Re: Mail to aol.com

Gregory W. Bondy ( (no email) )
Mon, 16 Jun 1997 19:15:45 -0500

I am reminded of a line from the Star Trek movie "Undiscovered Country"...

spock: "But they're dying!"
kirk: "Let them die."

*climbs onto his soapbox*

It is not the rest of our jobs to "fix" AOL's screwups. It is not for us
to make elegant workarounds so our users, with whom we all spend a great
deal of time, money, and effort supporting in the first place, can send
mail to this den of iniquity that is america online.

*steps off soapbox*

On our system, if mail from AOL bounces, it's sent to /dev/null and
forgotten about. "Just one of those things". If AOL can't get their sh*t
together, and FAST, they'll be a forgotton bad dream in a year. Just hold
on. :)

My two cents.

At 05:44 PM 6/16/97 -0600, you wrote:
>The AOL mail deal used to be a problem with me. I'm not a DNS guru by any
>means, but I was told by several that AOL returns truncated DNS entries.
>What this looks like: I don't know. But I do know that it screwed up my
>mail for quite a while until an update for my SMTP server came out
>addressing the AOL issue.
>
>QUICK FIX: (Tested and used by me previously: unknown if this will work
>now). Some SMTP servers have trouble handling AOL's truncated returns.
>Solution: Create an AOL.COM DNS zone hosted on your own system. Do a
>dig/nslookup & find some of AOL's lower priority (higher numbered) mail
>machines, and create a couple MX records in your local AOL.COM zone
>pointing to those IP addresses. Now you won't have to rely on AOL's
>screwed up DNS returns. AOL mail lookups will be local on your system.
>Please don't ask me how to create a new DNS zone on your server - I won't
>know what to tell you. Be advised that this will most likely affect users'
>ability to visit AOL websites.
>
>Eric
>mailserve@pdqnet.net
>
>----------
>> From: John Lange <microjl@palacenet.net>
>> To: ntisp@emerald.iea.com
>> Subject: Re: Mail to aol.com
>> Date: Monday, June 16, 1997 4:38 PM
>>
>> Don't forget the inherent problems caused by their backbone provider
>> Sprint(missing)Link.
>>
>> JOhn :}
>>
>> > >Does anyone else have trouble getting mail to aol.com?
>> >
>> > we've had all sort of problems with email and web traffic to aol.com,
>> > ostensibly because of they high level of traffic they are(n't)
>> handling...
>> >
>> > so far, none of our customers have whined too loudly...
>> >
>>
>> John C. Lange, Sr. PALACE dot NET, INC.
>> microjl@palacenet.net MICRO-TECH Computers!
>> 608.742.1601 & 6980 2800 New Pinery Road, Suite 10
>> http://www.palacenet.net/ Portage, WI 53901
>> http://www.microt.com/
>>
>> --- __o
>> --- _-\<,_ FASTEST SERVICE IN TOWN
>> --- (_)/ (_)
>>
>> ----------
>>
>>
>>
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