AOL mail server problems?
Hello everyone, I've noticed some weird things going on with AOL's smtp servers today - 2003-10-12 12:37:48 1A8k8X-0002OC-0c Remote host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [64.12.138.89] closed connection in response to initial connection 2003-10-12 12:37:55 1A8k8X-0002OC-0c Remote host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [64.12.136.153] closed connection in response to initial connection 2003-10-12 12:38:35 1A8k8X-0002OC-0c Remote host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [152.163.224.122] closed connection in response to initial connection Have about 40 of these in my mail logs going to different AOL smtp servers. Trying to connect by hand using telnet results in the mail servers closing the connection right away without giving a reason. I did however, out of about 20 tests, got through once and actually got the server's welcome message. Any ideas? -------------------------- Brian Bruns The Summit Open Source Development Group Open Solutions For A Closed World / Anti-Spam Resources http://www.sosdg.org ICQ: 8077511
On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, Brian Bruns wrote:
I've noticed some weird things going on with AOL's smtp servers today - 2003-10-12 12:37:48 1A8k8X-0002OC-0c Remote host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [64.12.138.89] closed connection in response to initial connection 2003-10-12 12:37:55 1A8k8X-0002OC-0c Remote host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [64.12.136.153] closed connection in response to initial connection 2003-10-12 12:38:35 1A8k8X-0002OC-0c Remote host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [152.163.224.122] closed connection in response to initial connection
They're probably blocking you. Have you gotten many scomp complaints recently?...perhaps a big backlog of them that you/your abuse people haven't dealt with? Last time I dealt with AOL blocking us, that was the cause, and the result was mixed. Sometimes we'd get the connection closed as above, sometimes a 550 message telling us we were blocked. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Lewis *jlewis@lewis.org*| I route Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are Atlantic Net | _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________
----- Original Message ----- From: <jlewis@lewis.org> To: "Brian Bruns" <bruns@2mbit.com> Cc: <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 2:16 PM Subject: Re: AOL mail server problems?
They're probably blocking you. Have you gotten many scomp complaints recently?...perhaps a big backlog of them that you/your abuse people haven't dealt with? Last time I dealt with AOL blocking us, that was the cause, and the result was mixed. Sometimes we'd get the connection closed as above, sometimes a 550 message telling us we were blocked.
Well, just to be absolutely sure, I checked the forwardings for abuse@, postmaster@, and a few others, all of which go to admins@2mbit.com. I haven't seen any mail from AOL support/abuse/tech/whatever to us (nor has any of the other admins). We are a very small and close nit group with very few actual users - stuff like spam, viruses, and mailbombs get noticed really quickly (we all have pagers/cell phones which get a message whenever the system detects something unusual going on). What I was discussing with someone offlist was that AOL has apparently been threatning to disallow connections from dynamic IPs for a while now, and they apparently are starting to follow through with it. Although my IP looks like a dynamic IP, its a static IP out of a block of /29 (do a whois on 68.78.10.168 and you'll see it belongs to Nathan Drook, one of the people here). This is one of those reasons why I hate DUL lists with a passion. Its not foolproof, and alot of smaller sites get nailed in this mess. Of course, AOL offers up no way of correcting these listings on their site, the postmaster site of theirs, or via the mail daemon itself. Whats very interesting is that the mail finally does go through after rotating a few dozen times between different MX hosts. Whats even more interesting is that when the mail did go through, it went through to an IP which blocked it several times before. I have no idea if its just because not all of their servers are properly updated yet or not. Who knows. *shrug* -------------------------- Brian Bruns The Summit Open Source Development Group Open Solutions For A Closed World / Anti-Spam Resources http://www.sosdg.org ICQ: 8077511
Brian Bruns writes on 10/12/2003 11:58 PM:
This is one of those reasons why I hate DUL lists with a passion. Its not foolproof, and alot of smaller sites get nailed in this mess.
When it comes to a choice between letting in the ~ 1% of small businesses and linux geeks on dialup + dynamic DNS, and letting in all the direct to MX spam and virus mail that is ~ 99% of the traffic from dynamic IP space, I'll surely take the choice of blocking dynamic IPs, thank you very much. srs -- srs (postmaster|suresh)@outblaze.com // gpg : EDEDEFB9 manager, outblaze.com security and antispam operations
----- Original Message ----- From: "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <suresh@outblaze.com> To: "Brian Bruns" <bruns@2mbit.com> Cc: <jlewis@lewis.org>; <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 2:39 PM Subject: Re: AOL mail server problems?
When it comes to a choice between letting in the ~ 1% of small businesses and linux geeks on dialup + dynamic DNS, and letting in all the direct to MX spam and virus mail that is ~ 99% of the traffic from dynamic IP space, I'll surely take the choice of blocking dynamic IPs, thank you very much.
Just checked their DUL lookup. My range is not on their list. I guess I'll call them a little later and ask whats up. -------------------------- Brian Bruns The Summit Open Source Development Group Open Solutions For A Closed World / Anti-Spam Resources http://www.sosdg.org ICQ: 8077511
jlewis@lewis.org writes on 10/12/2003 11:46 PM:
On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, Brian Bruns wrote:
I've noticed some weird things going on with AOL's smtp servers today - 2003-10-12 12:37:48 1A8k8X-0002OC-0c Remote host mailin-04.mx.aol.com [64.12.138.89] closed connection in response to initial connection
They're probably blocking you. Have you gotten many scomp complaints recently?...perhaps a big backlog of them that you/your abuse people
Someone in another thread did say that you were on a DSL line. AOL has a published policy of blocking mail from residential broadband IPs. That, combined with the fact that it is quite often rather tough to tell where an ISP's dynamic / residential pool ends and where its static IP DSL pool begins, might well make AOL cast their net a bit wider than they intend. Call the number they give at http://postmaster.info.aol.com and ask them -- srs (postmaster|suresh)@outblaze.com // gpg : EDEDEFB9 manager, outblaze.com security and antispam operations
participants (3)
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Brian Bruns -
jlewis＠lewis.org -
Suresh Ramasubramanian