Eircom DNS/Mail Servers. What the hell are they at??

Occidental

Following a month of DNS sagas and now the ongoing e-mail host fiasco, does anyone know what on earth is going on at Eircom and is there any possibility that they might actually get off their collective arses and sort it out. I'm sure I remember this being called a service and I'm equally sure I'm paying for something called a service .

Mountjoy Mugger

One of their support guys posted to Eircomnet.support that they were experiencing DOS attacks.

jd

Originally posted by Mountjoy Mugger
One of their support guys posted to Eircomnet.support that they were experiencing DOS attacks.

nope-its a problem with customers (companies) running open mail relays.
jd

Occidental

Now how did I know that it wouldn't be Eircom's fault.

They've also told me that

We haven't had any problems reported.
It must be your e-mail server.
We have no record of your account here.
It should be okay if you don't try first thing in the morning.
We're having a problem with some of the routers.
We're having capacity problems on the e-mail servers.
It's a temporary problem while we replace some servers.
It'll be fixed by Tuesday.


As I said, does anyone actually know what the hell they're up to?

jd

Originally posted by Occidental
Now how did I know that it wouldn't be Eircom's fault.

They've also told me that

We haven't had any problems reported.
It must be your e-mail server.
We have no record of your account here.
It should be okay if you don't try first thing in the morning.
We're having a problem with some of the routers.
We're having capacity problems on the e-mail servers.
It's a temporary problem while we replace some servers.
It'll be fixed by Tuesday.


As I said, does anyone actually know what the hell they're up to?

As I said that the the open relays are causing problems..
of course it shouldn't affect other customers, but if its any comfort new systems are being tested in Indigo/Eircomnet, part of which includes new mail servers which will minimise these problems infuture.

from one of the systems guys in eircomnet

I suspect that the reason that you are failing to connect sometimes is that
your mail client (Outlook Express or whatever) is timing out when trying to
connect to our mail servers (mail1.eircom.net or mail2.eircom.net).

I suspect the reason that it is timing out is because the mail servers are
under an increased load due the recent influx of spam on our mail servers
due to open relays.

This is more or less what happens:

Customer X has say an ISDN account with Eircom Net and has their own mail
server as well. There mail server is set to forward all its outbound mail to
mail1.eircom.net for delivery. The customer should only be allowing mail
from their own company to send outgoing mail but sometimes due to
misconfiguration or otherwise, they allow anyone in the world to send
outgoing mail through their server.

A spammer who is scanning the Eircom Net range of addresses notices this and
uses that customers mail server to send thousands of spam messages to
eircom.net, yahoo.com hotmail.com addresses - and every one gets forwarded
to mail1.eircom.net to try and sort out where they should go.

Not only does this take bandwidth and processing time away from valid emails
but also every mail that is not immediately deliverable sits in a queue
awaiting delivery and uses more processing power as the mail server
periodically try's to send them again.

Worse still - if the spammer has faked a non-existent return address on the
Company X domain - any bounces message that should leave the mail queue to
be downloaded by Company X's mail server may not and can stay on our queues
for a period of time as Company X' mail servers says that they have no email
address by that name.

This is why spam is such a hard/difficult/revenue draining thing.

Anyway, we have identified the spam source(s) and for the moment have them
closed down. I am sure some more will spring up in the future but all we are
doing all we can.

The load on the mail servers is significantly down on last week and I expect
it to be just about back to normal by Friday.


And bloody Mary Harney is in favour of what is essentially a spammers bill of rights in the e-commerce bill..(I have a letter regarding this issue from her..)
jd

Occidental

jd,

So what you’re really saying is that Eircom have only just woken up to the realities of relay vulnerabilities and that I should go and find myself a proper telecoms provider, who knows what their doing and doesn’t treat their customers like fools.

now why didn't I thinkl of that..

Snaga

Umm occidental, no.

What hes saying is that the problem itself is caused by its customers being clueless and not knowing how to configure their mail servers properly.

An isp has to have mail servers that accept ALL mail from its ip range (i.e. any ip address given to anyone connected via their service). Its the customers machines with the problem, and the isp just accepts mail from their ip addies as it is assumed the email traffic is 'valid'.

Occidental

Snaga,

So you feel that it is acceptable that Eircoms e-mail servers should come crashing to their knees because some of their customers have not applied patches to secure relay vulnerabilities which are known about for the last two years.

Well, good for you. Now excuse me while I go and find an ISP that lives in the real world.