On 2020-01-21 13:36, Hartmut W Sager wrote:

Shaw seems to have gotten personal and business mixed together in a single action. They are probably cracking down on Shaw personal accounts that are "playing SMTP server", which is a common violation in the ISP world.

As for relaying, they ought to accept the use of their mail server for relaying as long as you're only doing it from equipment connected to your Shaw internet service (and otherwise, they could accept uid/pw authenticated access to their mail server).

easyDNS addresses this problem with their "SMTP port forwarding" feature:

https://easydns.com/features/smtp-port-forwarding/

easyDNS, just like Tucows/OpenSRS, is another totally Canadian gem based in Toronto.

MX chaining makes for fun troubleshooting but I'm glad it is available as an option. Did you try the submission port (587) and see if that is blocked (won't help other than will tell you it was administrative)? Usually they just block tcp/25, cause bots. One could probably lift the restriction on Shaw by asking the business support folk to do so on your delegated subnet or specific MX (also consider an external relay for secondary MX to queue traffic when Shaw inevitably forgets or something screws up). Blocking egress SMTP by default is a reasonable ISP policy since customers get popped so easily. Super annoying but they should document and be transparent about it so you don't go banging your head against something that should have been 10 minutes and a phone call. -- Sean

On January 23, 2020 3:42:30 a.m. CST, Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.ca> wrote:

On 2020-01-21 Gerald Brandt wrote:

...

Hi,

I've been fighting with Shaw for days on this. I have what they call a business account with 8 static IPs.

I can telnet mail.shaw.ca 25 and get a connection. So, inside their network, SMTP works.

If I try to telnet to any other server on port 25, i get no connection. e.g. telnet to google email servers fails, telnet to my server in Montreal fails.).

There is no reason your business account should have port 25 blocked, in either direction. If they have done that to you, complain and get them to fix it. If they gave you a static range, make sure you are using it and not grabbing one of their residential DHCP addresses by accident.

Also, the business side has some smart people working there, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to get it resolved by people who understand your language.

I just checked and my customers on Shaw business have port 25 outgoing unblocked.

I agree with everything you said, except the smart people comment. If you tell me to login to my gmail account via web, and send and email to myself (from gmail to gmail) and use the successful delivery of the email as proof of port 25 being open, you have no idea what you're talking about. Guaranteed not using a DHCP address. Incoming port 25 works, outgoing fails to leave their network. The first person I talked to thought the 24.x.x x addresses they gave me placed me in India. WTF? Seven days, and this issue is still not resolved. Gerald -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

On 2020-01-23 Gerald Brandt wrote:

I agree with everything you said, except the smart people comment. If you tell me to login to my gmail account via web, and send and email to myself (from gmail to gmail) and use the successful delivery of the email as proof of port 25 being open, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Oh yes, the gmail garbage you got from them is laughable. True LOL material. I said there were smart people there, but it's clear you haven't reached one of them yet! There are also no-nothing canned-response people there :-)

The first person I talked to thought the 24.x.x x addresses they gave me placed me in India. WTF?

On 2020-01-23 Vijay Sankar wrote:

Tried to simulate your situation on one of our Shaw Cable modems. FWIW, it looks to me like your firewall is probably using a DHCP address instead of the static address you may have configured.

Vijay is right. My hunch you were on the DHCP address space is confirmed by your 24.* address comment. I have business customers on Shaw static business and none of them have a 24.* address. Most have a 184.* address, like Vijay's. You should find out from Shaw what your static range is, and set your firewall/router/whatever to use static and set the IP manually. That's what most of the setups I'm familiar with are doing. I think we've solved your problem! Let us know...

Hi Gerald. You really still need to press hard to talk to a biz techie at Shaw who understands this stuff. And then, notwithstanding the possibility that your particular 24's are from their DHCP pool, you should press hard to have them give you 183's, 184's, or such, which are unequivocally in their "business customers" pool. Otherwise, there's probably more trouble in the future with something at their end considering you as "residential" again. Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331 On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 at 07:05, Gerald Brandt <gbr@majentis.com> wrote:

Hi Trevor,

On 2020-01-24 2:47 a.m., Trevor Cordes wrote:

...

Vijay is right. My hunch you were on the DHCP address space is confirmed by your 24.* address comment. I have business customers on Shaw static business and none of them have a 24.* address. Most have a 184.* address, like Vijay's.

You should find out from Shaw what your static range is, and set your firewall/router/whatever to use static and set the IP manually. That's what most of the setups I'm familiar with are doing.

I think we've solved your problem! Let us know...

I had a 183 address from them and it all worked. When we went to their 600Mb/s service and asked for 8 static IPs, they gave me eight 24.109 addresses (on two different subnets and gateways). I even asked them about that, and they said it wasn't the problem.

I think I really need to verify the 24 address space isn't part of their DHCP list, even though they gave them to me as static.

Gerald

On 2020-01-28 Gerald Brandt wrote:

Now, since it seems Shaw gave me some of their dynamic range, my email server is blacklisted in a few places.

To say I'm not happy with Shaw would be a gross understatement.

Yes, many RBLs will have Shaw's many of Shaw's entire 24.x.* blacklisted as "residential". Getting off a blanket RBL is near impossible. I would still try to see if you could obtain IPs in their normal "business" range. If they won't give you that, then you should tell them it's *their* job to get their was-rez-is-now-business 24's off of the RBLs! Note: there are many online multi-RBL checker web sites you should utilize to see what's blocking you. And you could always try following each RBL's "remove" guidelines. But that quickly becomes almost a full time job. I share your pain... I administer an email-heavy system and the world is much too aggressive with their BL's. The more concentrated email gets (think gmail) the worse it gets. (My 2c.)

