Mail failing to second level domains like [email protected]

noimad1

Well-Known Member
Mar 27, 2003
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I am having a lot of customers complain on one of our servers that mail is getting bounced back when they try to send to certain second level domains.

Here are a couple of the domains that seem to always bounce:

se1.bp.com
research.telcordia.com

The bounced message says:

unrouteable mail domain "se1.bp.com"

and sometimes:

550-Verification failed for <[email protected]>
550-unrouteable mail domain "research.telcordia.com=

Anyone have any ideas on why these would be failing?
 

noimad1

Well-Known Member
Mar 27, 2003
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chirpy said:
Well I have a question about that then. What are the dnsreports requirements when getting info about subdomains? For example, I tried a few of mine, like h1.interxstream.com and it said the same error? However, I can get to that domain without any problems? Does there have to be a complete zone file for that subdomain in order for the dnsreport to show?

I do have zone entries for h1.interxstream.com in my zone file, but it doesn't have its own zone file because it is a subdomain?
 

chirpy

Well-Known Member
Verifed Vendor
Jun 15, 2002
13,437
33
473
Go on, have a guess
No it doesn't need to have it's own zone. However, if you want to send email to/from it it does at least need to have its own MX record.
 

noimad1

Well-Known Member
Mar 27, 2003
626
0
166
chirpy said:
No it doesn't need to have it's own zone. However, if you want to send email to/from it it does at least need to have its own MX record.
Hmm..now this is getting stranger. I tried to send to the se1.bp.com domain from my yahoo account and my personal time warner account and it went through. It just tends to bounce with our servers?
 

lankyb

Well-Known Member
Sep 21, 2004
99
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166
Peterborough, UK
I've noticed that depending on which server the records are being requested from.... depends why the emails are not getting routed. Here are all the available NS servers for the telcordia.com and bp.com domains (as to what dnsreport.com says):

TELCORDIA.COM:
dns1rrc.telcordia.com.[128.96.20.43] [TTL=7200]
dns1py4.telcordia.com.[128.96.176.51] [TTL=7200]
dns1rrc6.telcordia.com.[128.96.20.47] [TTL=7200]
dnsmx2pya.telcordia.com.[128.96.20.32] [TTL=7200]
dnsmx1pya.telcordia.com.[128.96.20.31] [TTL=7200]
dnsmx1rrc.telcordia.com.[128.96.20.41] [TTL=7200]
dns1pya.telcordia.com.[128.96.20.33] [TTL=7200]

BP.COM
ns0-b.dns.pipex.net. [158.43.129.66] [TTL=172800] [UK]
ns1-b.dns.pipex.net. [158.43.193.66] [TTL=172800] [UK]
----------

MY OWN NS SERVER - Random Test
ns1.artificialmedia.co.uk
ns2.artificialmedia.co.uk
Now i went through them one by one to see which ones can collect the MX records for research.telcordia.com, then se1.bp.com using this lookup tool [http://network-tools.com/nslook/Default.asp ]... this is what i found:

RESEARCH.TELCORDIA.COM:
dns1rrc.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1py4.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1rrc6.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dnsmx2pya.telcordia.com - Collected Fine
dnsmx1pya.telcordia.com - Collected Fine
dnsmx1rrc.telcordia.com - Collected Fine
dns1pya.telcordia.com - Timed Out
----------
ns0-b.dns.pipex.net - Searched, but could not find NS server relating to domain
ns1-b.dns.pipex.net - Searched, but could not find NS server relating to domain
----------
ns1.artificialmedia.co.uk - Collected Fine, used dnsmx2pya.telcordia.com to obtain records
ns2.artificialmedia.co.uk - Collected Fine, used dnsmx2pya.telcordia.com to obtain records

SE1.BP.COM
dns1rrc.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1py4.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1rrc6.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dnsmx2pya.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dnsmx1pya.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dnsmx1rrc.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1pya.telcordia.com - Timed Out
----------
ns0-b.dns.pipex.net - Collected Fine, mx records only - goes to messagelabs.com
ns1-b.dns.pipex.net - Collected Fine, mx records only - goes to messagelabs.com
----------
ns1.artificialmedia.co.uk - Collected Fine, mx records only - goes to messagelabs.com
ns2.artificialmedia.co.uk - Collected Fine, mx records only - goes to messagelabs.com

Basically, in conclusion to this tiny (nearly pointless) experiment..... i was taught NS servers performed a search whenever the records in question where not available on themselves; The majority of telcordia.com NS server's timed out when the request was made that required them to search. This is like the servers going 'I have NO idea what your on about' when they are asked a question, instead of looking for the answer.

