[SpamCop-List] Re: {webmail,imap,mail}.spamcop.net not found?

[Mike Easter]

WazoO wrote:
> Michael Vilain

>> I can't seem to access spamcop's imap server.  Nor can I can I access
>> webmail.spamcop.net from the web site to read my mail.  There's no
>> notice on the web site of any outage nor can I access
>> mail.spamcop.net to see if there's anything specific.
>> mail.cesmail.net returns no error or result from my local DNS server.
>>
>> What gives?  Looks like the spamcop DNS server is seriously sick.
>> Is it just me, or is this a problem for others?  Any word on when it
>> might be fixed?

There's some news posted here

http://webmail.spamcop.net/

System news from the last 24 hours

Nov 9, 2004

[01:49 EST] We have a longer explanation of the whole DNS issue here.
[ME: see below]
Nov 8, 2004

[14:37 EST] In good news, we believe we have fixed the problem with
fetching mail from AOL accounts. We have started doing this and all AOL
accounts should start retrieving mail within the next several hours.
[14:36 EST] We have been experiencing sporadic problems with our DNS
provider for the last day or so. While all our testing looks OK, there
is quite a bit of evidence that suggests they are returning wrong or no
information at times. We have opened a ticket with them and, in the
meantime, have eliminated any need for DNS for some internal mail
handoffs which should get rid of most of the problem. We haven't made
any DNS changes in weeks and the DNS provider has been very reliable for
a year or more, so we hope we can get to the bottom of this quickly. We
apologize for the inconvenience.

> JT has been working overtime...  as it turns out, an
> explanation now exists in the web-Forums at
> http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3007

<JTsnip>
Posted by: jefft Today, 01:10 AM
A couple of years ago, we began to take steps to help make the system
more robust in the event of network failures or DOS attacks. We had
always run two DNS servers, on two different networks. That gave us
network redundancy, but when we experienced a DOS attack on the two
nameservers, it pointed out a limitation in the network. It would be
nice to expand to more servers, on more networks, and move those servers
away from the main web and mail servers. That way, an attack on one
wouldn't bring down the other.

So, we moved DNS for spamcop.net to Akamai and for cesmail.net and
cqmail.net to name-services.com, a paid DNS service run by the enom
domain name registry. When testing them, they appeared to have about 8
nameservers spread across 5 different names, in 5 different geographic
locations. And, for the last couple of years, we've had no problems with
them at all. DNS has had 100% uptime and I'm not aware of any
DNS-related issues.

That all changed on Sunday when we started receiving complaints of
sporadic DNS problems. It didn't appear to be a problem specific to our
network because we had reports from different mailservers worldwide
which couldn't resolve one or the other of the domain names. Obviously,
something was going on but we've yet to actually see a query here that
didn't succeed. Manual testing consistently shows good results from all
of the name-services.com nameservers. I'm aware that dnsreport.com is
reporting errors on our domain name, but it's clear that they don't test
in real-time. They apparently cache results, either for the whole report
or for individual lookups. Because of that, it's hard to tell whether an
error they report is happening now or 10 minutes ago.

Regardless of the testing, it's clear that there's a problem so we've
begun the process of moving all DNS to a different DNS provider.
Unfortunately, this brings about another problem. Because of the
antiquated DNS system, for a while some servers will continue to ask our
OLD nameservers for information instead of our NEW nameservers. This
will probably result in mail delays for the cesmail.net and cqmail.net
domains sporadically, although I don't expect any mail to bounce.

I apologize about the hassle and inconvenience. We thought we had
exercised good diligence in setting up the DNS. We still don't have an
explanation as to why name-services.com is doing what they are doing.
Once the transition is over, we expect that things will be smooth again.
Please bear with us as we work to make sure that the system is as
reliable as possible.

Thanks
JT

</JTsnip>

> A couple of other Topics over there contain lots of
> stuff that's been going on for a few days, trying to
> get to the bottom of things.

3 pages of forum conversation here
http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3001


-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin