Server and System Status

NC036: Maintenance complete

15 December 2018 19:57:20 +0000

Our scheduled maintenance to increase the storage space available for email accounts on the mail server (NC036) is complete. The ability to send and receive email was not available between 19:17 and 19:44 UTC. The expanded disk space has been tested and all is running normally.

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

Tags: down time, email delivery, mail relay, smtp, webmail
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC036
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NC036: Scheduled maintenance underway

15 December 2018 19:14:54 +0000

The scheduled maintenance to increase hard drive space on server NC036 is underway. We will post progress reports or notice that the maintenance is complete as necessary.

Tags: down time, email delivery, mail relay, smtp, webmail
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC036
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NC036: Mail server blocked by Microsoft

14 December 2018 05:33:38 +0000

We are aware that the IP address of server NC036 (the primary mail server) has again been blocked by Microsoft’s various mail services, variously known as Outlook.com, MSN, Hotmail, Live.com, etc.

Although we are a member of their Smart Network Data Services programme and Junk Mail Reporting Program, which are supposed to allow us to proactively prevent these kinds of issues, we have been unable to use the service as advertised, or at least as we understand it’s supposed to work. We will continue to attempt to have this server’s IP address removed from their blacklist, and report here when we have success.

In the meantime, outgoing mail to their primary domains (hotmail.ca, hotmail.com, hotmail.co.uk, live.com, msn.com and outlook.com) is being routed through our relay server. If you receive a bounce message that reads similarly the one below to an email you’ve sent, it is probably for a private domain hosted by Microsoft of which we are not aware. Please contact us and we will add it to the list of domains for which email is routed through our relay server:

host 901e3cd0af6f44ab11b5a5e8a49da3.pamx1.hotmail.com[104.47.0.33] said: 550
5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [178.62.195.26] weren’t sent. Please
contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on
our block list (S3140). You can also refer your provider to
http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors.
[HE1EUR01FT033.eop-EUR01.prod.protection.outlook.com] (in reply to MAIL
FROM command)

Please remember that all email you send through our mail server must be to recipients with whom you already have a business or personal relationship, and all mass email must be explicitly requested — i.e., Confirmed opt-in (COI) or Double opt-in (DOI) email.

Thanks for your cooperation, and our apologies for this inconvenience.

Tags: email delivery, mail relay, mail server, microsoft, spam
Categories: Email, Incidents, NC036
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NC023: Maintenance complete

2 May 2018 21:03:31 +0000

Server NC023 was down between 20:06 and 20:23 UTC while a patch for the Spectre vulnerability was applied.

Tags: down time, hardware, mail relay, reboot
Categories: Maintenance, NC023
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NC023: Blacklist update

28 April 2018 20:46:12 +0000

We heard back from Microsoft/Outlook.com, and they have removed the relay server’s IP address from their blacklist. Thanks for your patience.

Tags: email delivery, mail relay
Categories: Email, NC023
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NC023: More blacklist problems

27 April 2018 08:52:05 +0000

It has come to our attention that some email from the IP address of our secondary mail server (NC023) is being blocked at Outlook.com. It seems that only email sent to Outlook.com domains — e.g., outlook.com, hotmail.com, msn.com — is being blocked, but email sent to other domains hosted by Outlook.com is not being blocked. It’s unclear why the differentiation.

We do have an account with Microsoft for the purpose of monitoring reports about mail sent from our IP addresses to Outlook.com mail servers. However, although the account tells us that the IP address is blocked, it doesn’t tell us why or provide us with any statistics, as it does for our other IP addresses.

We have contacted Outlook.com to determine what is happening here, as this too is a situation we’ve never seen before.

Tags: email delivery, mail relay
Categories: Email, NC023
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NC023, NC027 and NC031: Spectre maintenance

25 April 2018 11:41:21 +0000

Per our previous blog post, three of our servers will be updated to address variants 1 and 2 of the Spectre vulnerability per the following schedule (start times) in chronological order:

NC027: 23:00 UTC on Tuesday 1 May 2018 (DONE)
NC031: 05:00 UTC on Wednesday 2 May 2018
NC023: 20:00 UTC on Wednesday 2 May 2018

As with the previous upgrades for the Meltdown vulnerability, the maintenance windows for each are two hours long, but we expect that each server will be down for much less than that. During the Meltdown maintenance the servers were down for between 13 and 19 minutes, and we expect much the same this time around.

Please click the links above to determine when this will be in your time zone.

During the maintenance of servers NC023 and NC027 you will not be able to send or receive email. Incoming email to your domain will be held on the sending servers until our mail server is back online, and will then be delivered to your accounts. No email will be lost. Please note that email to NinerNet will also be down during the maintenance on server NC027.

During the maintenance of server NC031 your website will be inaccessible, both to you and the public.

Tags: down time, email delivery, hardware, mail relay, reboot, smtp, web server
Categories: Maintenance, NC023, NC027, NC031
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NC023 and NC027: Maintenance complete

19 January 2018 03:30:26 +0000

Server NC023 was down for maintenance between 03:00 and 03:18 and server NC027 was down for maintenance between 03:02 and 03:15, and both have been successfully updated with current patches. This phase of the maintenance protects against Meltdown; further maintenance for protection against Spectre will take place when patches for it have been developed.

Updates will be posted here.

Tags: down time, email delivery, hardware, mail relay, reboot, smtp
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC023, NC027
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NC023 and NC027: Emergency server maintenance

18 January 2018 02:54:25 +0000

Per our previous blog post, the next of our servers to undergo updating are NC023 (the relay server) and NC027 (the primary mail server). The maintenance windows for each are two hours’ long, but we expect that each server will be down for much less than that.

The maintenance window for both starts at:

03:00 UTC on Friday 19 January 2018

Please click the link above to determine when this will be in your time zone.

During the maintenance you will not be able to send or receive email. Incoming email to your domain will be held on the sending servers until our mail server is back online, and will then be delivered to your accounts. No email will be lost.

Please note that email to NinerNet will also be down during the maintenance on server NC027.

Tags: down time, email delivery, hardware, mail relay, reboot, smtp
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC023, NC027
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NC027: Spam clean-up update

28 December 2017 12:27:23 +0000

We have cleaned up the mail server (NC027) after yet another email account was compromised. This necessitated shutting down the mail server between 22:39 and 22:52 UTC yesterday (27 September) while we cleaned up the mess.

This has resulted in the mail server being blacklisted by at least one large mail provider and restrictions put in place by others. The email account in question has been disabled pending resolution of the root cause of this issue, and we are diverting outgoing email to some major mail providers via our relay server until restrictions on our primary mail server’s IP address expire. However, it may still be a few hours more until some outgoing mail is delivered normally without delay.

These incidents usually arise after a client’s 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 computers and any other devices to ensure that this doesn’t happen to your email account.

At this time NC027’s IP address is not listed in any of the major blacklists (which operate on an automated basis to remove blacklisted IP addresses once no spam is seen from them), but we will (as always) monitor this and, where necessary, make manual submissions to the smaller, niche blacklists and to ISPs and other mail providers to have our IP address de-listed where that is possible. Manual processes like these can take a couple of days, however.

Tags: email delivery, mail relay, smtp, spam
Categories: Email, 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?