HOT Mail weirdness

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "FB" == Frank BENNETT <bennett@example.com> writes:

    FB> I have had complaints from two correspondents about delivery
    FB> failures to our mail server, both of them from Hotmail
    FB> accounts.  The failures occurred over the past two weeks.  Has
    FB> anyone else experienced similar problems?

I would suggest telling your correspondents that Hotmail has no
interest, and quite possibly lacks competence, in seeing that their
mail gets delivered in either direction.  Even if it is _your_
problem, they are zero help in identifying what's going on.

Eg, it's the other way around for me.  Here's my /etc/issue on my
students' mail host:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are connected to \n on line \l.

The services on \n have moved to a new machine.  The name \n
and Internet address are unchanged.  The configurations are not identical;
if you have trouble logging in or getting mail, contact Steve.

I know that hotmail.com has been dropping all messages from `\n' on
the floor for more than four months.  I have sent mail to the postmaster
to find out why.  Until further notice, however, you should assume that
mail addressed to users at hotmail.com will not arrive.  (Mail sent via
mailing lists and so on should be fine, it is only direct mail.)

This also happens at other machines in my lab, so it's definitely Hotmail's
fault.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's been well over a year since this idiocy started.  I have been in
correspondence with Hotmail three times.  Each time they were puzzled
and said they would get back to me.  No joy.

What happens is that the SMTP connection succeeds, DATA transmission
starts, and then the connection is terminated with prejudice from
Hotmail's end.  Read fails on the TCP connection, _not_ connection
closed.

I'm not in RBL or That Other Thang, I've got A and PTR records that
work.  It is possible that they are checking MX records on the return
path, since when I mail directly from my institute's mail server, I
get through, but relays from my host via the mail server don't work.

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