[H-GEN] sendmail timeout problem

[R&J Stuart]

johannes at paradise.net.nz wrote:
> Running sendmail 8.11.6 essentially works just fine except a couple of domains 
> do consistently time out with the message "Deferred: Connection timed out 
> with smtp.domain, or smtp2.domain"
> 
> Both domain names do resolve just fine.To traceroute them is also no problem.

How about "telnet smtp.domain 25" : does that work?

If it does, that's wierd.

If it does not, I'd guess that you are being filtered for some reason.  You 
mentioned that other mail was going out fine to other domains so it would 
indicate that the remote end is dropping your smtp connection attempts.

It looks (from your headers) that you are delivering directly from an ADSL 
service which is probably a dynamic IP addr.  If this is the case, the 
domains you are probably talking about are probably AOL and some other very 
big domains (eg email.com is another I've come across).  You have probably 
tried some of these domains often enough (and not read or taken notice of 
the bounce messages) that they have started firealling off smtp from your IP 
(or they do that anyhow for dynamic IPs).

They do this so that they can supposedly cut down on SPAM and viruses 
(admittedly it is very cheap way of doing it as they don't receive the whole 
email, and its a relatively simple test to perform).

Personally I feel this is wrong.  I wouldn't mind a dynamic IP contributed 
(even highly) to a anti spam scoring system, but rejecting mail based on the 
fact that the IP is (supposedly) dynamically allocated is lazy.


Your alternatives are:
1. don't email those domains
2. send mail to postmaster of those domains complaining about their 
behaviour (probably best to not do this through the same mail server as the 
one you are currently using - ie do 3 first)
3. use your ISPs smtp server as a smarthost in sendmail
4. don't use a local smtp server and direct all your mail through your ISPs 
smtp server.

BTW, does anyone have a definitive list of the offending domains?  Is there 
a maintained list of them?


Robert