Clear bouncing emails from Xtra

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Clear bouncing emails from Xtra

mclean

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#108916 8-Sep-2012 15:05

For the last week any emails sent from our Xtra account to clear.net.nz or paradise.net.nz have been bounced with a message "452 Too many recipients received this hour". Is anyone else having this problem? The issue has been raised with the Telecom broadband helpdesk twice already.

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Vocus

#683107 8-Sep-2012 15:10

Yep, there's a thread already: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=44&topicid=108705

mclean

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#683429 9-Sep-2012 15:25

Ah thanks, in the right place now!

freitasm

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#686985 17-Sep-2012 10:25

In the other topic TelstraClear has received some email headers and investigated this matter. It seems they never actually received the messages and bounced them.

Back to Telecom New Zealand camp now.

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Ragnor

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#686992 17-Sep-2012 10:31

Friends don't let friends use Telecom/Xtra/Yahoo or be locked in to any ISP email imo....

Gmail Getting Started
https://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/start.html

Gmail Mail Fechter (pull ISP email into your gmail account)
https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21288

Gmail pop/imap settings (if you want to use a email client instead of the website)
https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=12103
https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75726

If you don't like Google/Gmail there's also Outlook.com (formerly Windows Live Hotmail), I would post a few helpful links but it's a pain finding the Microsoft equivalent of the above documentation it seems.
https:/www.outlook.com/

linw

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#686995 17-Sep-2012 10:37

+1.

But there are people who like beating themselves up!

qraider

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#687002 17-Sep-2012 10:47

It'll be the same request as TC - headers, headers, headers

Suggested email address: adsl.helpdesk@telecom.co.nz

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mclean

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#687010 17-Sep-2012 11:06

linw: But there are people who like beating themselves up!

Thanks Ragnor, linw, you are right. We gave up and moved our business mail to gmail last week. It just bugs me that Telecom can't simply tell us they have a problem with Telstra Clear that they can't fix.

ABeerForMe

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#687180 17-Sep-2012 15:52

Excuse me all, but I'm gonna jump in and say what it looks like to me. I've realised today that I've had this occur: email sent from xtra on 15/9/12 to me at (clear.net). Sender got a failure message only 10pm on 16/9/12. Message never received by me. Sorry I'm going to assume that my problem is on topic (based on it concerning email from xtra to clear.net). Maybe I should wait for more info, but it's not so easy as you have to annoy senders, who you do not neccessarily know that well, to give you more info.

This situation is really not on! I coach a basketball team and try to keep comms good with the parents. On Saturday a parent emails me to say their Boy not able to play on Monday. I eventually find out, just by luck really, that they had sent me an email (email never received obviously). That's hideous.

Also the organiser of the basketball league (xtra.co.nz account) reported troubles on 10/9/12, with some of the emails sent by her not being received.

This is my conclusion from looking at it (and knowing not that much about the tech, but hey):

Telstra has done all they can, and is doing everything right. If they are protecting their system and users from an unusual situation that can reasonably be interpreted to be a very strong sign of spam, then that's normal and expected behavior of an ISP, and good on them I guess. They have to do it.

(Now I don't even know if the 452 is generated at Telstra. Obviously there's a big unknown somewhere in the middle which I guess everyone has been trying to figure out.)

Now, it's only emails from Telecom to clear.net or paradise.net, yes?. And 452 results from an email bomb from a specific server right? So it's pretty obvious is it not. Telstra is obviously not bombing, hell they are just trying to receive. Telecom is bombing. Telstra is allowing a buildup, then releasing the floodgate. Emails to Telstra would form the biggest chunk of emails sent from telecom (other then telecom to telecom emails). Telecom doesn't do the right thing and let Telstra know that a flood is coming, rather just pushes the button and grins, knowing what's going to happen to Telstra and their customers - chaos. Very funny (except for the basketball league and the person waiting for their reply to their job application).

Obviously one reason for bombing is that your system breaks, and so you get a buildup of emails, which you then eventually release in a flood when your system is no longer broke.

Of course the other problem is that, to the people out on the street sending from xtra to clear.net it tends to look like the clear.net people are the ones with the bum provider, as the sender says "well all the other people received the email, must be a problem with clear.net". But really it's the other way around. Convenient (for Telecom).

Now, I'm not 100% sure I'm all correct here. But GOD it's GOT to be sorted out. I cannot believe that we are having email failures and it's not all over the news.

Come on Telecom.

Skolink

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#687190 17-Sep-2012 16:11

I recently helped my neighbour with her internet/computer/email etc. One thing I discovered was that her xtra email account had been hijacked. The 'vacation' message had been enabled and a spam message added. Consequently every time someone emailed her they got spam in reply.
She first knew it was happening on 22 August 2012. There is an old thread on it here

I wonder if this is the reason Xtra email is blacklisted by other ISPs

Also trying to change the Xtra email password was enfuriating. It would not accept a password that was 9 characters long (7 letters, 2 numerals), but would accept 8 characters (6 letters, 2 numerals).

mclean

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#687194 17-Sep-2012 16:15

ABeerForMe: ....Now, it's only emails from Telecom to clear.net or paradise.net, yes?...