Trevor, on the big picture in so few words my sense is you absolutely nailed it! On 28/01/2020 10:35 PM, Trevor Cordes wrote:

I share your pain... I administer an email-heavy system and the world is much too aggressive with their BL's. The more concentrated email gets (think gmail) the worse it gets. (My 2c.)

First, I would like to thank you and several others for offering solutions to Gerald's email problems that major interests such as google/gmail have not only no interest in correcting the problems but as you point out are aggressively ratcheting up the situation through a well greased Catch-22 marketing plan that is also strategically heavily levered whereby google/gmail gains access to a market many times larger than its direct clientele. In short, though the pot is clearly warming up and small wonder why so many users are resistant to switch, to repeat, my thanks to all of you for making Gerald's task a little easier! Might it be time to set up a range of low-cost to no-cost how-to options from the small time email user with no more than a domain name with a host email service to the more complex as mentioned here? As well as proactively seeding interests so that the open sourced non-gmail providers see the need for some serious upgrading and not leave improvement options like labels in lieu of folders only to google? Eduard

Gerald, the replies you've received here on MUUG pretty well converged onto a consensus, and it looks like you haven't carried out the main suggestion yet - IP address(es) unequivocally in the "business" category. E.g., here's my own (second) reply a while ago:

Hi Gerald. You really still need to press hard to talk to a biz techie at Shaw who understands this stuff. And then, notwithstanding the possibility that your particular 24's are from their DHCP pool, you should press hard to have them give you 183's, 184's, or such, which are unequivocally in their "business customers" pool. Otherwise, there's probably more trouble in the future with something at their end considering you as "residential" again.

Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331 On Tue, 4 Feb 2020 at 20:28, Gerald Brandt <gbr@majentis.com> wrote:

So, port 25 opened for a few days. Shut down again today with no reason why.

Talked to business support, and they suggested that perhaps someone discontinued receiving our newsletter.

What the hell that has to do with SMTP out not connecting to any servers, I have no idea. That as stupid as saying since gmail can send to gmail, port 25 is open.

Gerald

On 2020-01-21 12:25 p.m., Gerald Brandt wrote:

...

Hi,

I've been fighting with Shaw for days on this. I have what they call a business account with 8 static IPs.

I can telnet mail.shaw.ca 25 and get a connection. So, inside their network, SMTP works.

If I try to telnet to any other server on port 25, i get no connection. e.g. telnet to google email servers fails, telnet to my server in Montreal fails.).

To test that port 25 was open, they had me start Firefox, login to gmail, and send an email from my gmail to my gmail account. that was proof they weren't blocking port 25... Yeah.

Right now, in order to get email out, i am using mail.shaw.ca as a relay. That is not supported, so they are asking me to not do that. I told them if I don't use them as a replay, i can't get email out. They did not understand.

Does anyone have any idea how to get these guys to understand what is going on? Am i using the wrong terminology? I can't see how I can make it any clearer to them that they are blocking port 25 access to any system outside of their network.

Gerald

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On 2020-02-04 21:04, Gerald Brandt wrote:

Of course I've tried to get new IPs. I've had nothing but resistance. I've made another attempt today, so now I wait for a response.

Unfortunately, Hartmut is right in this regard. Trying will not solve your problem, only succeeding will. Until you succeed at that, I strongly recommend you route all outbound mail through a proxy or relay server, because otherwise you will be wasting your time. The only option I know of is to reach Shaw's retention team; just like cell carriers, the retention team is the only group actually empowered to fix things for you. In this case, I suggest you _*ahem*_ relent if they send a business tech out to your site, who demonstrates before leaving that you have a static IP, DHCP is disabled, reverse DNS is set (correctly), and you can once again send email. MTS also has business service, and if sending email is your main use case, their business DSL service is probably good enough. So you call Shaw, tell them you're switching to MTS because Shaw has consistently failed to address your problem. And if they say "OK, have fun with MTS", switch. You literally can't get any worse off than you are right now. And if you have the same problem with MTS (which you almost can't because YOU aren't in control of your IP address, they are, ergo you can't really get it wrong) then... um... there's only one common element remaining... SMTP email pretty much requires a specialist nowadays. If you haven't devoted, eh, let's say 10yrs (cumulatively, assuming standard working hours) of your life to managing and running public SMTP servers, I'd estimate >50% odds that the problem somehow, somewhere, lies on your end. Maybe the proximate problem is Shaw, but I've never had problems like you're describing with getting their business service to do the right thing. If you continue to have problems, there's a small chance I might be able get your complaint routed to someone capable within Shaw; email me directly if you want to try that before threatening to leave them. Also, maybe tell us what the router is, and what the SMTP server is - I don't think we know those details yet. Although ESR is a walking dumpster fire, this article of his remains relevant (albeit tone-deaf) today: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -Adam

On 2020-02-05 09:39, Gerald Brandt wrote:

The fact that I can't telnet to any outside SMTP server removes any mistakes I may have made on my end anyway, since it doesn't involve the SMTP server.

Try http://ipaddr.ca and tell us what your IP and reverse DNS are? Some of us (including me) have access to non-public databases that might tell me what's going on with your IP address' "reputation". Again, email directly if you don't want to share it on a public mailing list. -Adam