email forwarding from domain host UK2.net not working with Plusnet

[#1]

Quote from: chasby

Bob I have sent an email direct to you re your queries about my access to the postini quarentine area. Re the latest adjustment to plusnet system and spam that you mention in 67,  does this mean we should still have edge active or not? I shall be checking the plusnet emails shortly and would like make sure of the system first.

Hi chasby. Your PM confirms my suspicions. I've sent you a reply.

Quote from: snozboz

Since making the change over 48 hours ago which Bob suggested in reply 28 (moving hosting of my UK2 domain to Plusnet's DNS servers, but leaving the account with UK2), I haven't received ANY emails to any of my email addresses on that domain name, and I haven't had any "bounce" messages when I've sent test emails either.  This is worse than before!  At least then, I was getting email that UK2 forwarded to my gmail account, and the emails sent to my Plusnet mailboxes were failing with "bounced" messages.  Now, there's nothing.  😞 Help!

Hi Martin, I'll take a look at your account now and get back to you shortly.

Quote

Technical details of temporary failure: Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 451 451-Plusnet: Please route email according to MX record 451 (burches.co.uk/74.125.78.24) (state 14).

In fact I think I know what's happened. That suggests to me that your domain records aren't pointing to Postini after the transfer and instead mail is trying to bypass Postini altogether. I'll be back shortly to confirm though.
Edit: I'm about to reply to your ticket Martin. Let me know if you have any further problems.

[#2]

Quote from: Bob

Right folks, We're about to make this change. I'm hoping a few hours later we should begin to see some degree of improvement. It would be appreciated if people could keep a close eye on things and let me know how they get on.

Bob,
As far as I can tell, this hasn't made any difference for me. None of my test uk2-hosted domain emails are coming through to my f9 account; yet emails directly to f9 are fine. Please, please can you try something else - losing emails is no fun!
Kev.

[#3]

Thanks for the feedback Kev, let me know if there's no change tomorrow and we'll look to take further steps.

[#4]

After a long wait I have managed to move my domain from UK2 to another web host. Although I did I get a small increase in spam over "normal" I also got some mail from newsletters that I had signed up for but hadn't seen for some time. I guess Postini thought I shouldn't be troubled with them!! I also got a couple of emails from two or three days ago. Makes you wonder what you have missed in the name of Postini filtering. But  I still can't  get get Thunderbird to let me send mail and no one seems to know why. Ho hum!

[#5]

Kev, same for me. I have just tested and the changes have made no difference - I am still getting the failure message bounced back from uk2.net about giving up after multiple retrys. Emailing directly the plusnet account that the uk2 address is forwarded to, works fine - so Postini is still not accepting any of my emails from uk2.
Creamola.

[#6]

OK, so doesn't look like that worked then
We're going to make some more adjustments today. I'll post planned maintenance announcements before each of these.

[#7]

Hiya, just confirming I'm another user affected by this scenario.
Forwarding from UK2net to Plusnet has not worked since perhaps Friday (except for a brief window mid-Monday).
Appreciate that solutions can be hit-and-miss, but it might be worth ensuring your suppliers adopt a precautionary principle with people's mail.
Best of luck!

[#8]

We've just made some further changes to the spam filters. If people can let me know how they're getting on after an hour or so then it would be appreciated.
If this doesn't work then there's one more change we'd like to make before referring the case back to Postini, I'll let people know before hand if we consider this to be necessary.

[#9]

Within the last 5 mins have had a delivery fail message from a uk 2 redirect. Have just seen your latest post now and will check again in 30 mins or so.
Cheers

[#10]

