The Malaysia Email Hosting Blog

smtp.dove.com?

girl@door.com?

More pictures from Gürbüz Doğan Ekşioğlu

My friend hosted their mail server in their own premises. Their in-house mail servers are connected to two fixed-IP Internet Connection. Since they have one one Mail Exchange server, setting up two MX records using the two different IP addresses might not help in this case.

The key thing for a round-robin DNS is where loads are shared. The load are distributed among the first and second (or more) servers, randomly- without checking if any of them are down!

I do come across a MX backup features by Zoneedit. It has a workaround for this. It is a subscription based service though! Check this out http://www.zoneedit.com/doc/faq.html#faq42

UUEncoded attachments appear as garbled text

Some attachments appear as garbled text in your Outlook or Outlook Express. It usually begins with “begin 666″ and followed by chunk of encrypted messages in the message body.

Most email clients or webmail support UUEncoded attachments. Decoding is done automatically. Yet, for some reason, the decoding was prevented and this causes the problem.

Try to check if any of the senders or the recepients are using Unix machines, or if the email was handled by command prompt. Also, check to make sure the email clients or the web browsers used to launch the Webmail are not having problem.

Hyperspin has performed the uptime monitoring to 10 selected web hosting companies in Malaysia since September 2008. Each web server is tested for its uptime every 15 mins from at least 3 monitoring stations from different physical location.

The following report shows the uptime in percentage, total outage and total downtime. The measurement is able to reflect how reliable is a web host in Malaysia.

Thanks to Hyperspin’s monitoring services, a total of more than 15 business email hosting companies in Malaysia was chosen to put on real test- How reliable is their email services? Both incoming and outgoing email servers are tested every 15 minutes since December 2007. The review reveals the uptime of each mail servers and every outage are recorded together with the downtime duration.

Recently, we have decided to include the total downtime in hour & minute format, to better reflect the performance of each company instead of using percentage. Perhaps, it is clearer to see the pain of not able to access your email this way :)

Malaysia Email Hosting Review

For those who has referred to this email report, you might also want to consider the following measurement before making a decision:

1. Do they have enough bandwidth and hardware resources to cater for total number of email users they have? Again, those offering unlimited mailbox might have a problem with this.

2. Your email service is not one, but a combination of various services and applications including POP, SMTP, IMAP, Webmail, Email Control Panel, Mobile Access, Mail Exchange, DNS, Spam & Virus filtering, etc. Features, software upgrade, bug fix, check them out!

3. Yes, domain name. Lost it means you lost your email. Make sure someone is taking care of it including renewal and updating of WHOIS information.

4. Those web hosting package bundling with email is not good. Email hosting is not free gift, why bundling it and make it less important when the fact is, clients use their email more often that the web! What happens if your web hosting expire and your email services will be terminated as well? Email and web are completely two different services!

5. Some email diagnose or test… This can be techy but it is not that difficult at all. Check if they have Reverse DNS corretly configured? Minimun two MX records? Geographically dispersed network? Blacklist?…

Need help on email diagnose?

Need a review on web hosting too?

This email verification tool actually connects to the mail server and checks whether the mailbox exists or not.

Verify email address

The useful dig tools comes so handy with every Linux distribution, but it can not be found in a Windows machine. Dig, allows you to find out the Zone info such as MX, A, CNAME behind your domain name. You can use the Web-based dig command even when you don’t have a Linux box. Check this out GeekTools

Dig DNS Interface

“The Jaring IDC Network has been experiencing several Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the recent weeks. The probable reasons for these attacks were likely to be targeted to several political-related servers hosted within Jaring Network.”

It is easy to say that Jaring data centre or Streamyx broadband connection is down and causes your email problem. Isn’t that email service provider should be the best person to decide which is the best data centre for their customers?

What’s your story? Share with us by posting it as comment below.

Streamyx broadband or TMNet dial up Internet services come with free email services. It would be a nightmare if you start using it. The following are problems that you are most likely encountered with. Check them out if you are one of the xxx@streamyx.com or xxx@tm.net.my!

The not-so-friendly webmail from Streamyx

- Can not retrieve your email with a timeout error
- Your friend sent you an email, but you never receive it
- You can’t use your email when you are overseas
- You sent an email but was marked as Spam
- You need some setup guide but no luck with TM’s support
- TM’s Webmail is not easy to use

What is the solution?

It is easy to say, ’stop using them’. But you are afraid of losing your sales leads, or an important email from your love one.

1. Sign up a free Gmail account.

2. Write to TM at help@tm.com.my (by luck). Tell them to forward any incoming email to your TM or Streamyx email to your Gmail account. I prefer you get this in a proper letter and fax to them (Call 100 to find out their latest fax number).

3. Login to Gmail. Go to Settings > Account > Add another email address you own. This creates a new identity in your Gmail. When you compose a new message in Gmail, you can choose this newly created identity and make it looks like you are sending your email from TM or Streamyx.

For Corporate Users:

Sign up a domain name, and host your email services than using Streamyx!

