Mysterious Email Problems

[gmalone <gmalone () PCC EDU>]

Hello Group,

Over the last two or three months, Portland Community College (PCC) has had
mysterious email problems related to receiving incoming email messages.  A
college or vendor will send an email message to an individual at PCC and
sometimes it will go through and sometimes it won't.  We have worked with
two vendors and two universities to try and determine the root cause of the
problems.  It appears that when the sending email server sends a reverse
look-up for our domain it can find it sometimes and other times it
can't.  We have checked and rechecked our external DNS records.  We have
even had IT staff at the sending institution perform DNS look-ups at the
same time a message is sent.   We have found cases where the DNS look-up
will work but the email will be rejected because our domain is
unknown.   I've been told that both of the universities we are working with
have similar intermittent problems.

We have heard and discussed several theories such as the Spam software may
be casing the problem, or the need for a second authoritative DNS server
out side PCC, and even the possibility that the virus problem may be
causing this by flooding segments of the Internet periodically.  I'll admit
that this is not my area of expertise and all these worms and viruses have
caused us all to second guess our fundamental strategies.  I like to find
out if this is an issue unique to PCC so I can decide what actions to take
next.  Are there other colleges or universities out there who have been
experiencing problems like this?   If so were you able to determine the
root cause? Thanks.

Greg



==========================================================================
Greg Malone
Portland Community College
Manager, Technical Services
Sylvania Campus CC219
12000 SW 49th Ave
Portland, OR  97280-0990
email:  gmalone () pcc edu
Phone:  (503) 977-4390
Fax:  (503) 977-4390
==========================================================================

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