Unable to connect to mail servers

[tentimes]

All was going fine and I have been using mail with no problems. suddenyl today outlook cannot connect to my mailserver mail.tentimes.org

Server status all shows fine. Anyone any ideas on this?

Thanks

[shadmego]

No clue. I haven't had any issues connecting to any mail servers at HM. Are you having problems with your Internet in general, or only HM sites? Can you load your site in your browser? Can you log into your mail account via webmail?

[tentimes]

Everything else is working fine and i can get my mail by webmail - just outlook wont connect. Outlook has been connecting perfectly up now and I havent made any changes :(

[shadmego]

Is this a site that is hosted with Hostmonster or GoDaddy? Is there any specific error Outlook is telling you as to why it cannot connect?

Is it a port #? Username/password error?

[usvi4me]

Email Imap has not worked now for at least four hours.

Contral Panel webmail "takes too log to respond". Could not access control panel for a long time but now works.

Filezilla ftp:
Response: 227 Entering Passive Mode (67,222,57,143,73,4)
Command: MLSD
Error: Connection timed out
Error: Failed to retrieve directory listing

host275.hostmonster.com is what I'm working from.

Anyone else ?

[tentimes]

Yeah I cannot even reach the mail servers - IMAP seems to be down and webmail isn't working properly. I tried t0o add the tracert but they have sent my post for moderation.

The tracerouyt using network-tools.com in the USA shopws the same as mine - it's timing out at am ip at the host server for my mail (mail.tentimes.org). I have posted a ticket with a request to read this thread but I would bet money that they will send me back some generalised email advice and not inspect the server. Will post back here to say if I was wrong :)

I have been with HM less than a week and if this is their mail service I will be cancelling. Several hours mail outtage with NO support whatsoever, no live support and no response to tickets.

That makes the service useless for me - I need my mail to be reliable.

[tentimes]

The tracert times out from my location in the UK so I checked using network-tools.com (in USA):

Trace to mail.tentimes.org

64.202.165.92 is from United States(US) in region North America


TraceRoute to 64.202.165.92 [mail.tentimes.org]
Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 9 6 12 72.249.0.65 -
2 27 21 8 8.9.232.73 xe-5-3-0.edge3.dallas1.level3.net
3 18 17 21 4.68.19.62 vlan69.csw1.dallas1.level3.net
4 50 73 49 4.69.136.121 ae-61-61.ebr1.dallas1.level3.net
5 42 32 50 4.69.133.29 ae-8-8.car1.phoenix1.level3.net
6 45 34 30 4.69.133.34 ae-11-11.car2.phoenix1.level3.net
7 73 52 55 4.53.106.2 the-go-dadd.car2.phoenix1.level3.net
8 55 46 70 208.109.112.142 ip-208-109-112-142.ip.secureserver.net
9 41 43 31 216.69.188.74 ip-216-69-188-74.ip.secureserver.net
10 38 31 41 208.109.112.150 ip-208-109-112-150.ip.secureserver.net
11 33 32 33 208.109.112.185 ip-208-109-112-185.ip.secureserver.net
12 Timed out Timed out Timed out -
13 59 32 40 64.202.165.92 pop.secureserver.net

Trace complete

[shadmego]

pop.secureserver.net is not a Hostmonster server. That's GoDaddy, if I'm not mistaken. I also tried to look at your site in my browser and it shows a filler page from GoDaddy. I've not seen any indication your site points to Hostmonster name servers at all.

Either you tried to transfer your site to Hostmonster and it failed, or you never completed the process or you never started, but either way, your site doesn't have anything to do with Hostmonster (at least tentimes.org)

reference this site: http://whois.domaintools.com/tentimes.org

I apologize for the troubles, but perhaps you need to contact GoDaddy to get this straightened out ...

~regards

[tentimes]

Sigh..

Please read again.

Also, go to network-tools.com and do a tracerout to ns1 or ns2.hostmonster.com

The reason my site is going there now is godaddy cannot contact the nameservers. Neither can lots of other sites. I can't reach ns1.hostmonster.com from UK, France, Germany and many US sites that offer traceroute.

Forget about my site and give it a go. Godaddy have parked my site while the nameservers at hostmaster are down. My site worked fine for the last 5 days by the way.

[shadmego]

...
The reason my site is going there now is godaddy cannot contact the nameservers. Neither can lots of other sites. I can't reach ns1.hostmonster.com from UK, France, Germany and many US sites that offer traceroute.
...


After I posted my last entry I realized that might be happening. I personally have never tried to tracert directly to the nameservers at hostmonster so I don't know if there would be a response directly from them. I've likewise never tried to ping them, which would tell me if they were active and reachable (if they were configured to respond to pings). Because of this, I have to baseline to compare the current responses against.

I have to take your word, and I have no reason to not believe your results. I've personally tried to both ping and tracert the nameservers myself from various locations and have had no luck getting successful results.

Does this mean the nameservers themselves are down? Does this necessarily mean it is Hostmonster's fault? I can't say. I can tell you that all the sites I manage on Hostmonster are up, and I have not heard any complaints from my clients about email being down/unreachable. To be fair, all my clients have their domains managed with Hostmonster, so there is no bouncing the domains to the nameservers, which might be where the problem is?

I would say there might be a definate problem with the nameservers, I just don't know where it is. They are neither responding to pings (which might not suprise me) nor are they responding to traceroutes. Because there are definately sites that are still available, I would say the problem is not terribly wide-spread, though I can't say for sure.

I just tried to tracert my own site and it completed successfully. I would recommend you try the same thing, but we both know how that will go ;).

I just don't know what to say. I apologize if you took what I was saying the wrong way. I'm simply trying to cover all the bases I know to cover. No ignorance on your part is implied or inferred.

~regards

[pghcollectibles]

if this comes down to a communication error with godaddy, i would seriously compare your registrar fees between godaddy and the $10 at hm. either way there is going to be some delay when the client has to be bounced to hm from gd even when all is good.

[tentimes]

It's nothing to do with godaddy - I have tried reaching the nameservers from various locations. Some main backbones in the USA can reach it, some can not. A nameserver has to respond to queries, so yes, it should be able to be reached by tracert.

[cade]

It's nothing to do with godaddy - I have tried reaching the nameservers from various locations. Some main backbones in the USA can reach it, some can not. A nameserver has to respond to queries, so yes, it should be able to be reached by tracert.

This statement is only partially true. If a server is serving DNS, it should be reachable and answering DNS queries on port 53. Whether it responds to ICMP or UDP datagrams (on ports 33434 to 33534) externally is irrelevant to the function of the DNS server.

Probably the easiest way to test whether a DNS server is responding is by using dig to query the server directly:


dig @ns1.hostmonster.com tentimes.org

As an aside, while I wrote this reply, I attempted to traceroute ns51.domaincontrol.com. It summarily timed out. I would guess that it is behind a load balancer (or something along those lines) that doesn't bother to forward that kind of traffic. Things aren't always as they seem.

[tentimes]

Well just to tie all this up, I got a reply from support today and they said that due to some major network outtage beyond their control *some* sites were unreachable for a "brief" period during the holdiay. For me that was nearly 12 hours, which isn't the end of the world.

I think the thing that got me annoyed was the denial. Sometimes problems happen, fair enough, but the first thing is to give out information so people know what is going on. Have you ever been delayed for a flight and nobody will tell you what it going on? It's that kind of frustrating.

Anyway, it's fixed now so I'm happy. I got the email I was waiting on and it wasn't lost (thank god).