Pablo Software Solutions

[chrisf]

I'm having issues sending mail to .nhs.uk addresses. The sending process fails, claiming that the address does not exist:

03/14/2006 23:17:45.718 [3352] <RELAY> Delivering email to '<receiver@subdomain.nhs.uk>' (mail.nhs.uk)
03/14/2006 23:17:45.828 [3352] <RELAY> 220 rlmh09 ESMTP; Tue, 14 Mar 2006 23:17:45 GMT
03/14/2006 23:17:45.843 [3352] <RELAY> HELO mail.mydomain.co.uk
03/14/2006 23:17:45.859 [3352] <RELAY> 250 rlmh09.swi.contact.secure-ops.net Hello mail.mydomain.co.uk [212.159.115.249], pleased to meet you
03/14/2006 23:17:45.859 [3352] <RELAY> MAIL FROM: <sender@mydomain.co.uk>
03/14/2006 23:17:46.296 [3352] <RELAY> 250 <sender@mydomain.co.uk>... Sender ok
03/14/2006 23:17:46.296 [3352] <RELAY> RCPT TO: <receiver@subdomain.nhs.uk>
03/14/2006 23:17:46.781 [4000] <SMTP> QUIT
03/14/2006 23:17:46.781 [4000] <SMTP> 221 Bye
03/14/2006 23:17:46.781 [4000] <SMTP> Client disconnected from 192.168.0.5
03/14/2006 23:17:49.328 [3352] <RELAY> 451 <receiver@subdomain.nhs.uk>... Requested mail action not taken: mailbox unavailable
03/14/2006 23:17:49.328 [3352] <RELAY> Invalid response, expecting 250.
03/14/2006 23:17:59.328 [3352] <RELAY> Copying message to: C:\badmail\
03/14/2006 23:17:59.328 [3352] <RELAY> Finished delivery of mail.

I know that the email address does exist, but the remote server seems to be rejecting it.

I asked someone else to send the email to the address (using a different server to see what would happpen). The email was rejected the first time, claiming that the address did not exist, but after the third attempt at trying to deliver the message, it managed to get through and was accepted.

The only thing I put this down to would be the NHS using spam prevention, requiring senders' mail servers to continue to send the email a couple of times, to verify it is not spam.

Is there any way that the mail server could re-attempt to send failed mail, rather than putting it in the badmail folder after first fail?

[chrisf]

I was wondering if it would be possible to retry mail attempts to "invalid" addesses.

[admin]

I will try to implement a retry-mechanisme in a future release, but normally it doesn't make any sence to retry if the server rejects the specified data, because it will reject it the second time too.