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I'm caught in a technical war between two companies. One is a major email hosting organization. The second is a DNS provider called DNSMadeEasy.

The problem: An email from an outside domain to a domain inside the email host is intermittently delayed for two or more hours. The outside domain uses DNSMadeEasy for hosting and vanity nameservers.

The symptoms: postfix at the email host sends: 450 4.1.8 : Sender address rejected: Domain not found (in reply to RCPT TO command) deferred

It looks like some kind of DNS problem, but both DNSMadeEasy and the email host say there is no problem and point the finger at each other.

One of the techs at the email host passed the following information to me supposedly written by one of the senior techs:

Actually the problem with skv.com is here -- domain resides on

skv.com

ns3.primusnetworks.com 208.80.126.4

ns2.primusnetworks.com 208.80.124.4

ns1.primuscomputing.com 208.94.149.4

Looks like everything is correct, but

1) domain primuscomputing.com is also served by ns1/2.primusnetworks.com,thus we should be asking ns2/3.primusnetworks.com to get address of ns1.primuscomputing.com

2) In turn primusnetworks.com is actually located only on one NS (despite of what root servers think)

primusnetworks.com

ns1.primuscomputing.com 208.94.149.4

This is severe violation of RFC – there should be at least two NS servers for domain. The worst – this single NS server is not configured correctly. So finally we see that skv.com is served by single incorrectly configured NS server – skv.com needs to change the DNS hoster.

Additional Note: DNSMadeEasy says that there are SIX independent servers that work for skv.com.

Two Questions:

  1. If you look at how the nameservers are specified for skv.com, do you see a problem?

  2. Do you understand what the mail host is trying to say?

I'm trying to find out more information but both companies are digging their heels in.

tcv
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1 Answers1

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From looking at the whois record for skv.com, we can see that only one of the three listed nameservers has a glue record:

   NS1.PRIMUSCOMPUTING.COM      
   NS2.PRIMUSNETWORKS.COM       
   NS3.PRIMUSNETWORKS.COM       66.162.216.152

We can also see that the one that does have a glue record doesn't match what's in the DNS for that hostname.

$ host NS3.PRIMUSNETWORKS.COM
NS3.PRIMUSNETWORKS.COM has address 208.80.126.4

So, the domain having been registered via Network Solutions, the place where this needs to be fixed is at Network Solutions, by the owner of skv.com.

Community
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Michael Hampton
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  • Thank you. What is a glue record? (Yeah, I'm heading to Google now.) – tcv Jul 12 '13 at 01:36
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    @tcv http://serverfault.com/q/309622/126632 – Michael Hampton Jul 12 '13 at 01:38
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    I just finished reading that. Admittedly, I don't seem to get it quite yet. I mean, I understand why you need glue when you reference your own domain for nameserver (ns1.example.com for example.com, for instance), but I'm still trying to understand how that applies here. Edit: I'm beginning to get it. Sometimes these things take more than a few seconds to sink in. Do you have any thoughts on the specific content of the email host's response? – tcv Jul 12 '13 at 01:51
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    Honestly I'm surprised any of this works at all. Both the people at skv.com and the people at primuswhatever.com have stuff they really need to clean up here. – Michael Hampton Jul 12 '13 at 01:59
  • Could very well be. :-) There's also DNSMadeEasy and these "vanity dns name servers" that are offered. I don't quite get the point of that, but I can imagine a few uses. – tcv Jul 12 '13 at 02:00
  • Yeah, that's what they appear to be. Only they don't seem to have been set up quite correctly. – Michael Hampton Jul 12 '13 at 02:01