Server and System Status

NC023: Sever migration starting now

18 November 2017 20:21:05 +0000

The relay server migration will be starting within the next few minutes.

Tags: down time, email delivery, hardware, mail relay, migration, smtp
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC023
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NC023: Migration of relay server to new hardware

17 November 2017 07:22:19 +0000

Server NC023 (the relay server) will be migrated to new hardware during our regular weekly maintenance window this weekend. This maintenance will start at 20:00 UTC on Saturday 18 November 2017, and should conclude within an hour. During this time the relay server will be offline.

This maintenance only affects clients using the relay mail server; it does not affect operation of the regular email server that processes the vast majority of the mail carried by NinerNet.

We will post an update here shortly before, at the start of and following the maintenance.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact support to let us know. Thank-you.

Tags: down time, email delivery, hardware, mail relay, migration, smtp
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC023
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NC027: Spam cleaned up

7 September 2017 13:23:50 +0000

We have cleaned up the spam on server NC027 and managed to funnel most of the delayed email through our relay server. Although the primary mail server’s IP address is not in a couple of the major blacklists, we are still in some niche ones with major ISPs and mail providers. We have been working to have the IP address de-listed where that is possible, but manual processes like these can take a couple of days.

In the meantime, at the moment most email is flowing normally, but email to most domains will still be delayed for the next few hours.

Tags: email delivery, mail relay, spam
Categories: Email, NC027
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NC027: Mail server issues

7 September 2017 11:39:46 +0000

We have cleaned up server NC027 after a client’s email account was compromised, resulting in thousands of spams being sent from the mail server. This is having a negative impact on email being sent from the server, as its IP address is now in anti-spam blacklists. This means that outgoing email sent from our clients will be bounced or delayed until the blacklist realise that the spam from our mail server has stopped.

We are working on implementing a workaround through one of our other, clean mail servers, but unfortunately it will be several hours before outgoing email to most domains is delivered normally.

These incidents usually arise after a computer has been infected with a virus. The virus then sends the email password back to the person or organisation controlling the virus, and they then use that information to compromise that email account on the mail server, using it to send thousands of spams from the account. Please ensure that you install, use and update an anti-virus program on your computer to ensure that this doesn’t happen to your email account.

We apologise for this incident. Please contact us if you have any questions. Thank-you.

Tags: email delivery, spam
Categories: Email, NC027
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NC027: Previous issue with outbound email to MessageLabs

8 April 2017 07:56:47 +0000

Further to our last post of two days ago, a little research digs up the fact that Symantec/MessageLabs “had a major incident … that led to an issue with multiple customers.” As we suspected, the problem was not with our mail server.

The message backlog was actually finally cleared within a couple of hours of that post.

Tags: email delivery
Categories: Email, NC027
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NC027: Issue with outgoing mail to MessageLabs/Symantec

6 April 2017 13:36:18 +0000

For several hours now we have been noticing that emails sent to domains hosted by Symantec on mail exchangers running their MessageLabs service (or the service formerly known as MessageLabs) have been stalled on our mail server (NC027) with errors such as the following:

(delivery temporarily suspended: lost connection with cluster6.us.messagelabs.com[216.82.242.46] while sending message body)

Particularly, messages with multiple recipients seem to be stalling like this, while other outbound emails to other domains not hosted by Symantec seem to be going out with no problem. Some messages appear to be going through over time, but not all.

Destination domains that seem to be affected by this include the following:

barrick.com (Barrick Gold Corporation)
sc.com (Standard Chartered)

We’re continuing to monitor this situation, but at this point there doesn’t seem to be anything that we have the power to do.

Tags: email delivery
Categories: Email, NC027
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NC027: Mail server emergency maintenance

23 February 2017 16:22:59 +0000

The mail server (NC027) was shut down between 16:08 and 16:11 UTC this (Thursday) afternoon for some emergency maintenance. This would have resulted in a brief interruption in your ability to send and receive email.

If you have any questions about this, please contact us. Thank-you.

Tags: connection issues, email delivery, smtp
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC027
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NC027: Mail server report

30 January 2017 13:18:24 +0000

We have not yet been able to determine a cause of the problem with the mail server (NC027). It seems that it stopped processing mail at 08:46 UTC, which means it was unavailable for 56 minutes until it was up and running again at 09:42 UTC. The server didn’t become completely unresponsive to monitoring until about 09:25 UTC, which is when the problem came to out attention. A few minutes later, after determining that the server was completely inaccessible and posting to our status page, we issued a full reboot. After a few minutes of disk scanning, the server was back online and processing email.

We apologise again for this brief interruption in service. If you have any questions, please contact us and we will be happy to respond.

Tags: connection issues, down time, email delivery, smtp
Categories: Email, Incidents, NC027
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NC027: Mail server rebooted

30 January 2017 10:01:07 +0000

The mail server (NC027) was rebooted and back online at 09:42 UTC. We are looking into the problem and will post an update here within the next two hours.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

Tags: connection issues, down time, email delivery, smtp
Categories: Email, Incidents, NC027
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NC027: Problem on mail server

30 January 2017 09:34:18 +0000

We are aware of a problem with the mail server (server NC027). We are looking into it and will post an update here as soon as possible.

Tags: connection issues, down time, email delivery, smtp
Categories: Email, Incidents, NC027
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System	Status	Ping
NC023	Internal	Up?
NC028	Internal	Up?
NC031	Internal	Up?
NC033	Operational	Up?
NC034	Internal	Up?
NC035	Operational	Up?
NC036	Operational	Up?
NC040	Internal	Up?
NC041	Operational	Up?
NC042	Operational	Up?