DNS cockup locks Virgin Media customers out of ntlworld.com email Virgin Media customers who retained their old @ntlworld.com email addresses are currently blocked from accessing their accounts after the cable company appeared to have made an embarrassing DNS blunder. Legacy NTL account names have apparently been spitting out DNS errors when messages were sent to those email addresses since …
True, but it would be a matter of minutes to set up a backup (store and forward) mail server to spool the email in the meantime, whilst rebuilding whatever needed doing for the pop/imap cluster - and it would prevent any further loss of email. Presuming that Virgin Media already have secondary, tertiary MX servers, it *should* just be a matter of a dummy primary MX record and then adding the secondary record, leaving it to spool until the primary MX is ready and running. But what do I know?
It's not as simple as someone cocking up a record from what I can tell.
Looked into it briefly this morning after a user couldn't email an ntlworld.com address, and discovered differing results from nslookups against various servers.
Some came back with a whole list of name servers and nothing else, some insisted the domain didn't exist. Having checked again now one of the DNS servers that claimed it didn't exist this morning looks to have a proper record with the correct MXs.
Perhaps a registration expiry/renewal cock up?
Interestingly, and on a seperate and most likely totally unrelated note, Critical Path/Openwave are having issues with their rDNS lookups not passing through some Cisco ISA devices due to buggy firmware, and Critical Path/Openwave run BT Internets mail servers.
Basically, if BTs filtering system does an rDNS lookup request of 4.3.2.1.IN-ADDR.ARPA, it fails.
If you do 4.3.2.1.in-addr.arpa it passes. But BTs system can't do it in anything other than uppercase.
I'm fully aware this is likely completely unrelated, but I thought some people might appreciate that if they run a mail server/DNS behind a Cisco ISA (or their network provider does) and find odd behaviour. In the case I was working on, the upstream DNS provider (Who provided the rDNS lookup thingies - look, I said I wasn't that hot at internet level DNS ;-) ) claimed to have just bounced the nameserver (one of two was causing an issue) which fixed it, but I suspect that bug may have been part of it.
Contact CriticalPath/Openwave directly on their support email addy if required, BT postmaster doesn't do a damned thing (still not had a response three weeks on)
Just a semi-related (from a loose tech perspective) tidbit for you kids.
Hugs and kisses
Raith
"Unless its been de-listed from DNS because they've shut the server down....."
Something like that - accidental or deliberate. It only takes seconds to put the MX record back - to direct it elsewhere (surely they have a receive/store/forward reserve server for when the mail system goes tits-up - a not unknown risk at VM).
Indeed taking hours to not getting a workaround in place suggests the Virgin problem is managerial rather than technical.
and in the meantime they are losing email...
Have a look at the email chapter of Hacker Highschool. Email is rarely lost through a domain name failure - a problem with the lookup of MX records (i.e. which server serves the recipient's domain) will return an "undeliverable" failure message to the sender.
Rarely?
So if an email server tries to send an email, and there's no MX record the email still gets sent? News to me. And the list-server doesn't drop the email address from the list because the email address doesn't exist?
There is a possibility that a human will see a message that an email wasn't drlivered, and they might try a 2nd time (and it will probably fail again, and they'll probably give up). However any invoicing/ordering etc. system will just fail to deliver the email.
Afaiac the email will normally be lost.
"So if an email server tries to send an email, and there's no MX record the email still gets sent?"
Potentially yes. There is a section of the RFC for smtp/email which refers to "fallback to A" meaning that if there is no MX record but there is a DNS entry for the domain with an A record then the A record address should be treated as a mail server and attempt to send the message to it. That of course may not work but in some cases it can, admittedly it wouldn't of helped in this case.
It is my understanding though that not all email systems implement the "fallback to A" process, be that by design or oversight.
One word: Google mail
Sigh - you poor naïve end user. Domain "ntlworld.com" actually routes to Gmail:
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ntlworld.com. IN MX
;; ANSWER SECTION:
ntlworld.com. 26 IN MX 5 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
ntlworld.com. 26 IN MX 10 aspmx2.googlemail.com.
ntlworld.com. 26 IN MX 10 aspmx3.googlemail.com.
ntlworld.com. 26 IN MX 1 aspmx.l.google.com.
ntlworld.com. 26 IN MX 5 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
Just in case you didn't know, all your email is shipped abroad. It may be worth checking your contract to see if they actually asked your permission for that...
"Just in case you didn't know, all your email is shipped abroad. It may be worth checking your contract to see if they actually asked your permission for that..."
Is it? IIRC, when the VM techs used run the usenet support groups, they said the google mail servers would be in house in answer to those very concerns. Whether that was (or still is) true is another matter.
