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Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 08:29:46 -0500
From: Chad Robinson <crj@lucubration.com>
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To: Rotary motors in aircraft <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Subject: Re: [FlyRotary] Re: The Ire of Ma Bell
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Russell Duffy wrote:
> The path of least resistance might be to try the gmail account for the 
> flyrotary list, which is the ONLY thing I have a problem with.  
> Otherwise, Bellsouth has been just outstanding.  Fast, reliable, etc, 
> except when dealing with the lancaironline server.   I just wish I knew 
> enough about how this all worked to figure out where the problem really 
> is. 

Rusty, I guarantee that even if you knew what you were doing there'd be no way 
you could resolve this problem yourself, unless the problem is on your PC. 
SMTP is a very simple and very old protocol that contains no delivery 
guarantees, security mechanisms, or other features we expect from software 
today. All it does is send a message from one server to another. The message 
may go directly to the recipient's (or mailing list's) e-mail server, or it 
may bounce through six servers on its way there. Either way, the sender and 
recipient are not part of the actual transaction, so you aren't provided with 
the debugging information you'd need to analyze the problem.

The only people that can investigate this issue are the individuals with 
administrator-level access to the sending and receiving systems - they can 
look at the log files when a test message is sent, and see where the holdup 
is. SOMETIMES you can get away with just one administrator on the phone, 
although you usually need the sender side. More commonly you need both of them 
to talk to each other. A standard BellSouth techie isn't even an administrator 
- aside from the occasional password reset, they have NO access to these 
systems at all. They're just call center workers answering questions based on 
a database of past questions and answers.

It IS actually possible to get a BellSouth SMTP admin on the phone. I know 
this because I've done it. However, it takes a lot of time and you probably 
won't get this unless you're a corporate client, or you're sending to a 
corporate client of BellSouth's. They have separate contacts they can call, 
and if you know what to ask for ("I really need to talk to an SMTP 
administrator who can look at your logs when I send a test message and watch 
the message delivery cycle.") you can get this done. You might try asking for 
"escalation", which is a buzzword in the industry that means you want to go 
from the support worker to a low-level engineer (who can't solve your problem 
either but can talk to a high-level engineer who might).

Otherwise, Gmail is probably your best bet. Sorry.

Regards,
Chad