smtp.vodacom.co.za

ic said:
@v3g, are you sure that's what happened in Jozie's case?, bcos according to Jozie's first post, the IP address 196.207.32.251 is mentioned, and that does appear to be a 'user IP' address...
Click to expand...

Yip, pretty sure. 196.207.32.251 is from the new server IP Pool (196.207.32.237-251)
 
Mail server problems again?!?

Pinging smtp.vodacom.co.za [196.11.XXX.XXX] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Same thing to smtp.vodamail.co.za

Why again?!? Is anybody else experiencing this? The SMTP problems really bug me.
 
All 16 of the MX relays are in the 196.207.32.0/24 netblock which forms part of the total netblock allocated by AfriNIC to Vodacom for GPRS:

inetnum: 196.207.32.0 - 196.207.47.255
netname: VODA-GPRS1
descr: Vodacom

That entire netblock is permanently blacklisted by many RBLs as a dynamic dial-up IP range. As long as Vodacom insists on keeping their mail servers on the same netblock, the blacklistings will continue (permanently).

The rule is, always put your (outbound) mailservers on a different netblock than what is being used to service your customer's direct outbound connections (i.e. NAT pool and the likes).

--deckert
 
Deckert said:
All 16 of the MX relays are in the 196.207.32.0/24 netblock which forms part of the total netblock allocated by AfriNIC to Vodacom for GPRS:

inetnum: 196.207.32.0 - 196.207.47.255
netname: VODA-GPRS1
descr: Vodacom

That entire netblock is permanently blacklisted by many RBLs as a dynamic dial-up IP range. As long as Vodacom insists on keeping their mail servers on the same netblock, the blacklistings will continue (permanently).

The rule is, always put your (outbound) mailservers on a different netblock than what is being used to service your customer's direct outbound connections (i.e. NAT pool and the likes).

--deckert
Click to expand...

Why does a company the size of Vodacom employ such incompetant IT staff to manage there mail servers? I mean really, it should not be up to us as customers to provide technical support to our ISP, it is supposed to be the other way round. I am just gratefull we have such knowledgable people on this forum, or who knows where we would be without them?
 
There is something very wrong with this picture. You want to tell me they blocked the *entire* range ?! 196.207.32.0-196.207.47.255 ??

That is a problem ! I can understand that they would block 196.207.32.0/24 as you said, but the whole netblock ?

v3g - I think we need to make another plan here...

Deckert said:
All 16 of the MX relays are in the 196.207.32.0/24 netblock which forms part of the total netblock allocated by AfriNIC to Vodacom for GPRS:

inetnum: 196.207.32.0 - 196.207.47.255
netname: VODA-GPRS1
descr: Vodacom

That entire netblock is permanently blacklisted by many RBLs as a dynamic dial-up IP range. As long as Vodacom insists on keeping their mail servers on the same netblock, the blacklistings will continue (permanently).

The rule is, always put your (outbound) mailservers on a different netblock than what is being used to service your customer's direct outbound connections (i.e. NAT pool and the likes).

--deckert
Click to expand...
 
Deckert said:
All 16 of the MX relays are in the 196.207.32.0/24 netblock which forms part of the total netblock allocated by AfriNIC to Vodacom for GPRS:

inetnum: 196.207.32.0 - 196.207.47.255
netname: VODA-GPRS1
descr: Vodacom

That entire netblock is permanently blacklisted by many RBLs as a dynamic dial-up IP range. As long as Vodacom insists on keeping their mail servers on the same netblock, the blacklistings will continue (permanently).

The rule is, always put your (outbound) mailservers on a different netblock than what is being used to service your customer's direct outbound connections (i.e. NAT pool and the likes).

--deckert
Click to expand...

Blocked by whom? Not Spamcop, I just checked them.

Deckert, can you PM me from where you got this info?

Noted your point on IP's for servers, thanks?
 
Hi,

Sorry about the few days delay in response.

Best way to check blacklistings is at http://openrbl.org and click on the OpenRBL JS client. Fill in the IP address there.

At the time of this writing, 196.207.32.253 is listed at no less than 9 RBLs. I've not checked the others yet. One of them (SORBS) is a hugely popular RBL with many sysadmins. They took over the EasyNET (netherlands) dynamic dial-up IP list and has been maintaining it ever since.

Because the netblock is flagged as a GPRS range, any IP within that range that shows the slightest hint of SPAM gets a higher score than usual.

