Re: educating rDNS violators

[token <chip.gwyn () gmail com>]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:20:25 -0400, Derek Schaible
<dschaible () cssiinc com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-08-25 at 13:55, someone wrote:
> > This becomes even further complicated if a company is hosting with
> > somebody who provides "virtual domain" mail hosting. The server could
> > be mail.somefamily.net, but have a reverse DNS entry that points to
> > mail.myprovider.net. How is that invalid? Just because the records
> > don't match doesn't make me a spammer!
>
> > > Mail servers should have correct DNS info. Forward and reverse. It is
> > > the sysadmin's responsibility to ensure that their systems are
> > > configured properly. Period.
>
> I wanted to respond to this point to the list before I get flooded with
> similar replies.
>
> True, such a situation does not make you a spammer but using a virtual
> domain will in no way impact the reverse DNS of the smtp server from
> which the email is delivered. Reverse DNS is not matching the address of
> the smtp server to the domain name in the email address. This would
> break many things like reply-to, etc.
>
> All it is doing is verifying that the server is who it claims to be.
> Virtual mail domains are not impacted. I run many virtual email domains
> as well for every website we host. These accounts can happily send mail
> through our company's SMTP server, arrive in tact and survive an rDNS
> lookup.
>
> --
> Derek Schaible <dschaible () cssiinc com>
> CSSI, Inc.

Quick little note on what is actually happening in the above scenario.
 The e-mail server makes and SMTP connection to send the mail.   The
receiving server does a lookup for reverse dns on the ip address.  It
gets mail.mydomain.com, next the receiving SMTP looks for IP address
for mail.mydomain.com and then makes sure the IP's match.  If so, it
delivers, if not, it rejects.   This works with cluster type mail
servers as well.

--chip

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