Re: Mysterious Email Problems

["Barros, Jacob" <jkbarros () GRACE EDU>]

We too have had similar occasions with outside companies.  Each time the
problem seemed to be on their end.  Our exchange admin said that we used
http://dnsreport.com to check the accuracy of their DNS setup and found
that they did not have the reverse lookup working.  (But they do now...
thus the problem no longer exits.)  We've never been curious enough to
follow up and ask what they did or how they did it.  

 


-----Original Message-----
From: gmalone [mailto:gmalone () PCC EDU] 
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 6:30 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] Mysterious Email Problems


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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