Mail to tiscali bounced

[#1]

I have just received this bounce message:

<xxxx@tiscali.co.uk>: host relay.plus.net[212.159.9.107] said: 550
    <xxxx@tiscali.co.uk> recipient rejected - domain has no delivery address
    (DNS MX or A record) (in reply to RCPT TO command)

(I've redacted the user name.)

I get:

~]$ dig MX tiscali.co.uk

; <<>> DiG 9.10.8-P1 <<>> MX tiscali.co.uk
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 10169
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;tiscali.co.uk.                 IN      MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
tiscali.co.uk.          267     IN      MX      10 mx.tiscali.co.uk.

;; Query time: 12 msec
;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1)
;; WHEN: Wed Feb 09 11:27:35 GMT 2022
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 61

~]$ dig mx.tiscali.co.uk

; <<>> DiG 9.10.8-P1 <<>> mx.tiscali.co.uk
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 1158
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mx.tiscali.co.uk.              IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
mx.tiscali.co.uk.       300     IN      A       62.24.139.42

;; Query time: 17 msec
;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1)
;; WHEN: Wed Feb 09 11:27:52 GMT 2022
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 61

I  don't know why PN's DNS appears to have failed here.

[#2]

Hello @kjpetrie

Thanks for getting in touch. Are you able to try this again please? We have been having a few issues with our systems today, which appear to have now been resolved.

[#3]

I still see this from time to time. Here are the last four messages I have received with the user name hidden:

Date: Tue,  8 Feb 2022 21:49:10 +0000 (GMT)

<xxx@tiscali.co.uk>: host relay.plus.net[212.159.9.107] said: 550
    <xxx@tiscali.co.uk> recipient rejected - domain has no delivery address
    (DNS MX or A record) (in reply to RCPT TO command)

Date: Mon, 30 May 2022 13:06:23 +0100 (BST)

<xxx@tiscali.co.uk>: host relay.plus.net[212.159.9.107] said: 550
    <xxx@tiscali.co.uk> recipient rejected - domain has no delivery address
    (DNS MX or A record) (in reply to RCPT TO command)

Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2022 16:12:34 +0100 (BST)

<xxx@tiscali.co.uk>: host relay.plus.net[212.159.8.107] said: 550
    <xxx@tiscali.co.uk> recipient rejected - domain has no delivery address
    (DNS MX or A record) (in reply to RCPT TO command)

Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2022 20:37:47 +0100 (BST)

<xxx@tiscali.co.uk>: host relay.plus.net[212.159.9.107] said: 550
    <xxx@tiscali.co.uk> recipient rejected - domain has no delivery address
    (DNS MX or A record) (in reply to RCPT TO command)

It looks as if there's a problem with DNS on these two servers, at least some of the time, and only wrt to that domain. Seven other recipients received the e-mail, but the copy to the Tiscali user bounced.

---

[#4]

I've been trying to send an email for the last hour or so to a few people of which two have tiscali addresses and I'm getting the same rejection message

Took one off the list to check and still get the failure on the other tiscali address so there is still an issue with this.

Is this a PN or tiscali issue? If Plusnet can it be looked at please.

Sod's law, just tried it again to get the exact message and it went through! Must have tried over a dozen times in the last hour before....so this is just for info at PN Towers as there seems to be intermittent issues with Tiscali as I have issues with Tiscali addresses before

[#5]

@kjpetrie, @lyndonp, as far as I'm aware this error "domain has no delivery address (DNS MX or A record)" suggests an issue with the receiving domain, so if you're trying to send an email to a Tiscali address, then I'd recommend (somehow) asking the recipient to call their provider, which I believe is likely going to be TalkTalk. 

[#6]

Thanks Gandalf. Fortunately one of the two people has a gmail address so I can get them to report it.Will be the good ol' dog and bone for the other person!

[#7]

Ah nice! 

No problem, let me know if you need any more help. 

[#8]

I doubt they don't know. This fault will block all incoming mail for the whole domain every time it occurs. That it seems to occur quite often suggests TT have a real problem with their name servers or are not managing them properly.

Their domain is currently up but it was down when I tried this morning. I even checked with Nominet and their registrar in case they hadn't paid the bill and the domain had expired! It hadn't, of course.

[#9]

That might not be the case at all. 

For example, if you had a Plusnet email address anything@username.plus.com, then the account of the username was destroyed, then you'd get that same error, but anything@username2.plus.com would still work. 

[#10]

Look more closely at the bounce message. It doesn't say the user is unknown. It says there is no MX or A record for the domain. That means as the TTL expires the domain will progressively vanish from routeable domains on the Internet. I checked with dig and it returned no answer.

If a user is deleted their server (not yours) would bounce the message and there'd be no mention of DNS. If the domain can't be routed no mail can reach their servers, so they'd see the incoming mail drop off as DNS servers around the Internet reached TTL and more and more sending MTAs cannot find where to send it.

I initially found it hard to believe and assumed there must be some strange misconfiguration on PN's name servers causing them to fail to find this one domain, but then I found asking other public name severs also couldn't find it and realised the problem is with the domain itself.

[#11]

All I can go on is my experience that I’ve seen the same error for times where a particular email address off a domain is destroyed, but the domain remains intact and working for other email addresses.

What you’ve said seems to make sense to me though but honestly I don’t know enough to comment further.