NinerNet Communications™
System Status

Server and System Status

Relay server move complete

11 December 2010 19:59:35 +0000

The relay server has now effectively been moved from the United States (server NC020) to the United Kingdom (server NC023). The new relay server is processing email normally. The old relay server will continue processing email still in its queue until it is clear, and will then be disabled.

Please remember that the new relay server only accepts mail submitted on port 587, sometimes called the “submission port”. Attempts to submit outgoing email to the relay server on the default SMTP port (25) will be rejected. This is an anti-spam and anti-virus measure which will ensure that your network doesn’t inadvertently send spam or viruses through the relay server (thereby needlessly consuming your bandwidth), and will ensure that the IP address of the mail server doesn’t end up in blacklists, thereby delaying the delivery of legitimate email.

Configuration instructions for your email program are available at Configure your Email Account to Use the Relay Server. Please remember that these instructions only apply if you are already authorised to use the relay server. Otherwise normal email configuration instructions apply.

Relay server move and change of IP address

8 December 2010 13:28:29 +0000

The relay server will move from the United States to the United Kingdom on 11 December at 19:00 UTC. This will move it closer to most of the clients who use it, making it faster to access.

There are three important points to note:

  • Due to new anti-spam and -virus measures on the new relay server, email must be submitted to port 587. Submissions to port 25 (the default SMTP port) will be blocked. Please see Configure your Email Account to Use the Relay Server for instructions on reconfiguring your email account on and after Saturday.
  • The address of the relay server (relay.niner.net) will remain the same.
  • Some people using firewalls may need to allow the new IP address, which is 178.79.145.43. We suggest that you allow both the old and new IP addresses effective immediately until about 21 December to ensure a smooth transition back to the old IP address in the event of any problems with the new server.

If you have any questions, please contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.

Email to Realtime and iWay Africa delayed

7 November 2010 22:33:07 +0000

We’re seeing a fair bit of email queued on the mail servers for email addresses on Realtime domains, and domains hosted by Realtime. Some of this email has been undeliverable for several days, and will be returned to the senders unless the Realtime mail servers come back up soon.

Email to the iwayafrica.com domain continues to be delayed in transit. For several months now we have noticed that email to this domain sits on our mail servers for days before it is delivered.

As always, if you refer people hosted with these companies to NinerNet for reliable and timely delivery of email, we’ll happily credit your account with referral fees! Contact us for details.

Server NC018 removed from SORBS blacklist

20 September 2010 18:40:16 +0000

The IP address of server NC018 has been removed from the SORBS blacklist. However, it could be up to 48 hours before cached information expires. If you have any issues with outgoing email being returned because of this issue, please contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.

Server NC018 SORBS listing

20 September 2010 08:08:32 +0000

We have determined the issue with this listing and made the necessary submissions to have this erroneous listing removed. Unfortunately, when this happens is beyond our control.

Server NC018 in the SORBS email blacklist

20 September 2010 06:33:08 +0000

We have just become aware that the IP address of server NC018 is in the SORBS email blacklist/blocklist. We are investigating this incident and will post an update here when we know more.

Relay server back online

15 July 2010 02:13:28 +0000

The relay server is back online. We have blocked the source of the spam and are continuing our investigation.

Just to be clear, server NC020 has been online at all times. Only the mail server was taken offline. It was taken offline at 01:32 UTC and put back online at 02:08 UTC.

If you have any questions or concerns about this incident, please contact support. Thank-you.

Relay server offline

15 July 2010 01:37:41 +0000

Server NC020 (widely known as the the relay server) has been taken offline while we investigate reports of spam being sent through the server. We will post an update within the hour.

Relay server configuration change

13 July 2010 08:33:56 +0000

We’ve made some configuration changes to the relay server to make it more secure. If you are using the relay server and there was a chance that these changes might have affected you, you would have been contacted by your service provider through which you have access to the relay server.

If you are trying to use the relay server and find that you are getting “relaying denied” error messages, please contact your service provider to ensure that they have included your IP address in the whitelist.

Problems with delivery to kcm.co.zm domain

12 July 2010 11:37:39 +0000

We have had ongoing problems with delivery to the kcm.co.zm (Konkola Copper Mines) domain since time immemorial. Konkola appears to host their own mail server over a very slow Zamtel connection. This means their connection appears to be extremely limited in what it can handle. While sporadic small emails without attachments generally go through within a day or two (yes, that’s days, not seconds, minutes or even hours), larger emails with attachments either stall or take so long to deliver that they affect delivery of other emails.

That is the case today. Three large emails from two clients to over one hundred kcm.co.zm email addresses effectively plugged up the mail server while it waited for the kcm.co.zm mail server to accept delivery, preventing delivery of hundreds of other emails. We had no choice but to delete these emails. As soon as we did, the backlog of several hundred emails that had built up over the course of about an hour were successfully delivered within minutes.

If you email people on the kcm.co.zm domain, please consider reducing the sizes of attachments and reducing the number of kcm.co.zm email addresses you include in your distribution lists. You might also want to point them to this post so that they might become aware of the problem and therefore do something to fix it.

NinerNet home page

Systems at a Glance:


Loc.SystemStatusPing
Server NC023, London, United Kingdom (Relay server), INTERNAL.NC023InternalUp?
Server NC028, Vancouver, Canada (Monitoring server), INTERNAL.NC028InternalUp?
Server NC031, New York, United States of America (Web server), INTERNAL.NC031InternalUp?
Server NC033, Toronto, Canada (Primary nameserver), OPERATIONAL.NC033OperationalUp?
Server NC034, Lusaka, Zambia (Phone server), INTERNAL.NC034InternalUp?
Server NC035, Sydney, Australia (Secondary nameserver), OPERATIONAL.NC035OperationalUp?
Server NC036, Amsterdam, Netherlands (Mail server), OPERATIONAL.NC036OperationalUp?
Server NC040, Toronto, Canada (Web server), INTERNAL.NC040InternalUp?
Server NC041, New York, United States of America (Web server), OPERATIONAL.NC041OperationalUp?
Server NC042, Seattle, United States of America (Status website), OPERATIONAL.NC042OperationalUp?

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