Allo,

Customers of ours with BT Internet accounts are having constant problems
sending mail to our Fasthosts dedicated servers. This is occuring with more
than one DS with Fasthosts.

Fasthosts insist the problem is with BT.. Although I suspect if I spoke to
BT they'd say the opposite!

Unfortunately BT won't speak to me as I'm not a customer of theirs.

Before I borrow someone else's identity to contact BT, I was wondering if
anyone here had had this experience?

Mail just seems to disappear down a black hole with the sender recieivng no
notice of failure.

I've had a look at the maillog on the DS, but it doesn't appear to show any
attempted connection from BT's SMTP server.

Anyone have any ideas what the problem is or how to get it resolved?

In article <>, pauls <> wrote:
>Allo,
>
>Customers of ours with BT Internet accounts are having constant problems
>sending mail to our Fasthosts dedicated servers. This is occuring with more
>than one DS with Fasthosts.
>
>Fasthosts insist the problem is with BT.. Although I suspect if I spoke to
>BT they'd say the opposite!
>
>Unfortunately BT won't speak to me as I'm not a customer of theirs.
>
>Before I borrow someone else's identity to contact BT, I was wondering if
>anyone here had had this experience?
>
>Mail just seems to disappear down a black hole with the sender recieivng no
>notice of failure.
>
>I've had a look at the maillog on the DS, but it doesn't appear to show any
>attempted connection from BT's SMTP server.
>
>Anyone have any ideas what the problem is or how to get it resolved?

Have your customers use your dedicated servers to relay their outgoing
email. Set them up with SMTP-Auth (or better), or even pop before smtp
if they get email from their domains that you host for them.

If BT block outgoing email on port 25, then open up port 587 and have
them use that instead. (Arguably what they ought to be using anyway)

I've found that by far to be the easiest way to get my customers to send
email From: their own domains hosted on my servers when they use useless
ISPs like btinternet, aol, etc. that they insist on using.

Gordon

"Gordon Henderson" <gordon+> wrote in message
news:g0ppka$1ran$.net...
>
> Have your customers use your dedicated servers to relay their outgoing
> email. Set them up with SMTP-Auth (or better), or even pop before smtp
> if they get email from their domains that you host for them.

Hi Gordon,

Thank you for the reply.

Unfortunately this isn't an option, or not for everyone anyway.. The people
we've done websites/look after the hosting for are set up to use SMTP via
the DS Fasthosts, however some customers (with BT) can't contact us or
people we do the hosting for.. It'd be difficult to over *everyone* an
account on our DS to send mail through, and impossible to guess where mail
would come from if they're new leads etc.

> If BT block outgoing email on port 25, then open up port 587 and have
> them use that instead. (Arguably what they ought to be using anyway)

They don't appear to block 25. People who have accounts on our DS *can* send
through those accounts okay, without doing anything fancy with port numbers.
The problem is only when mail goes via BT's SMTP server.

> I've found that by far to be the easiest way to get my customers to send
> email From: their own domains hosted on my servers when they use useless
> ISPs like btinternet, aol, etc. that they insist on using.

Agreed; where possible we've done that!

Is this problem something you've come across before, and if so, are you more
inclined to lay the blame with BT or Fasthosts?

Unfortunately, people tend not to believe it's a BT thing when you bring
that up! They think a company of that size can't possibly be to blame!

pauls wrote:
> "Gordon Henderson" <gordon+> wrote:
>>
>> It's not blacklisted in some RBL list somewhere?
>
> Have checked all IP's with DNSStuff and none are listed :-( If you know
> of somewhere else I could check though please let me know.
>
>> I've no first-hand experience of Fasthosts (other than welcoming a
>> couple of new hosting clients who left FH!) The biggest "problem" area
>
> That'll probably happen with us eventually after their hacking mishap
> and a week of downtime after a HDD failure, but that's another thing
> altogether!

Blacklist checkers:




However, BT/Yahoo (and AOL) appear to maintain their own blacklists. I
once spent several months chasing an issue with them calling me back
weekly, and was eventually told "no information can be released".

Are they sending email directly from their BT accounts? Would a
third-party with only a BT account get an email to go through?

Phil, London

"Philip Herlihy" <> wrote
>
> Blacklist checkers:
>
>
>

None of our IP's appear to be listed there.

But then thinking about it, would BT block *outbound* mail TO a listed IP,
or just inbound?

Not sure, but we're not listed anyway :-)

> Are they sending email directly from their BT accounts? Would a
> third-party with only a BT account get an email to go through?

A mixture of BT email addresses (name escapes me at the moment,
@btconnect.com?) and personalised domain names, all going through BT's SMTP
server.

Sending through different SMTP servers from a BT connection works fine.

pauls wrote:
> "Philip Herlihy" <> wrote
>>
>> Blacklist checkers:
>>
>>
>>
>
> None of our IP's appear to be listed there.
>
> But then thinking about it, would BT block *outbound* mail TO a listed
> IP, or just inbound?
>
> Not sure, but we're not listed anyway :-)
>
>> Are they sending email directly from their BT accounts? Would a
>> third-party with only a BT account get an email to go through?
>
> A mixture of BT email addresses (name escapes me at the moment,
> @btconnect.com?) and personalised domain names, all going through BT's
> SMTP server.
>
> Sending through different SMTP servers from a BT connection works fine.

Surprised that the native BT senders have trouble. I've seen plenty of
cases where BT won't relay email from forwarders, even though it
originated on their own network.

P