I must admit that, in this case, it seems the server is listed for another reason (according to the site: "Spam Sending Trojan or Proxy attempted to send mail from/to from=<[email protected]> to=<janet.palmer-allen@spamtrap>"

That same server is also listed at SPAMCOP.

The bottom line is still, move the outbound mail servers to a range that is not part of the GPRS netblock.

--deckert
 
Hi 3gmac,

3gmac said:
Why does a company the size of Vodacom employ such incompetant IT staff to manage there mail servers? I mean really, it should not be up to us as customers to provide technical support to our ISP, it is supposed to be the other way round. I am just gratefull we have such knowledgable people on this forum, or who knows where we would be without them?
Click to expand...

Vodacom (and MTN and Cell C) are three of only a handfull of operators in the world that provide full-on Internet access through their GPRS, EDGE and 3G technologies due to the high costs (and unavailability) of fixed line infrastructure. As such, they have to learn all the tricks that other ISPs have had *years* to learn.

Vodacom, especially, had to learn these things from scratch. MTN was lucky (or maybe it was foresight) in that they bought out CiTEC (now MTN Network Solutions) who was a TIER-1 ISP for many years.

Insofar as Vodacom providing e-mail services for "free", well, outbound SMTP is part-and-parcel of being an ISP - it's just that simple. Eventually Vodacom will have to start looking at the other services traditional ISPs offer such as NNTP, etc.

--deckert
 
I've had the past week the experience of having to tell super IT master at a big corporation in SA that it is bad practice to block mail based on a Spamcop listing only... so I could send urgent mail via a SAIX SMTP server to them.

In general I find that the competency of outsourced IT management leaves a lot to be desired.

I'm not the best admin there is, and due to lack of qualifications does not qualify for a job at these guy. I also don't know all the trick etc these people know from swotting for their precious certificates.

But I do have a lot of experience, and find that often I have to guide these super guys in solving their problems.

The lack of experience and common sense in the IT support industry is shocking.

VC is not the only people getting the thin end of the stick - it is common right through industry.
 
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No denying we're still learning. Therefore any advice is greatly appreciated and always taken seriously.

And I know of a good home for a sh*t-hot SMTP guy or two....

What I find interesting is this sudden spate of blacklisting issues. We originally had it right at the beginning and then (with a lot of input from the forum) got it stable and now in the last few weeks all hell broke loose again.

Is this seen across the industry? What changed? Even in my private mail boxes, where I seldom saw Spam, I'm getting a few per day.
 
vodacom3g said:
No denying we're still learning. Therefore any advice is greatly appreciated and always taken seriously.

And I know of a good home for a sh*t-hot SMTP guy or two....

What I find interesting is this sudden spate of blacklisting issues. We originally had it right at the beginning and then (with a lot of input from the forum) got it stable and now in the last few weeks all hell broke loose again.

Is this seen across the industry? What changed? Even in my private mail boxes, where I seldom saw Spam, I'm getting a few per day.
Click to expand...

Spam rejection on my server more or less doubled during the past two weeks.

On international support lists there are many similar complaints.

In short, servers are recieving much more mail and all mail need to be tested for being spam or not (if spamcontrol measures are in place - see spamassassin.apache.org for an example of such a system).

Spam control is managing the fine line between rejecting as much as possible bad without rejecting any good mail.

I'm sure that I'm not the only one that became more aggressive in spam control during the past week or so. DUL (Dialup list ) rejections is a quite aggressive way of rejecting mail before it is received on a server. This reduces the load on a Spamcontrol server quite a bit - and it seems as if quite a few sysadmins could have added this to prevent their servers from being overloaded.

I'm therefore not surprised that these problems all of a sudden became major issues again. The issues highlighted were that the VC server was rejected as being a Dial Up rogue.

BTW: The biggest growth in spam seems to be images with text. There are character recognition systems available, but the cost of CPU and RAM consumption is tremendous.

The spammers also became clued up and are now creating images with lots of noise in them calling for even better character recognition systems to identify these junk images.

Expect much more spam.:mad:
 
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[Resolved] smtp.vodacom.co.za down?

I am in Somerset West area. Cannot send via smtp.vodacom.co.za since last night. Anyone else having problems?
 
M'bay area - had problems (intermittent) accessing pop3.vodamail. Didn't notice smtp problems.

ryts
 
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