, apparently, anywhere other than AOL
> and hotmail. (Not that that's really a *bad* thing but I do have a
> number of locally hosted mailing lists with AOL and hotmail members.)
>
>>
>>  I swapped a few emails with BS support (and I must say I'm very
>
> impressed that (a) they were working late on a Saturday night and that
> (b) they seemed to be much more clueful than most first-line tech
> support I've swapped emails with) and they confirmed that
> mail.bellsouth.net is no longer relaying mail unless the From or
> Reply-To header ends with @bellsouth.net.
>
>>
>>  David is still relaying happily and we compared IPs. We're definately
>
> in different subnets and I recall that my connection bounced sometime
> Friday. So, my theory is that they probably changed their policy
> recently but haven't removed the "old addresses" from the list of
> ok-to-relay and that my Friday bounce put me into a new address block
> that isn't in that old list.
>
>>
>>  I'm currently seeking a non-BS host that will relay email to AOL and
>
> hotmail for the handful of domains for which I process email. With luck
> I'll have something going in a day or two...
>
>>
>>  >Bellsouth support is now telling him that they won't relay email
>>  >that isn't from bellsouth.net or has a reply-to of bellsouth.net.
>>  > This would really suck.
>>  I'll be happy to post the BS responses if anyone is interested.
>>
>>  >However, I have the same set up, and (so far, fingers crossed) I
>>  >do not have a problem
>>  >
>>  Maybe they just like you more :-)
>>
>>  >
>>  >David
>>  >
>>  >On Sunday 29 June 2003 12:52, Jim Kinney wrote:
>>  >
>>  >>You need to adjust the "smart_host" setting in sendmail to use the 
>> smtp
>>  >>provided by your ISP. It is a anti-spam feature that helps track
>
> spammers.
>
>>  >>
>>  >>
>>  >>>I'm looking for a sanity check here from anyone else with 
>> BellSouth DSL
>>  >>>service.
>>  >>>
>>  >>>Tonight I started seeing this kind of thing in my mail logs:
>>  >>>host mx00.mail.bellsouth.net[205.152.59.32] said: 550 .net 022: Your
>>  >>>current IP address is not allowed to relay to hotmail.com Solution:
>>  >>>Connect using BellSouth Internet Service.
>>  >>>
>>  >>>I sent a note to dsl_help at bellsouth.net and they confirmed that 
>> they're
>>  >>>no longer relaying email through mail.bellsouth.net.
>>  >>>
>>  >>>Unfortunately, AOL (and probably others) refuses to allow incoming
>
> email
>
>>  >>>from dynamically assigned IPs:
>>  >>>
>>  >>>telnet some.aol.mail.host 25
>>  >>>554- (RTR:DU)  The IP address you are using to connect to AOL is a
>>  >>>dynamic 554- (residential) IP address.  AOL will not accept future
>
> e-mail
>
>>  >>>transactions
>>  >>>554- from this IP address until your ISP removes this IP address 
>> from
>>  >>>its list
>>  >>>554- of dynamic (residential) IP addresses.  For additional
>
> information,
>
>>  >>>554  please visit http://postmaster.info.aol.com.
>>  >>>
>>  >>>So what's a fella to do?
>>  >>>
>>  >>>Has anyone else tripped over this yet?
>>  >>>
>

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