[26504] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: mail does bounce (was: Customers down?)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven J. Sobol)
Sat Jan 1 21:43:53 2000
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2000 21:41:25 -0500 (EST)
From: "Steven J. Sobol" <sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net>
To: sthaug@nethelp.no
Cc: nanog@merit.edu, swmike@swm.pp.se
In-Reply-To: <39476.946761286@verdi.nethelp.no>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10001012135110.20779-100000@amethyst.nstc.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Sat, 1 Jan 2000 sthaug@nethelp.no wrote:
> > > I know for certain that Postfix and Smail will immediately bounce a
> > > message when the domain is authoritatively non-existant. I'd be very
> > > surprised and dismayed if sendmail and all other true SMTP mailers did
> > > not do exactly the same thing.
> >
> > Sendmail most definitely does not, instead treating the error as a
> > transient error, issuing an SMTP error code in the 400 series, and
> > continuing to try to send the mail for up to five days (the default),
> > or whatever the mail server admin configured for that particular
> > server.
> >
> > I think I like it better that way. Just because both nameservers are
> > temporarily down doesn't mean the domain doesn't exist. :P
>
> Seems to me you're talking past one another. If all nameservers for a
> domain are down there *is* no nameserver which can say that the domain
> is authoritatively non-existent. (OK, you could get a negative caching
> answer from one of the authoritative servers on the level above, but
> that's a different issue...)
> I agree with Greg Woods - if a domain is authoritatively non-existent,
> I'd expect a sane mailer to bounce the message.
Hm. I think you're looking at this from a different angle. Yes. If
the domain can't be found because there are no records in the root
nameserver, a sane mailer should bounce the message, and in fact,
Sendmail does, as shown by the following bounce message from my Sendmail
server after a message to sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.org, which
doesn't exist:
----- Transcript of session follows -----
501 5.1.2 sjsobol@northshoretechnologies.org... Host unknown (Name server:
northshoretechnologies.org: host not found)
The 500-series errors are permanent (fatal) failures.
What I was referring to was a situation where the domain does exist in the
root nameservers but the authoritative nameservers are unavailable.
--
North Shore Technologies http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net 888.480.4NET
Steve Sobol, President, Chief Website Architect and Janitor
sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net
My opinions DO, in fact, represent the official opinions of North
Shore Technologies Corporation, since I own the company. Thanks for asking.
