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| Why BT SDSL can not send email |
| Monday, January 16, 2006 at 14:51 by Kathleen Hill |
We have been getting reports over the last few weeks, from various Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), about ongoing problems with British Telecom and their Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) range of products.
SDSL is growing in popularity throughout the UK, due to the fact it can transfer data at the same speed in both directions (Symmetric), where an ADSL line upstream rate is usually only a quarter (or sometimes less) of the downstream rate (Asymmetric). SDSL also comes with a Service Level Agreement and offers a contention ratio of 10:1, compared to ADSL, which has no SLA and a contention ratio of 50:1 (usually). This makes the BT Business SDSL range of products ideal for use with SME email servers, or so BT would have you believe.
One particular UK based SME contacted us today to explain the problems further. The SME told us they had subscribed to BT Business SDSL around six months ago and due to the amount of email traffic they send and receive, they subscribed to two SDSL lines, effectively giving them 4MBit/Sec bandwidth in both directions. They were charged $1,200 (£700) installation (plus a further $1,400 (£800) for routing equipment), signed to a minimum contract term of one year and are currently paying over $16,700 (£9,500) per annum in rental costs.
Happy with the SDSL service at first, problems soon started to rise. The problems were not with the connectivity or bandwidth, the SME in question was quite happy with this, the problem was with sending email.
Most email servers and junk mail (or spam) filters have the ability to use something called Realtime Black Lists (RBLs). These RBLs are lists of IP addresses which have been flagged or "blacklisted" for various reasons, including known spam offenders and insecure relay servers. Some RBLs also contain lists of Dynamic IP addresses, again a common source of spam.
When BT Business SDSL is installed, customers are assigned a single static IP address which allows them to run their own email server on the SDSL line. This information is promoted on the BT Business SDSL web site, under the section 'How can it help my business?' and reads: "BT Business Broadband Advanced gives your business the ability to reliably host and maintain your own email and web servers in-house."
The SME we spoke with today noticed after only a couple of weeks use that some emails being sent were getting bounced back as undeliverable. Upon further investigation of the problems, it came to light that the IP range assigned by BT to the SDSL products is classed as Dynamic by a couple of RBL providers, due to the Reverse DNS (rDNS) lookup of the IP range. Conducting a reverse lookup on the IP of the BT Business SDSL lines does indeed show they resolve back to "host81-137-*-*.in-addr.btopenworld.com". Because of this rDNS issue, the SME is now finding it more and more difficult to send email out, as more and more companies are employing the use of RBLs on their email gateways.
We asked if the SME had contacted BT Business about these issues. The SME told us they had asked BT to change the rDNS entry for their IP or range, but were told BT were unable to do this. The customer then asked for the IP address of a relay server through which they could send their email via the BT SDSL email relay server. At this point, the customer was informed that only 7 domain names were allowed to relay, per SDSL connection. This meant the customer could have only added a maximum of 14 domains (due to having two SDSL lines) to the BT relay server. The problem there is that the SME in question has 104 domains that are used for email purposes. There is no mention of a seven-domain limit within the terms and conditions of the SDSL contract. The SME then went on to ask if BT could add their email server IPs as "trusted", to the BT relay server, enabling them to send email from any of their domains. Once again, BT said this was not possible.
This has left our SME in a rather awkward position. They are unable to send all their email and are locked in a contract costing $16,700 (£9,500) a year, with a provider that is unwilling to help them.
Having spoken to our legal team about the SME position in general, and having gone over "the small print" in the terms and conditions of contract on the BT Business SDSL products available from BT, our legal team have advised the SME that they are fully within their rights to exit the contract, without penalty. They are currently seeking an alternative internet service provider.
Our legal team are also speaking to the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK today, as the BT Business web site is clearly selling a product that is not "fit for purpose".
We contacted BT today, but they declined to comment on the matter.
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| That's ridiculous, how are you supposed to run an email server from an IP on a RBL?
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| least their SDSL didn't take 2 months of engineer visits before it was usable :( |
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| While I would agree that a Business ISP should offer a reverse DNS service - surely if anyone needed to add their server IPs to a 'trusted' list it would be the recipients' mail servers? |
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| i used to work for said company and we used to have to tell the customer to contact the recipients company and ask to be put onto the list, so many customers cancelled because we did not offer rDNS it was quite funny actually |
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| JohnS: that would mean EVERY mail server you send to would need to add you, that isn't feasible. What was mean by a trusted list was in regards to the BT relay server so the SME can use more than 14 sender domains.
BT's customer relations is poor (note: not customer service - they just get lumbered with the screw ups), They need to take a leaf out of the book of someone like Google / MS who are a bit more open these days. |
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| This is typical for BT. Only they could sell a product you can't actually use for the purpose it was soley intended.
Way to go! |
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| To comment # 4, I wonder how BT have got away with this for so long.
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| dpvreony: Ah, I read it differently, i.e, the SME asked a) first, whether they could add all their domains to BT's relay list, and then when they were told no, they then asked b) whether their server IP could be added as being a safe sender for the recipients, so that their emails would be received without being rejected for being spam - so I said that this would apply to the recipients' servers. I do realise that this would be an extreme solution unless they only sent emails to a couple of domains!
I can now see that I should have read it as - adding their server IP to BT's mail relay list, instead of adding all the domain names individually. |
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| To comment #7, Out of the things anyone can say about BT they are good at one thing, writing 'terms and coditions' they include a a get out claus for everything. |
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| Use an ISP to relay incoming and outgoing email, set SPF DNS records for your domain, and use an antispam filter like SpamShifter to reduce the amount of incoming email and therefore reduce the size of the pipe needed to connect to the Internet. |
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| Mail servers get blacklisted all the time. It may even be the SME's own fault. The following actions could get you blacklisted:
1) sending out lots of email - your recipients may report it as spam.
2) Using autoresponders - this may foward spam and get you reported as the sender.
3) Bouncing spam after the email server has accepted the message - all bounces should occur at the smtp protocol stage. |
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| This happened to my business also. I have business ADSL broadband and BT assigned 4 static IP Addresses that are seen by SORBS as being dynamic. BT refused to change my rDNS entries. It took about a month for SORBS to de-list me in their blacklistng database. But this is only firefighting the problem as BT need to offer rDNS services. With hindsight, I would look for an ISP with full DNS services. |
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| I to have the broadband business light option with a supposed static ip address assigned. Outgoing requestes work just fine however nobody can ping or do a trace route to my ip address. Give it a try if you like 81.149.145.80. A friend who has the same service has exactly the same problem. Bt have given me the run around for more than two months with various excuses. Let it be said that we are not on good terms and yet the problem lingers. We are now in the compensation phase but the damage incurred and waste of my time cannot have a value. A large organisation like this needs to respond to clients problems promptly. Should anyone have similar problems please let me know at brett.elston@bisquared.com and maybe together we can get them to pull their fingers out.. |
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| I wonder.... 104 seperate domains to send emails and needing 4Mbits bandwidth ? maybe they are bulk emailers not sure how some organisations classify spammers?
and depending on where they are they located they could have 10Mbits for around £10k per annum on a proper internet access service from the same company ... DSL is and will remain a cheap internet access mechanism invest in a proper one if you need it. |
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| The firm in question runs 100+ web sites which all send out between 10-20 emails per day, not major league spam by anyones definition.
They have also now closed their account with BT and got a 10Mbit leased line from Telewest, cheaper than BT and with full RDNS control over all the IP addresses assigned.
Problem solved!
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| I spent the last week trying to get BT to add a rDNS entry for one of the 5 static IP's that they assigned to us and were classified as Dynamic.
After around 50 e-mails and at least 30 phone calls to unexperience support operators and managers that did not understand DNS we were told that BT would not add the entry, nor would they inform the sites that were blocking us.
If you search www.btbroadbandoffice.com support for reverse DNS it clearly states that BT provide reverse DNS for up to 8 IP's - this is not the case.
We are now having to look at alternatives, very frustrating!! |
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| rDNS is now available from BT for ADSL and SDSL. However they will not add the entry until the A record for the mail server actually points towards the static IP in question, as well as the MX record showing on the DNS records for the domain - so you can't order it in advance of implementation, for example.
Here are the relevant helpdesk numbers:
BT ADSL: 0845 600 7020
BT SDSL: 0845 601 6928 |
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| Yes - they can now finally to it. We now have a fully working mailserver that can send directly by MX rather than relaying. It's only taken 2 years! You can just request through reverse.dns@btbroadbandoffice.com. |
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