Exchange - Problems for Overseas colleagues - Companies wont connect to UK servers??!

[Vini]

We've a few overseas sites, with our HQ being in the UK. Our Exchange 2007 server sits at our HQ but provides all our sites with their email (via HTTP).

Recently it has come to my attention that some of our US colleagues are not receiving ALL email, because some companies in the states block connections to foreign servers?!!

Whilst this is another case of us having to bend over backwards to suit our customer, is there anyway we can do this without having an Exchange server in the states?

We use Postini as our message filtering solution, can we make use of their international presence to resolve this?

[Moby-Dick]

are your remote sites ( which you dont have much control over by the sounds of it ) connecting via OWA or RPC over HTTPS ?

It just sounds like a really badly configured firewall to me.

[Jay]

Positi should be your SMTP and in your primary MX Record so that should mean that servers should not hit your exchange server directly for sending or receiving external mail they should only see postini Some ISPs will block ports 110 and 25 unless its to their own mail servers.

So do you mean that some people are not able to receive mail or that some people can't get to the OWA?

[Vini]

are your remote sites ( which you dont have much control over by the sounds of it ) connecting via OWA or RPC over HTTPS ?

It just sounds like a really badly configured firewall to me.

RPC over HTTPS

Positi should be your SMTP and in your primary MX Record so that should mean that servers should not hit your exchange server directly for sending or receiving external mail they should only see postini Some ISPs will block ports 110 and 25 unless its to their own mail servers.

So do you mean that some people are not able to receive mail or that some people can't get to the OWA?

Postini is our MX Record...

The problem is some of our customers in the US apparently get bounces because the Exchange server is in the UK.

Noone has an issue with OWA, the actual problem does not affect our users. Other than the fact their customers cannot liaise with them.

[burble]

The problem is some of our customers in the US apparently get bounces because the Exchange server is in the UK.

Unlikely. Your MX records are pointing to Postini so how do the mail servers from these customers know that your Exchange server is in the UK? They'll never connect to it directly.

That aside, Ive not heard of US companies blocking emails because the end destination is in the UK.

Can you get an exact failure message and post it?

[Moby-Dick]

The problem is some of our customers in the US apparently get bounces because the Exchange server is in the UK.

pretty much what burble said

so the mail flow problem is on the inbound side ie . ie Customer attempts to mail yank@viniscompany.co.uk and it bounces ?

[Vini]

I've seen one of the bounces before, but just can't put my finger on it now... It's definitely been along the lines of "rejected because of foreign server"

I'm beginning to wonder if that was before we put Postini in though.

[burble]

Foreign doesn't mean off shore, it means not local, ie, *ANY* server that's external to the one generating the NDR.

A copy of the full NDR would be useful if you can find it.

[Jay]

Look at it like this, anyone external sending mail to your server or from your server to an external party will see you as a postini server so I doubt its a location based issue.

[Lucio]

Could be a relaying issue, are you sure that your Postini server is properly designated as an allowed sender for your domain? Even then, you can get failures from the stricter mail providers because they see the message as being relayed.

[burble]

Could be a relaying issue, are you sure that your Postini server is properly designated as an allowed sender for your domain? Even then, you can get failures from the stricter mail providers because they see the message as being relayed.

The OP is talking about problems receiving emails from certain customers, not sending to them.