For us its to ANY domain hosted by Telstra Clear, not just those two. Makes it harder to predict.

Ragnor

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#687278 17-Sep-2012 18:22

Someone point this thread out to https://twitter.com/TelecomNZ will likely get some action on the issue.

I don't use twitter myself or I would.

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ABeerForMe

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#687314 17-Sep-2012 19:02

Telstra is allowing a buildup, then releasing the floodgate.

Just correcting my own post here. Should be reasonably obvious, but above should have said "Telecom is allowing a buildup, then releasing the floodgate."

Also, yes I guess we assume that it is emails sent to ANY Telstra domain that could fail due to a Telecom bomb. This is out of my area, as I only know of clear.net.nz and paradise.net.nz, but sounds fair enough. So unless anyone is able to eliminate any domains, then we'll assume all Telstra domains potentially affected.

ABeerForMe

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#687474 17-Sep-2012 23:15

I guess one more question that might help complete the picture ... Is there usually an unusually long delay between time email originally sent, and time that the failure email arrives back at the sender? Perhaps I'm suggesting that there is. Obviously it was the case with me i.e. failure email only arrived very late the next day. Not sure if this adds anything, or maybe it's already pretty much clear that it occurs when Telecom is broken i.e. someone on xtra.net sends email, it gets stuck at Telecom with all the other emails that are building up cos they cannot go out, eventually they go out once Telecom is fixed (then all turns to custard at this point). So no failure message is generated while sitting at Telecom waiting to go out. So will be a delay unless original sending of email happened to be just before Telecom came back up.

Geez I don't know the answer. It all of this is roughly correct, then ...

... Well there needs to be a resolution when a hiccup causes outgoing emails to build up at Telecom. Let's face it it's going to happen, hopefully not too often. Hell, thinking about if now, the same could happen at Telstra presumably i.e. a buildup of their outgoing emails for Telecom. So what should happen when either of them gets a buildup, and what is going wrong??? There needs to be a least some basic level of understanding between the two companies, in terms of the release of the flood.

This is getting hard. I'm guessing that what is not being said is that no-one generally likes notifying the opposition every time their system breaks. Help, someone! Maybe an agreement to send them all via an independent third party, set up just for the purpose! But that sounds like overkill.

Or is the solution just that the floodee should be able to cope and deal with the flood. I don't know enough about it. But PLEASE Telecom and Telstra get together and sort this out real quick. The country is suffering.

At end of day, I guess, we should remember that the problem is this (I think?). Clever spam things that are not really doing what they are supposed to do. They are supposed to detect and stop most of the genuine spam while not causing too much trouble by flagging stuff as spam when it isn't. Then again did I read that Telstra says that the things are NOT being bounced by them? What is going on? Presumably everyone agrees at least that there is always a sudden email flood (bomb) involved? Yes? Telstra - you must be able to see if there was an incoming flood from Telecom yesterday. Or maybe not, if the whole lot never even reached you? Where did they go then? Telecom - did you release a flood on the weekend or not? Did you deliver a huge pile of failure messages to your customers? Hell, if it cannot be resolved, so both Telecom and Telstra can confidently tell us that it's fixed fixed and how, then maybe we need to go public and organise a collating of reports of Telecom customers who have received the 452 failure emails.

Surely the answer does not need to be as drastic as everyone should drop their Telstra and Telecom email address and get something else. These two need to sort out what they can and cannot do to the other's system, that's all.

mattwnz

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#687493 18-Sep-2012 00:53

I'm have hte same problem, but mine is sending from between xtras (aka yahoo's) smtp server with a domain name, and an @xtra.co.nz email address. The domain has already been authenticated to send on yahoos smtp server. Sent on Friday, bounced back today with some strange piping error as a failure notice.

elmesg

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#687873 18-Sep-2012 20:11

See the following:

http://networkstatus.telstraclear.co.nz/home/email.html

Perhaps it is related to new MTAs at Xtra. Just a theory, but reputation filters (as subscribed to by many ISPs to protect their email customers from spam) tend to penalise heavy loads from new IP addresses, as this is a classic spam characteristic.

Only messages sent by new MTAs are impacted, which may be why there are seemingly random instances (i.e. most get through when sent via the more established MTAs).

A poor (as opposed to bad) reputation usually results in throttling, not blocking. So if messages from the new MTAs are going to an ISP that doesn't receive lots of email from Xtra, but does subscribe to a reputation filter, they may not hit any limits. If there are high volumes going through, they may hit some limits.

This is usually solved either by time, or by the various parties working together, which seems to be happening now.....

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