[freelists-users] Re: Hot Mail Failures
- From: John Madden <weez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: freelists-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 12:24:41 -0500
> I have always had this problem on my list, but the last couple of weeks
> it has gotten really bad. I'm talking about failures to subscribers with
> Hot Mail accounts. This is what comes back in the bounce message.
>
> Final-Recipient: rfc822; bigfisher70@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Action: failed
> Status: 5.0.0
> Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host mx01.hotmail.com[65.54.254.145] said:
> 554 Transaction failed
After a bit of research, I've found that a lot of people (not just
FreeLists) are having issues with Hotmail.
(Background on the SMTP RFC's: you exit with a 5xx error when the delivery
failed with a fatal error so that the client doesn't try to send the
message again. You fail with a 4xx error to say "try again later.")
The "transaction failed" message is apparently a "we're too busy to accept
your message at the moment," which is fine, but they should fail with a
4xx message, for example the 450 "mailbox unavailable." Microsoft, in
their infinite wisdom, has decided to not follow RFC here and is instead
sending a 554, causing mail to bounce permanently.
One suggestion made was for them to switch back to FreeBSD (anyone notice
how much more the service there sucks since they made the "political
migration" to windows 2000 servers?), since it can better handle big
server loads. I hear they already had to use a 5:1 ratio when replacing
the FreeBSD servers, and that was apparently still not enough. :)
This isn't something that'll be fixed anytime soon, I imagine. Microsoft's
SMTP services are inherently braindead, as we see here. Their support
people are incompetent, and are not likely to offer help to begin with.
My questions have certainly gone unanswered. Their 'free' services
certainly seem come with a very high price tag (privacy, reliability,
quality, etc.).
Thus, my suggestion to your subscribers is that they abandon Hotmail.
Thanks,
John
- FreeLists Staff
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