email MIA for anyone else?

[blakemiller]

I spent hours/days/weeks a few months ago trying to resolve a problem where one of my clients was continuously reporting email (sent from outside, third parties) not making it to their mailboxes. They were on mail11 and there was a few weeks/months were emails simply wouldn't make it to the VT servers. (I even went as far as setting up a test account on EVERY mail server, would have 3rd parties email to each test account and i could see what mail servers were actually getting the emails.)

Fortunately, without any real final resolution, that particular client has been pretty quiet and I haven't gotten a report from them in 2+ months.... I'm holding my breath.

But now, another client has been reporting the exact same problems for a few weeks now. They are on mail9. He has to have a 3rd party forward email messages round-about back to them, as the originals are not making it. He had another report of having to send an email 3-4 times before a single copy made it into his box.

He's now had about 4-5 instances in the last 3 weeks, and he's rather pissed and ready to bail.

I do not want to get into another round of Support Tickets and phone calls again (I literally spent hours and hours over the course of weeks on this one issue alone) and I"m ready to simply go elsewhere and setup email service for this one client.

But I want to first check to see if anyone else has clients who have been reporting missing emails.

Thanks,
Blake

[cleonard]

Over the years I've had several issues, however none were a problem with the system here. If I can recall them all:

• End user sent to incorrect email address. Misspelling
  Customer had spamassassin set too high and in delete mode.
  Customer had to reboot their router
  Email ended up in Outlook junk email folder
  Nameservers setup incorrectly.

I'd start by looking doing a DNS report www.dnsreport.com on the domain to ensure things look ok.
Make sure customer can connect to email server (command prompt: telnet mailxx.yourservicedomain.com 110
Setup a forwarder to a generic mailbox on their account to store all the mail so you can see what was truly delivered and what wasn't.
See what email client the customer is using and ensure it's not in their junk mail.
Have customer do a traceroute to the mailserver to ensure not alot of packet loss. Get the customer's IP (have them go to www.whatismyip.com) and do the reverse from a vortech server to their system.

[blakemiller]

Thanks Cleonard. I've been through "the basics" that you listed with each client that calls with this issue. I actually manage this particular clients "IT" stuff, so know the ins/outs of their systems/setup.

1. Email addresses are correct, i can see them in the original message(s) that end up getting forwarded to the client (and then me)
2. SpamAssassis is 100% DISABLED on all accounts. I rarely set it on for any of my clients. IMO, it just not user friendly, and i'd rather see spam with a higher assurance that legit mail will get through.
3. How does a router "lose" email? Plus, these reports are coming from many within the company, and each are outside salesmen, located around the country, each using unique ISP's, etc. The email service doesn't just go down, only certain email from certain senders don't make it.
4. Since i do their IT work, I disable Outlook's automic junk email, and while we use McAfee, we only "mark" as spam and leave in Inbox, vice moving it to a folder. I also set McAfee to "Low" setting, so we don't get much marked as Spam anyway.
5. Incorrect nameservers would render ALL mail gone, right? They've been with us for 2+ years . . and only about over the last few months they've been reporting problems.

Again - this is one example: Jack from xyz company (a customer of my customer) sends email to Employee 1 (Boss), 2, 3 and 4. All 4 employees have POP mailboxes and are physically located around the USA. He also copies Frank at Yahoo.com (a company rep, not direct employee.) Frank receives the email message . . . Employee 1-4 don't. Employee 1 only learns of it after talking to Frank on the phone 4 hours later, as Frank called to "confirm the order." Frank at Yahoo.com forwards the message to Employee 1's personal yahoo account (where the original message shows all the original recepients.) Employee 1 (who is the boss) is now super pissed, as this particular one was a Purchase Order worht about 12k. He fororwards it to me with ?????????????????????? He's sent me 3-4 examples over the last month alone. All from different senders.

