ok, your careful experiment duplicates the others' experiences. Sorry, you'll have to share the Nobel Prize in AOL mail research. vbg

>Isn't this unethical, even unlawful?

Since when does ethics or legalities apply to Internet?

>I wasn't able to get any explanation from AOL.

Your Nobel prize is on hold until further notice.

>The "[216.216.179.130] (may be forged)" message is I believe I don't have >reverse DNS.

I KNOW you don't have your reverse setup, but AOL couldn't reject you because of that since 1000's of Internet mail server don't have their reverse set up.

So, it's very clear that AOL is accepting mail but not delivering it and not bouncing it. And the same mail when relayed via another mail server is accepted and delivered.

When talking to customers, I think the only position to take is that our mail server delivered the mail to AOL and we have logs to prove it, so the mail delivery failure is internal to AOL. sorreeee

There's not much we can do from the outside, how we (well, you people) who run your own DNS can try this test.

In your DNS, set up a spoofed zone for fake AOL.com, but with valid data you get from DNS lookups to AOL' NS's. With your DNS as SOA and NS records, use a valid A record for www.aol.com and aol.com. Set up the MX's using AOL's data:

;; ANSWER SECTION: aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 za.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 zb.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 zc.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 zd.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 yb.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 yc.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 yd.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 ye.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 yg.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 yh.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 xa.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 xb.mx.aol.com. aol.com. 32m33s IN MX 15 xd.mx.aol.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: za.mx.aol.com. 32m33s IN A 152.163.224.26 zb.mx.aol.com. 32m33s IN A 152.163.224.58 zc.mx.aol.com. 29m33s IN A 152.163.224.88 zd.mx.aol.com. 29m33s IN A 152.163.224.122 yb.mx.aol.com. 29m33s IN A 205.188.156.97 yb.mx.aol.com. 29m33s IN A 205.188.156.98 yb.mx.aol.com. 29m33s IN A 205.188.156.99 yb.mx.aol.com. 29m33s IN A 205.188.156.100 yb.mx.aol.com. 29m33s IN A 205.188.156.101 ye.mx.aol.com. 29m33s IN A 205.188.158.25 xa.mx.aol.com. 29m33s IN A 64.12.136.57

Now, to force Imail to use a specific AOL MX, comment out all the MX's but one, and have Imail use this DNS to send mail to AOL. Run the test for each MX. Maybe some MX gateways will let mail be delivered and you just run the DNS for AOL using these MX gateways.

If not, at least you've learned how to spoof DNS.

This is why "DNS spoofing" is so dangerous. If some black hat can spoof data in his cache, he can point the MX to his mail server and steal the mail. Of course, you never put any valuable information in Internet "postcard" mail, do you?

Len

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