Also se1.bp.com dns record only contains has MX records, no A or NS records. I'm not sure if this is necessary - I also thought subdomains did.

DNSReport did not work for me when i tried to look at research.telcordia.com because its first port of call was dns1rrc6.telcordia.com. And se1.bp.com did not work because record only contains MX records, no NS for dnsreport.com to look from.

Hopefully all this was helpful in some form or shape :)

---[ DnsReport.Com Errors ]-----------------------
RESEARCH.TELCORDIA.COM
[ERROR: I was unable to get an answer from the parent servers [dns1rrc6.telcordia.com], when I tried to find the NS records for research.telcordia.com.]
SE1.BP.COM
[ERROR: The parent servers say that the domain se1.bp.com does not have any NS records (although they may have some other information on that zone). I can not do a DNS report on a hostname (such as mail.example.com) or a domain name that does not have its own zone.]
 

noimad1

Well-Known Member
Mar 27, 2003
626
0
166
lankyb said:
I've noticed that depending on which server the records are being requested from.... depends why the emails are not getting routed. Here are all the available NS servers for the telcordia.com and bp.com domains (as to what dnsreport.com says):



Now i went through them one by one to see which ones can collect the MX records for research.telcordia.com, then se1.bp.com using this lookup tool [http://network-tools.com/nslook/Default.asp ]... this is what i found:

RESEARCH.TELCORDIA.COM:
dns1rrc.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1py4.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1rrc6.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dnsmx2pya.telcordia.com - Collected Fine
dnsmx1pya.telcordia.com - Collected Fine
dnsmx1rrc.telcordia.com - Collected Fine
dns1pya.telcordia.com - Timed Out
----------
ns0-b.dns.pipex.net - Searched, but could not find NS server relating to domain
ns1-b.dns.pipex.net - Searched, but could not find NS server relating to domain
----------
ns1.artificialmedia.co.uk - Collected Fine, used dnsmx2pya.telcordia.com to obtain records
ns2.artificialmedia.co.uk - Collected Fine, used dnsmx2pya.telcordia.com to obtain records

SE1.BP.COM
dns1rrc.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1py4.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1rrc6.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dnsmx2pya.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dnsmx1pya.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dnsmx1rrc.telcordia.com - Timed Out
dns1pya.telcordia.com - Timed Out
----------
ns0-b.dns.pipex.net - Collected Fine, mx records only - goes to messagelabs.com
ns1-b.dns.pipex.net - Collected Fine, mx records only - goes to messagelabs.com
----------
ns1.artificialmedia.co.uk - Collected Fine, mx records only - goes to messagelabs.com
ns2.artificialmedia.co.uk - Collected Fine, mx records only - goes to messagelabs.com

Basically, in conclusion to this tiny (nearly pointless) experiment..... i was taught NS servers performed a search whenever the records in question where not available on themselves; The majority of telcordia.com NS server's timed out when the request was made that required them to search. This is like the servers going 'I have NO idea what your on about' when they are asked a question, instead of looking for the answer.

Also se1.bp.com dns record only contains has MX records, no A or NS records. I'm not sure if this is necessary - I also thought subdomains did.

DNSReport did not work for me when i tried to look at research.telcordia.com because its first port of call was dns1rrc6.telcordia.com. And se1.bp.com did not work because record only contains MX records, no NS for dnsreport.com to look from.

Hopefully all this was helpful in some form or shape :)

---[ DnsReport.Com Errors ]-----------------------
RESEARCH.TELCORDIA.COM
[ERROR: I was unable to get an answer from the parent servers [dns1rrc6.telcordia.com], when I tried to find the NS records for research.telcordia.com.]
SE1.BP.COM
[ERROR: The parent servers say that the domain se1.bp.com does not have any NS records (although they may have some other information on that zone). I can not do a DNS report on a hostname (such as mail.example.com) or a domain name that does not have its own zone.]
Wow, thanks for going through all of that for me. That is a good tool to know about. I will let my customer know about the telcordia.com nameservers not responding.

I guess I am still leary on the bp.com though, becuase those nameservers seemd to respond ok. I'll see if I can do research to see if whole zone files are supposed to be listed, or if just the mx records should work.....