Another one... I spoke with 3 of them yesterday as we were all at the same sales meeting. ALL of them have reported that they stopped getting their SouthwestAirlines confirmation email messages over the last few months (or ever if they can remember) .... They have all since started sending their SWA messages to their personal Yahoo/Gmail accounts.

Also, it's not that their email suddenly goes down for any period of time. Overall, 98% of it is up all the time and okay. (For instance, this is one of my biggest clietns, and we likely sent 1000's of emails over the years to each other... between him and I (both on VT Servers, btw...) we have never experienced a "lost email.") It's that some/most/all emails from "SPECIFIC SENDERS" seem to get lost alot, or have never been able to get through (SWA for instance) at all.

One of the responses I got from VT Support a few months ago was related to Spamd:

Spamd will not be disabled. It is in place to combat DoS attacks, not filter spam; that is just a secondary benefit. Any mailserver that complies with the RFC spec can get through to our mailservers. If their mail is not getting through, they / their ISP is using mailservers that are not compliant. In these instances we need the IP range that they use to send mail. Please note this is the IP range of their mailservers, not the clients IP. Several of the IP's you have provided are for DSL modems and not the ISP's mailservers. Spamd is running on mail7-mail11 and will probably be installed on any new mailservers. It could be installed on any of the other mailservers at any time if the need arises.

Could Soutwest Airlines email servers not be RFC compliant?

I'm not making this stuff up - am hosting 40+ clients with 110+ domains and hardly any problems otherwise (that are reported, at least.) and as i mentioned, spent hours upon hours over weeks on an appearantly same issue with another client of mine (both totally unrelated)
http://forum.vortechhosting.com/showthread-t_11939.html

And I just got a voicemail from another client last night... "Blake, people said they're sending email from my website and i'm not getting any..." More to come on this one. Since i don't manage this client's IT/computer, I will start with the basic questions before making any further assumptions.

[blakemiller]

Okay, i'm running my "Mail Server Test" with this latest issue... Here we go.

SETUP
From a few months ago - I have setup a POP email account on EVERY mail server (unless a new one has been added in the last 2 months) (I went in and "borrowed" some email space from clients where I personally didn't have a domain/mail server.)

I have my Outlook configured to pull from every account. On mail9 and mail11 i have two each, since those were originally suspect back then, making the test go to 14 accounts on 12 mail servers. I also copy my personal, non VT account, and also my Yahoo account to spread the fun a bit.

EXECUTION
I send an initial test email message TO the suspect 3rd party with a CC to EVERY email account noted above, from me using my personal (non VT) account. I ask 3rd party to simply REPLY TO ALL.

I initially get all my original message on all accounts. Success - I receive all 14 instances of my original message along with the copy on Yahoo.

3rd party responds shortly after. 3.5 hours have passed since his initial response (as i'm writing this) and OOOPS, so far, i've only received 8 copies back on 8 servers. (I also received the response on my personal email and my Yahoo account, so those are good.)

CONCLUSION (as of now)
As of 3.5hrs later, i am still missing his reply message on the following servers:

mail7
mail9
mail10
mail11

Guess which one my client (the boss) is on? Yep, mail10.

I have included a screenshot of my inbox to see what the results look like.
Unfortunately, this doesn't point towards any spam blocker, junk mail filter, router issue, etc. Only 1/2 of VT mail servers are receiving this guy's email.
I've asked 3rd party to send to me any/all error messages he may receive in the next 24 hrs.

NOTE: I will say that a few months ago when i did this, i had a few servers get the mail super late, like 6, 8 10+ hours, so i wouldn't be suprised if I do get some additional ones tonight ... but back then mail9 was still never receiving one of my customer's 3rd parties email.

I'll be sure to update this thread as things progress, or if i mysteriously receive the mail.

Thoughts????

[chungmike]

I've experienced some issues possibly similar to what you posted here.

Today one of my accounts (a personal one on mail6), received an email about 4 hours late. (sender sent around 3:14pm but I received at 7:24pm) I'm not sure how often it happens.

