Malfunctioning ISP

[carlsson]

Argh. Since a few days ago, my web hotel ISP has had serious malfunctioning. From time to time, there is no ssh, ftp, web, mail, webmail or even a page to the provider itself. There has been DNS failures, traceroute failures, redirection to other machines in their server room, redirection back etc. Sometimes all services have been out, sometimes only one or a few.

In the middle of this chaos, I still received email, of which I filed down on disk. I even replied to some. Now, it seems they have restored a backup of both the email and files as it looked like before the problems occurred. It means the (small amount, but yet) email received in the last two days is gone, files that I stored and files that I changed are reverted to the old state. So far there has not been any announcement from the ISP what happened.

As both file and mail seem to have worked from time to time during the hickups, it annoys me even more if the final solution was to revert to an older backup as there seemed to be little wrong with the disks themselves?

If something like this happens again, I'll consider moving my services to another provider.

[vic user]

those network guys sound like the ones at our work :)

chris

[carlsson]

ATM, all services more or less work again, and the provider has put a small news item on their web page about what happened; a file server broke down, the replacement (replica?) server also went down and they had to get a third one. An updated backup (can you say that?) will be restored later; I suppose this includes both files and mail.

However, the message doesn't say what will happen with mail and files added or changed between restoring the old backup and restoring the new one. I suppose I better do as little as possible (how does one prevent legitimate e-mail from incoming - automatic forward elsewhere?) and see if they manage to merge the best of two worlds.

What baffled me most was the DNS hickups, but maybe they were juggling function names (mail.domain.com, ftp.domain.com etc) between servers already assigned own identities (names) and IP numbers.

[joe sixpack]

i had a problem a few weeks ago it seems my ISP started banning all outgoing
port 25 SMTP to any server other then theres to help stop spam
the dumb ass's did'nt even tell me about it so i spent 2 hours
trying to figure out what my problem was. reboot/check router, check mail client,
port scan server, then i came across it on there support page
but they had a opt out link so all is well but i hate when they start blocking ports
i take it has a attempt to limit my use of the service im paying for and
if they had'nt had a opt out link i would have dumped them like a sack of shit!

[carlsson]

Personally I could live with - and am planning to one day use - my broadband provider's SMTP server for outgoing mail from my computer. The only good reason I've heard that you should be able to connect directly to any other outside SMTP server is for validation purposes, if you always use a particular private server and by using it, you minimize the risk of someone else spoofing your email identity. Many incoming servers also put spam blocking on connections not done from a known outgoing server. It is almost like you would hunt down the mailman in a district on the other side of town to hand him some mail meant for your friend living there instead of sending it through the post office.

Now all the files and mail from this afternoon are back online, but instead missing out on any changes that happened between restoring the old backup and restoring the more recent one. One can't have it all. Also it seems /tmp is temporarily (?!) write protected on the shell server, so a little limited use of that one.

[joe sixpack]

The only good reason I've heard that you should be able to connect directly to any other outside SMTP server is for validation purposes, if you always use a particular private server and by using it, you minimize the risk of someone else spoofing your email identity.
Email was designed without security in mind it's pretty easy to spoof someones
ID. you would have to track it back using the headers and even then..

Most isp outgoing mail server dont let you send email if the senders tag
is not your own. so sending email using me isp as mrjoe@littletimeisp.com
is'nt going to work if my real account is mrjoe@bigtimeisp.com
some will let you send no matter what but a lot wont.

Sidenote: spammers sometimes forge the senders field as the person they
really want the email to go to. then send it to someother server to a account
that does not exist. the server will then send back the email to the sender
but being a forged sender field it then goes to the person they really want to spam. example:

(spammer) -> (nonameserver.com)
from: mrjoe@bigtimeisp.com
to: blahblah239482@nonameisp.com

(nonameserver.com) "account not exist" (rejected / return to sender)
(nonameserver.com) "no such account / return" -> (bigtimeisp.com) "ok thanks" (move to mrjoe inbox)

this is the electronic version of the cheap real life trick where you place
a envlope in the mail with the person you want to send it too as the sender
but you dont put a stamp on it. the post man will return it to the sender "no stamp"
i've not done this trick i a long long time i dont know if it works anymore
but it wont work for out of state mail most times.

Many incoming servers also put spam blocking on connections not done from a known outgoing server.
Oh you hit the nail right on the head on that one. some servers are
so strict yahoo & hotmail users are blocked.
dont even think about using your own outgoing mail server on your
personal computer it will be rejected by alsmost everyone.
that is unless you have domain and everything and you isp does'nt block it.
incoming is ok so if you want to setup your own pop server so you can
have massive incoming attachments that works. but then again
just use ftp it's better.

i hope to get my server up and running soon as i get some big spare hdd's
and the will to start another website.

[carlsson]

Dunno about your situation, but over here most ISPs will look at the IP number of the connection to determine if it should be allowed to send e-mail via the server or not.

Returning e-mail to a supposed sender when recipient is not found is not much to be done to avoid without a total redesign of the process. However, e-mail warning receipts about virus etc is a big annoyance, in particular if the other end uses some stupid software (or has stupid sysadms) that blindly look at the forged sender and set up some future filtering rules based on that.

Regarding free email accounts, I know some free services like boards, other communities, online games etc where all known free email providers are banned per automation. Often it is due to not allowing multiple accounts for spamming, game item redistribution and so on.

On the other hand, once before I signed up to a web forum which took ages to send the automatic email, and the forum admin eventually sent it by hand. His explanation was that my e-mail address was "non-standard", in the sense it was not @yahoo or @hotmail. Not that it was not responding, but that the outgoing side didn't feel like sending automatic email to unknown addresses. Much strange.