Michael Brandonisio

Hello,

I have a server that I run as a shared hosting server and host many small web sites for various clients. In an effort to provide better service, I have recently moved all of the accounts to private IP addresses so email will send from the account IP address instead of the primary server IP address. This is a cPanel / WHM server setup.

After doing all this I have checked the reputation of the domains and IP addresses using these tools:

TrustedSource: www.trustedsource.org
BarracudaCentral: www.barracudacentral.org
MailRadar: www.mailradar.com
DNSstuff: www.dnsstuff.com

It all come back neutral and I still have email sent from this server marked as spam or it lands in junk mail folders. The IP addresses are clean, the domain is clean, both neutral reputations.

What can I do to get email sent from my server to not be labeled as SPAM?

I did some research it turns out that just setting up the server and properly configuring it is not enough these days. You need to apply for certification through a 3rd party white listing company. I found this one:

http://www.senderscorecertified.com/about/

And I found this regarding hotmail recipients:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=606426

I’m guessing that if I start with one provider like hotmail and can get email through to their customers by following their rules then that will also help with other SPAM and junk filters. Now the troublesome part.

They all have different requirements. So that means you need to chase entry into each provider from the top down large providers first then smaller ones e.g. hotmail, comcast, earthlink, AOL to name a few. I think this will give me a good start. It will also continue to develop has I move forward from provider to provider.

~~ Updated Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

In my research it turns out that “www.senderscorecertified.com” is more for bulk email providers and not for email servers that are used mostly for one-to-one email. I found these additional resources:

DNS Whitelist – www.dnswl.org
Email Reach – www.emailreach.com

Add your IP to DNS Whitelist and then review their “Other Whitelists” page. There are few more lists that may pertain to you.

Now for the golden email deliver ability troubleshooting service, GEDATS ( I made that up), Email Reach.   Email Reach test systems include over 69 different platforms, which run over 10,000 discrete tests on your email. It is a hosted service and has a 24 hour free LIVE, no restrictions trial. It can be used to test your one-to-one email server or email marketing message. A test creates a report containing Reputation, Content Assessment, Inbox Monitor, and White list Audit. Inbox Monitor will tell you if you email is landing in the SPAM folder or Inbox. Content Assessment is great for email marketing as it puts your message through the major SPAM filters and will tell what is being flagged.

I have not affiliation to any of these web sites. I just knew how much a struggled to get good information on my email server and the 24 hour test gave me what I needed.

~~ Updated Thrusday, December 25rd, 2008

Since adding all of the IP addresses on my shared server to the www.dnswl.org white list, email from this server is now landing in the inbox instead of SPAM for Yahoo and Hotmail. Very cool!

Sincerely,
Mike

Hello,

There may come a time when your DNS server is the authoritative DNS for a client or customer that has secured an IP block from a 3rd party, perhaps for T1 or DSL service. They want to use one of the IP addresses for an email server located in their office and have asked you to setup rDNS or Reverse DNS for the IP address specified. Since the IP address did not come from your ISP you cannot ask them to setup the rDNS for you. You must accept IP delegation and configure your DNS server to give an authoritative response.

Here are 3 links that helped me figure this out:
http://www.dnsstuff.com
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2317.html
http://www.fdcservers.net/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-578.html

I’m going to illustrate this using 10.x.x.x IP address ranges. This setup is for Bind DNS servers. You will be creating a zone for x.x.x.x.in-addr.arpa on your DNS server.

The scenario is that the client secured a new T1 line and wanted to use IP 10.0.142.162 for an email server in their office.

On your DNS server, open a terminal window. Then edited /etc/named.conf and added this to the end:

zone “160/28.142.0.10.in-addr.arpa” {
type master;
file “/var/named/142.0.10.in-addr.arpa.db”;
};

That means that it has been added to the external view section of named.conf

I have to admit that I do not fully understand why some delegations may be looking for zone 160/28.142.0.10.in-addr.arpa and others 142.0.10.in-addr.arpa. Both can contain the IP 10.0.142.162. It may have something to do with this delegation being a /28 giving the client 16 IP addresses with 14 usable starting from 10.0.142.160.

Save your changes then create a new zone DB named /var/named/142.0.10.in-addr.arpa.db

You can do this like this:

touch /var/named/142.0.10.in-addr.arpa.db

Then open /var/named/142.0.10.in-addr.arpa.db and add:

; Zone file for 160/28.142.0.10.in-addr.arpa
$TTL 14400
@      86400    IN      SOA     ns1.yournameserver.net. support.example.com. (
2008092801      ; serial, todays date+todays
14400           ; refresh, seconds
7200            ; retry, seconds
1209600         ; expire, seconds
86400 )         ; minimum, seconds
160/28.142.0.10.in-addr.arpa.         IN      84600   NS      ns1.yournameserver.net.
160/28.142.0.10.in-addr.arpa.         IN      84600   NS      ns2.yournameserver.net.

162.142.0.10.in-addr.arpa.           IN      14400   CNAME   162.160/28.142.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
162.160/28.142.0.10.in-addr.arpa.     IN      14400   PTR     mail.example.com.

Save and restart Bind. You can test your results here:
http://www.dnsstuff.com

Sincerely,
Mike

Hello,

If you are running a web site resource usage and performance can play a big part in your site visitors experience, namely their experience in how long it takes your web site’s pages to load. There are modules called GZip and mod_deflate for Apache web servers that will compress the data requested by a web browser using Zip compression to create a compress stream that is decompressed at the browsers end. This is server wide and effects all web services on the server. The result is less data sent from the server to the browser. This has two huge affects one, it can reduce bandwidth usage by as much as 75% and two, decrease page load times by a factor of 4. Here is some data on this BLOG:

URL: http://mbrando.com

File Size Comparison (in bytes):
Original size: 61964 bytes
Compressed size: 19077 bytes
Savings: 42887 bytes
Percentage saved by
compression: 70.0%
Transfer speed
improvement: 3.2 X

Dial-up Modem 56.0 Kbps – 8.645s vs. 2.661s
DSL/Cable Modem 256.0 Kbps – 1.891s vs. 0.582s

( Above data by: port80software.com )

Here are some links with additional information

GZip works with Apache 1.3x and Apache 2.x.
GZip Site Home
Compressing Web Output Using mod_gzip for Apache 1.3.x and 2.0.x

Apache 2.x comes with a module called mod_deflate.
Apahce 2.x documentation
Compressing Web Content with mod_gzip and mod_deflate

Sincerely,
Mike