In the past few weeks, one of my customers had been complaining that he was not receiving his email. His account is on mail11. He said he waits hours for email to arrive, and some eventually make it while some don't. While there was one sender that received bounced back messages (sender's IP was on greylist), the other senders did not get bounced messages.

I put in a trouble ticket, and tech support produced a log that showed times of received email. The log basically showed no errors in the account receiving email. If I present this to my customer, I might basically be telling him that he's wrong....that he didn't lose any email. It might have been his computer because he's the only one in the company complaining about this.

Either way, the situation reduced my confidence in the email servers, and I have to question its reliability. I continue to keep an eye on the problem and hope for no more complaints.

Overall, I'm fairly satisfied with Vortech. However, I do wonder about those mail servers.

Mike

[blakemiller]

Originally Posted by chungmike

I've experienced some issues possibly similar to what you posted here.
Today one of my accounts (a personal one on mail6), received an email about 4 hours late. (sender sent around 3:14pm but I received at 7:24pm) I'm not sure how often it happens.
In the past few weeks, one of my customers had been complaining that he was not receiving his email. His account is on mail11. He said he waits hours for email to arrive, and some eventually make it while some don't. While there was one sender that received bounced back messages (sender's IP was on greylist), the other senders did not get bounced messages.
I put in a trouble ticket, and tech support produced a log that showed times of received email. The log basically showed no errors in the account receiving email. If I present this to my customer, I might basically be telling him that he's wrong....that he didn't lose any email. It might have been his computer because he's the only one in the company complaining about this.
Either way, the situation reduced my confidence in the email servers, and I have to question its reliability. I continue to keep an eye on the problem and hope for no more complaints.
Overall, I'm fairly satisfied with Vortech. However, I do wonder about those mail servers.
Mike

Mike - YYYEEEESSSSSS!! This is 100% right on as to what I'm saying. In addition to many mails just totally lost in space, there are some that do show up late. (Though none in this case,,,, see next post.)

While I'm somewhat releived to finally hear of someone else with similar problems, I'm also at a point that requires action. Trouble Tickets just don't cut it anymore, i've been down that road alot (Though in one case a few months ago, the tech helping me indeed could NOT find the email traffic for a particular case... ) - though i'll likely open one up cuz we're burned if we don't. I'm close to moving mail servers totally off of VT for these few "problem" clients (dare I say VTServers )

I'm totally satisfied with Vortech, been with them for over 2+ years and still continue to add clients, domains and accounts. But in the last 6 months, the email service has been sketchy and has been by far my biggest complaint (from my clients to me and me to VT.) 98% of the time, it's right on (I personally have 5 domains across 3 servers on VT and have never had an issue.) But, it's the 2% that do have the issues that cause us the most grief - mostly cuz it's highly repetive and provable, yet at times a complete mystery. And these two cases have been my largest, most active email clients (i'm guessing they're sending/receiving in the hundreds per day, just due to the mere size of the company/traffic.)

It's one thing to listen to a (maybe not so competent) client on the phone. But when I am personally able to duplicate the issue through the test i've developed, it's frustrating to say the least.

And yes, my last episode was also on Mail 11 as yours is. Mail9 has acted up before too. Though this particular one is Mail10.

Anyone else? Or are Mike and I just smoking things and making this stuff up?

[blakemiller]

Okay, it's been 24 hours since my test ran and NOTHING.

4 mail servers failed to receive (or deliver to my accounts) the exact same message to my mailboxes. They are:

mail7
mail9
mail10
mail11


What gives?

I have the original sender's message, meaning I have all the header information, etc. Is there anything I can personally do from here to test/try? (I.e. without going back to this guy with my tail between my legs asking for weird tests again (like "can you send this email to me to 14 different email address....) )

[chungmike]

I'm going to try some more testing like you're doing to see if I can duplicate problems on my computers. I'll pay close attention to mail 7, 9, 10, and 11.

