Connection died 4.4.2 Error

[Totenmaske]

I am pretty sure this is not an issue on our side, but recently we have been having a few bounced back emails with the following error:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mail.plainhost.com

I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<somejoe@aol.com>

Connected to 205.188.156.185 but connection died. (#4.4.2)

I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.

Our email is a pop3 account, we do not have Microsoft Exchange. The only reason I can think of is that there is a problem on aol.com email server. When I try to ping the ip I get time outs. when I trace the route I get the following:

Tracing route to ya.mx.aol.com [205.188.156.185]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 11 ms 11 ms 23 ms 10.119.96.1

2 21 ms 12 ms 12 ms 172.30.88.209

3 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms 172.30.88.238

4 11 ms 11 ms 30 ms 172.30.88.186

5 34 ms 35 ms 35 ms 12.118.184.57

6 35 ms 37 ms 69 ms gbr2-p70.attga.ip.att.net [12.123.21.6]

7 45 ms 45 ms 47 ms tbr1-p013602.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.12.17]

8 62 ms 49 ms 85 ms tbr2-cl1.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.10.69]

9 49 ms 49 ms 63 ms ggr2-p3120.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.123.9.117]

10 48 ms 49 ms 48 ms pop2-ash-p13-1.atdn.net [66.185.140.249]

11 70 ms 49 ms 54 ms bb2-ash-p1-0.atdn.net [66.185.139.210]

12 60 ms 71 ms 48 ms bb2-dtc-p11-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.109]

13 49 ms 48 ms 49 ms pop1-dtc-p15-0.atdn.net [66.185.140.7]

14 51 ms 51 ms 59 ms ow1-dr2-s0-0-0.atdn.net [66.185.144.246]

15 * * * Request timed out.

16 * * * Request timed out.

17 * * * Request timed out.

18 * * * Request timed out.

19 * * * Request timed out.

20 * * * Request timed out.

21 * * * Request timed out.

22 * * * Request timed out.

23 * * * Request timed out.

24 * * * Request timed out.

25 * * * Request timed out.

26 * * * Request timed out.

27 * * * Request timed out.

28 * * * Request timed out.

29 * * * Request timed out.

30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

We are using Microsoft Outlook 2002. Windows XP Professional. I really would like to have some opinions on this issue.

[Sub]

My Mail Server(IMAIL) always has problems with AOL. I think AOL gets so much mail traffic that sometimes their servers freek out and dont let other mail servers to send.

Best bet is to increase your que time so it doesnt bounce back so quick. This fixed 95% of the problems with AOL.

I also checked and you havea valid reverse entry for your mail server, so that shouldnt be a problem.

[Frank]

Is your mail server a "Open Relay" by any chance? I have found that AOL does subscribe to some of the open relay databases to close the mail servers off.

[Totenmaske]

I have checked to see if our email server is Open Relay, but it doesn't seem to be. Our email being hosted by our domain hosting service (Hostica) they say they are not an open relay. Certainly I am restricted with the basic tests from thrid party to actually trying to send an email from hotmail through our mail server - resulting in the failing to be an open relay mail server. So that doesn't seem to be the issue. Unless I am testing it completely wrong. But really as I understand it, sometimes we just have to send email to that one individual at aol.com instead of cc or bc and they will recieve it fine. That simply makes me think it is a Aol problem.

[Frank]

Do you require outgoing authentication on your SMTP server?

From your last comment, I think it may just be their spam filter catching it.

[Totenmaske]

Yes we require outgoing authentication on our SMTP server. I think it's rather strange that aol would be catching our email as spam though, it does seem to be an on and off type of thing, but if we send email directly to them instead of bc or cc it usually goes through (excluding the times when their mailbox is full).

But thanks for the insight on this.