Edit: Having said that, a geolocate on 74.125.130.2 puts it in Palo Alto or thereabouts.
Is it? IIRC, when the VM techs used run the usenet support groups, they said the google mail servers would be in house in answer to those very concerns. Whether that was (or still is) true is another matter
As these servers are the same as used for Gmail, I would call BS on that statement - it would also be the first time ever that Google allows servers which are inside their domain to be housed outside, and VM isn't a big enough player for Google to bother, so I'd call double BS. Besides, it matters little - the servers geo locate as US based, which is what matters. Who hosts them is less revelant.
Just tried it, still borked. Logged in and got a page saying my login was successful. Click here... Did that and oops! this part of the site isn't working. About time they got it sorted.
Now that VM is owned by an American company maybe they are tweaking their network so all the VM traffic goes to the states and back and NSA can have a good sniff. And, being an American company the NSA etc can just ask for any data they want from Liberty Global. Just a thought. I wonder if this contravenes the Data Protection Act somehow...
Now that someone has mentioned them, I think that VMs email is hosted on googlemail servers...
There would be a dozen class actions already winging their way to the ISP
It is about time that Virgin were made to pay financially for their regular [redacted] ups.
Until then this sort of thing will continue to happen.
Perhaps Virgin Media... you might like to focus on the service you should be giving rather than the endless mailshots you send out to people who have no intention of ever in a gazillion years sign up for your [redacted]...
Anon simply because I get enough crap from them as it is and I don't want more.
Ask your average VM customer for their email address and the odds are it will be @gmail, @hotmail, @yahoo or something similar. Most probably don't even remember reading the info which explained how to access their VM email. Come to think of it, those VM customers I know who do use ISP mail have an @blueyonder or @ntlworld address. "Early adopters" so to speak, who've been around since before the common webmail services arrived :-)
Look dick head obviously it wont work for incoming mail thats been non delivered. But then if you have an ntlworld account you get what you deserve. At least my advice will help you get what hasnt bounced and allow you to send. Whats your helpful advice? It worked for my customer earlier.
... You shouldn't use email from your ISP.
This, and the fact it's really difficult to move ISP when it means doing so will lose you your email address. For all you @ntlworld.com email users out there, let this be a lesson to you. Get your self another email address, not tied to an ISP (Gmail, yahoo, your own domain names, whatever works best for you), start using it and wean your self off @ntlworld.com. Then, if they piss you off again, you are free to dump them if you want and move to another ISP - Until they piss you off and you move again - ad-infinitum ;-)
VM ntlworld emails are likely to be small users, not technically very aware and relying on the email that the ISP supplies. After all Email is Email to most ordinary users and all that matters is that they have a nice name to use.
Commetards on El reg will have multiple adresses, mail servers, disposable accounts and all that stuff. But not the gen pub.
And even many of the commentardists may still use an ISP account for family and friends email, or ordering from Amazon etc.
It's pretty obvious:
ntlworld.com registry whois
Updated 7 hours ago - Refresh
Domain Name: NTLWORLD.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS1.VIRGINMEDIA.NET
Name Server: NS2.VIRGINMEDIA.NET
Name Server: NS3.VIRGINMEDIA.NET
Name Server: NS4.VIRGINMEDIA.NET
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 26-aug-2014
Creation Date: 23-sep-1999
Expiration Date: 23-sep-2016
Stand by for the same to happen again in two years' time!
When Virgin took over NTL, I was told by a very unhelpful bloke at V that I couldn't keep my NTL address unless I paid! Of course, I refused, I was already paying Virgin and this caused quite a bit of trouble while I sorted out problems with lost emails, I may still have lost some. I then had a year of misery while Virgin belly-ached about my usage and it was with immense relief that I was finally able to get rid of them and join O2 who provided me with an excellent, unlimited service for about 5 years until Sky took over - meanwhile I set up a gmail account so that I was no longer locked to broadband suppliers.
Virgin ads on TV and elsewhere get a raspberry from me now.
I too am having problems with ntlworld - how soon will it be sorted?
I my case I have been able to send and receive e-mails, but the incomers are only "delivered" in the small hours of the day following the day they were sent. For example, I was unable to respond to the e-mail you sent me for the best part of 24 hours - it was timed at about 7 a.m on Sunday, and I first saw it just now, at 6.40 am Monday. Not what you want in this type of communication ( being somewhat long in the tooth - 85 on Saturday) I am not into Facebook , Iphones etc and do most of my communicating by e-mail.
I hope they get it sorted soon - is there anyone out there with the skills to chase them, or publicise the problem in the press and shame them into putting things right?
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