I'm no techie, but is it possible that some mailservers are using a spamlist that's just deleting email especially if the email is from an IP address that might have had spam before? Apparently not all the mailservers are behaving the same way.

Have you reported your latest test to tech support? I'm curious to know what they'll say.

Are you able to pull up an email log?

[blakemiller]

I've submitted ticket, and got a response.

As exepcted, it's everyone elses mail servers that must not be compliant.

I must now determine the IP address(es) of the affected servers so they can be added to the grey list. One down, 3 more to go. (And those of "known" senders of missing emails... we'll never know truly all of them since bounce-back or error messages are never sent back)

BTW - I just confirmed that Southwest Airlines email truly doesn't go to these affected servers. I logged into my SWA account and added 4 email addresses to their newsletter signup page (you can add up to 4 additional addresses in addition to your primary one) . . . i picked two good servers, mail0 and mail1 and two suspect servers, mail9 and mail10. I instantly (<60sec) received opt-in confirmation emails on 2 accounts... guess which ones - yep, 0 and 1. I'm still waiting for the emails on mail9 and mail10, but ain't holding my breath.

Next, I'll call Southwest Airlines to inform them about their non-compliant mail servers. Should I press 7 or 8 after the welcome message?

I can see someone's 4 yr old dial-up homemade bedroom mail server or some cheap ass back-country ISP being "non" compliant, but when we're looking at someone like SWA and claiming it??? This is all just becoming hard to swallow.

[crocman]

I was also told that I should tell the largest telco here in australia to do the same thing, same mailservers, same issues. I put those customers on a different server at another host and magically emails started working again.
Tech support did try to to sort it but it was never resolved. The NDR's just kept reporting that the VT servers didnt respond and gave up after 5 days

[retronaut]

They may be testing for SPF records.
Have you set up SPF records in DNS?
If your email address fails then it is a simple fix.

See this thread...
http://forum.vortechhosting.com/showthread-t_12006.html

[chungmike]

Just a few minutes ago I got a complaint from a customer that happens to be on mail7. She said she did not get an email from a customer!

I hate that this is happening, but I'm glad I'm not the only one. Vortech may not really care because it's only 2 of us vocalizing it on the forum.

Why is it that other hosts don't have this problem? Crocman's solution was pretty simple....switch to another host. If these problems persist, I may have to do that as well.

[blakemiller]

Originally Posted by retronaut

They may be testing for SPF records.
Have you set up SPF records in DNS?
If your email address fails then it is a simple fix.

That issue is regarding OTHER ISP's and email hosts rejecting email SENT FROM vortech servers. Our issue is quite the opposite, in that vortech servers are not RECEIVING all mail (or at least delivering them to our mailboxes.) Further complicating this issue, is that VT servers are NOT sending back rejection messages to the originating sender - they just dissapear. It's much different when the user/3rd party gets a rejection message. In that other thread's case, users were getting rejection message highlighting some of the issues. Ours are coming in with a blind eye....

[blakemiller]

UPDATE: WOW!?! It's Tuesday 12:10pm PST and to my wild suprise, I just received 5 new emails to 3 of the missing VT servers, mail7, 9 and 11. I thought it was deja vu, but then realized it was just more test messages tricklin' in. (I received 2 each on mail9 and mail11 as i noted previously that I set up 2 accounts on each as those were suspect a few months ago.)

Was there a resevoir of mail sitting behind some "spam" flood gate that decided to just let loose? Or some Mr. Wizard hanging out in the back room with a Go/No-go switch just getting a bit backlogged? I'm just trying to picture how this happens?

Only one more server to go . . . . but guess which one. Mail 10. Guess which one is the ONLY IMPORTANT one in this case? Yep, Mail10... that's the one my client sits on.

My support ticket remains ON-HOLD.

[chungmike]

An update on my issue:

My customer emailed me saying she finally got the email....a day late.
She's on mail7.

Why is this happening only on certain mail servers?