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Now this is a rather odd problem with emails from any hotmail address being bounced by one of our domains.

First off, I can guarantee that this is not a spam filter issue as there is defintitely nothing being held, furthermore, the spam filter has no records of the emails ever reaching them. Secondly I can assure you that email from all other domains gets through just fine. Thirdly, I'm content that all of the DNS records are set up correctly with the MX record for the domain in question definitely pointing to our mail server.

I'm seeing some old reports of similar things happening with the gist of this being that Hotmail attempts delivery to the server hosted at the a-name record for the domain instead of the mx-record. If it finds a service on port 25 then it'll attempt delivery there. If not then it'll 'fall back' and finally look at the mx record. Can anyone confirm that this weird set up is still happening?

Has anyone come accross similar situations?
Any ideas on what else I should be checking to ensure that emails get delivered to the correct server?

Thanks for helping, Rob

Email Header

x-store-info:D6taffyBScEUZsL+ZXbbDvsjG9szfvD7
Authentication-Results: hotmail.com; sender-id=pass [email protected]; dkim=none header.d=mail.hotmail.com; x-hmca=pass
X-SID-PRA: [email protected]
X-SID-Result: Pass
X-DKIM-Result: None
X-AUTH-Result: PASS
X-Message-Delivery: Vj0xLjE7RD0wO0dEPTA7U0NMPTk7bD0x
X-Message-Info: AuEzbeVr9u5fkDpn2vR5iCu5wb6HBeY4iruBjnutBzpStnUabbM/X3OHG1tkHI7a3kMiU15mwZkdItk0fkPUd26iJME4hbgAR+RCB0ejIvg=
Received: from blu0-omc3-s1.blu0.hotmail.com ([65.55.116.76]) by BAY0-HMMC1-F6.Bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4900);
     Wed, 23 May 2012 02:54:43 -0700
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 02:54:43 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=delivery-status;
    boundary="9B095B5ADSN=_01CD299C0888E07C001CA7A1blu0?omc3?s1.blu"
X-DSNContext: 7ce717b1 - 1196 - 00000002 - 00000000
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
Return-Path: <>
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 23 May 2012 09:54:43.0474 (UTC) FILETIME=[140FC720:01CD38CA]

This is a MIME-formatted message.  
Portions of this message may be unreadable without a MIME-capable mail program.

--9B095B5ADSN=_01CD299C0888E07C001CA7A1blu0?omc3?s1.blu
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=unicode-1-1-utf-7

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

       #################@##########

--9B095B5ADSN=_01CD299C0888E07C001CA7A1blu0?omc3?s1.blu
Content-Type: message/delivery-status

Reporting-MTA: dns;blu0-omc3-s1.blu0.hotmail.com
Received-From-MTA: dns;BLU161-W65
Arrival-Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 02:54:38 -0700

Final-Recipient: rfc822;################@##############
Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 relaying mail to ################# is not allowed

--9B095B5ADSN=_01CD299C0888E07C001CA7A1blu0?omc3?s1.blu
Content-Type: message/rfc822

Received: from BLU161-W65 ([65.55.116.73]) by blu0-omc3-s1.blu0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);
     Wed, 23 May 2012 02:54:38 -0700
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Return-Path: [email protected]
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
    boundary="_517b36bc-f50e-4056-81ff-c55f93271170_"
X-Originating-IP: [82.33.204.39]
From: R F <[email protected]>
To: <##############@###############>
Subject: Testing ############## emails
Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 10:54:37 +0100
Importance: Normal
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 23 May 2012 09:54:38.0360 (UTC) FILETIME=[11037180:01CD38CA]

--_517b36bc-f50e-4056-81ff-c55f93271170_
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

....
3
  • It would help if you could post the full headers of a bounced e-mail (it should show where the delivery was attempted). May 23, 2012 at 10:30
  • I've added that in Tony. May 23, 2012 at 10:38
  • Still no luck. The line "Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 relaying mail to ################# is not allowed" still concerns me, especially considering that at this point it hasn't left the confines of hotmail.com. Its been suggested to us that "either hotmail or the MX provider is refusing to relay for the domain". Why would this happen and how can we get around this? May 25, 2012 at 13:23

1 Answer 1

1

It may appear that Hotmail in all its wisdom likes to check MX records in reverse priority order. It looks like our backup-backup-backup-backup mx record (priority 40) was confusing the matter. We'll see how this progresses...

UPDATE

Many years later and this is still working fine. Lesson learnt: Anything associated with M$ may well involve flawed logic.

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