One of the things I don't understand is that UK2net switched off its free catchall facility a year ago.  Since then anyone with a domain registered with UK2net has had to pay extra if they want emails forwarded for more than a handful of domain related email addresses.  In common with most users I declined the opportuinity to line UK2nets's coffers and restricted myself to a couple of email prefixs to my domain name.
Since this change I've not received any spam sent to the email addresses I set up with UK2net.  I don't understand where the massive increase in spam which Postini claims to have suddenly started receiving has come from.
The only spam I've received in the last year has been addressed to permutations of my Plusnet account.  Rather suggesting that someone had got their hands on Plusnet info, as I'd not circulated my Plusnet address to anyone.  (My domain has been registered with UK2net and my ISP has been Plusnet) from the first day I 'enrolled' on the net some years ago.
In order to stop the massive volume of Plusnet originated CNN News Spam, I disabled the catchall within Plusnet.
So far, I can see absolutely no evidence for the innuendos on the Plusnet Service Status pages that the problem is down to UK2net, and that UK2net is causing it's continuation because they haven't responded to someone at Plusnet.
The ultimate cheek is the suggestion that I should move my domain to Plusnet, the organisation whose 'anti spam partner' has created the problem.
If I hadn't recently locked myself into a year long broadband contract with Plusnet, it would be my ISP I'd be considering changing.  After all, UK2net must be forwarding emails to other ISP's without this kind of problem.  One wonders how Plusnet's 'big brother' BT copes with the screening of emails forwarded from UK2net.
This is the second Plusnet mess up in the last couple of months.  The first was when they lost my broadband router for nearly a month, leaving me to pay dialup rates to BT as the change over at the exchange had gone through almost instantaneously.  One wonders where the ecstatic user survey results come from?
In the meantime, I'm just praying that Plusnet will fix the blocking of emails from UK2net before I have to email all my worldwide contacts with an alternative email address and the reason why I'm asking them to go to the trouble of altering their records.

[#11]

Bob
Just tried redirects from uk2 to my plusnet mail via 3 different outgoing servers. all three arrived quickly without problems into my normal plusnet/free-online mail box. At present it looks to be working. - For how long !!?
Lets hope you've solved it
cheers

[#12]

I can confirm that mail sent directly from UK2 at 1337z hit my PlusNet mailbox in under a minute.

[#13]

Quote from: snozboz

Since making the change over 48 hours ago which Bob suggested in reply 28 (moving hosting of my UK2 domain to Plusnet's DNS servers, but leaving the account with UK2), I haven't received ANY emails to any of my email addresses on that domain name, and I haven't had any "bounce" messages when I've sent test emails either.  This is worse than before!  At least then, I was getting email that UK2 forwarded to my gmail account, and the emails sent to my Plusnet mailboxes were failing with "bounced" messages.  Now, there's nothing.  😞

Martin, we've just fixed this. If you haven't already you should receive a reply to your ticket shortly.

[#14]

Dear Bob
I had an mail delivery system failure notice to one of my Plusnet aliases this morning so whatever mods you have made are not working correctly.
IMO tinkering with the settings is not going to restore my confidence when some email get through and some doesn't.
We need some guarantee that emails sent to our Plusnet addresses will get through or be marked as spam, as appropriate.
It's not acceptable for forwarded mail, whether from uk2 or anyone else, to a current Plusnet email box or alias, be dumped before I get it - I'll decide thanks.
Regards
R44flyer

[#15]

Like many of the others, I have been very unhappy about Postini choosing what I can and cannot read, particularly without my agreement or even telling Plusnet. All of that has been debated above. SO, I moved from UK2 because it seemed I had no choice if I wanted my mail to get through, and it has to, and now is, although how long before Postini starts on them none of us know. IF they do it again, I will have leave Plusnet because this last week has been a disaster.
My other problem has been that several days ago, I suddendly stopped being able to SEND email. Everybody was surprised at this, including the Thunderbird support team who have done their level best to help me but with no success. Uninstalling - reinstalling and fiddling with server settings helped while away unproductive days but nothing changed. Tickets raised with Plusnet Support brought some suggestions including
"The error could be caused by our sending server being under load, it takes too long to respond so the email client errors. We have more than 20 sending servers which should be load balanced to stop this type of thing happening but sometimes it can fail. This error would normally not happen again if you wait 15minutes and then retry to send the message. When was the last time you were able to send a message? Have you deleted the email account in Thunderbird and recreated it?"
The answer to that is, yes about every half an hours for the last four days. My wife's email on her laptop is through Plusnet and the relay address is the same, and that has worked throughout. Web sites across the world have told me that it could be Microsoft updates, AVG updates, my firewall, server settings and finally, see if it is possible to send an email with Outlook Express.
And then, suddenly, without me doing anything, it seems to have started working again. Now I wonder why? I don't subscribe to the Thunderbird software being intermittently flaky  theory. There have been no MS or AVG programme updates. I am completely baffled - except I am now getting my emails again through a different web hoster. And sometimes I have heard it said that ISPs might block port 25 if they are having big spam problems. OH I DO hope I am wrong.
Finally, thank you to Bob who continues to work very hard at keeping us all happy and for telling us what is going on. We do appreciate you.