There are DISA folks lurking here.

I had a similar issue where our block was labeled as residential by their new firewall, and DISA front-desk isn't yet trained on this mechanism so they can't help.

I escalated the issue to a lot of groups but in the end I gave up, too much bureaucracy. The issue is simply DNS - their DNS servers don't let you resolve. So I simply set 8.8.8.8 as the resolver for *.mil and it temp (permanently) fixed the problem.

Scott


On Saturday, 29/06/2024 at 09:16 Mike Tindor wrote:
Hi folks,

I'm looking for a DISA/DOD contact who feels that my issue has merit.   I've tried the DISA Helpdesk and have been told since I'm a commercial entity with no affiliation with the DOD, they can't help me.

The issue at hand is that our /23 netblock has lost communication (at least email TCP 25) with AS345 / AS721 as of May 31, 2024 and I cannot figure out why.   We are in a Flexential datacenter in Richmond VA and use Flexential for transport.   We cannot send emails to .MIL or receive emails from .MIL.  It is not that they are being rejected on either end.   The deliveries are timing out and being returned to sender, from both sides.

I don't know if DISA/DOD has a block on our ASN  and-or /23, or if there is a routing issue somewhere between us and AS345 / AS721.  I had asked the Flexential folks to look into it from their side, and they indicated that historic data does indeed show that there TCP 25 communications to and fro between us and AS345 prior to June 1, but nothing from June 1 onward.  And all they could say was that they (Flex) were not in any way blocking.  And I'd agree with that.

As you can imagine, my customers are not happy with not being able to communicate with their family / friends via email in the MIL domains, and our customers who are vendors / contractors cannot do business with the military effectively if they cannot send/receive emails.

 us --> Flexential --> GTT --> Level3 --> Qwest --> ? --> AS345 / AS721

Any idea where one would go next?   Is it likely that any of those entities further upstream like GTT / Level3 / Qwest would even assist since we are not their customer?

Thanks for your time!

Mike Tindor