1. Get yourself an alternate broadband. We have tried Celcom wireless router, not too bad especially when Streamyx is having problem. Check out the latest wireless broadband offer from Digi too!

2. Who knows, it might be some hardware failure? We used to run this very simple test- Disconnecting all PCs connecting via LAN, and connect just one PC directly to your Router. The router connects to your whatever broadband connection. In this way, you can perform a quick one-to-one test.

3. Could it be a DNS problems? By default, your router are configured with two DNS addresses, provided by your Internet Service Provider. Add third & forth DNS addresses by following the instructions on www.OpenDNS.org.

4. If download of email messages using Outlook or Outlook Express is slow, you can try to go into your Webmail and see if you can remove any huge email to make download faster.

5. Try Mailreader, as a temporarily solution to access your mailbox. Go to http://www.mailreader.com. Enter your email address as username and your POP/Incoming Mail Server Address as Mail Server. First time users need to go through some extra settings.

6. Quick check, make sure none of you are using smtp-proxy.tm.net.my in any setting under your email client such as Outlook or Outlook Express. If yes, ask your email service provider for your SMTP server address that didnt run on Port 25. Replace it.

7. This sounds silly, but who cares. Use Firefox web browser than Internet Explore (IE). You can download it here http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html. It loads your webmail faster.

8. The last killing resort, forward a copy of your email to your Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc. I have done this too, to make sure when things go wrong, I have a place to get a copy of my email too, free of charge. The forwarding setting can be done in your Webmail (Settings> Incoming Mail> Forwarding). Make sure you have checked ‘keep a copy of message after forward…’.

“We have encountered some problem with receiving email. We have 5 users here, one of the users cannot receive selected email especially which sent from Vietnam. Pls help to solve this problem asap. TQ”

An example of a typical technical support request I have received from my customers. If this is not finding a needle in the sea, it is close :)

1. ‘One out of 5 users’, good sign to show that the mail server is working. Reason, if a mail server is down, it will affect all 5 users than just one.

2. Oh ya, since she mentioned about the word ‘receive selected email’, this further narrow down the mail server to the Incoming mail server or POP3 server only, instead of Outgoing mail server or SMTP server.

3. ‘…selected email especially which sent from Vietnam’. Hmm, this can be a wee bit tough. We need to know what are those email addresses? From there, we can tell if the Sender email address is bad, or at least to figure out some hint from the Sender’s mail server.

4. ‘…one of the users’. This is another one, we need to know exactly who are this user? Having the email address of this user with problem, allow us to check his/her Spam box to find any trapped email, or to check if there are any unaware forwarding rules, filtering rules or even a black list related to Sender email address.

5. Is the user using Webmail, or any email client such as Outlook or Outlook Express? This is important to us!

6. Is sender getting any Returned Mail. It has useful information to tell where goes wrong.

7. Vietnam, thanks. This is somehow useful, thanks :)

8. ‘Pls help to solve this problem asap’. We would love to help diving into the sea and fight with the great white shark to get the needle for you. See, every email problem can be solved, so don’t worry. We just need some info from you and some passion and patience from us, that is about it :)

Customer told me their email was lost. Tracking down the error is not a mission impossible. In fact, email servers are well designed to debug and tell you where goes wrong- a lot better than your car engine, which never tell you where is the cracking sounds comes from.

‘MAILER-DAEMON (Mail Delivery System)…’

Never ignore any message from the above sender. The message has the crucial information about the error, and in most case, it provides your technical support team a way to debug and rectify the problem.

Post your error message here, I will try to help :)

Clients who setup your own email server using Microsoft Exchange or Domino mail server, should check if your Reverse DNS is properly setup. Find out what is the fixed IP address of your mail server. Enter the IP address in http://postmaster.aol.com/tools/rdns.html.

DNS Check

If the result returned no valid hostname of your mail server, please inform the service provider of your IP address to request this setup to be done. Without this, outgoing email from your mail server can be marked as Spam as your IP address is not resolving to a valid hostname.

“When you register a domain name with a domain registrar, you usually become responsible for that Forward DNS domain. In DNS terms, the domain is delegated to you. However, you are not also responsible for your reverse records. Your Reverse DNS records are still most likely to be the responsibility of your hosting facility or ISP. To make changed to your Reverse DNS PTR records, you must contact the company where you get your IP addresses from, usually a hosting facility or an ISP.”

Extracted from http://www.tech-faq.com/reverse-dns.shtml

I know this is confusing. There are few ways to access your email, POP3 or Webmail, and the not so common IMAP method.

To use POP3 method, you can use Outlook Express or Outlook. Yes, you need to do some setting before you can use. The emails are downloaded to your PC (through this setting can be overridden too).

Webmail method is easier. Gmail is one of them. In quick, your access to your mailbox is the same as like you are browsing a website.

Different methods use different port. What is port? Your broadband or Internet connection connects you and the servers via different port. We used to say a connection is down. But what users are not aware is, they didn’t mention what port is down.

In the case where your Webmail is down, you can try POP3. There is a convenient Web-based POP3 service which you can use when your Webmail is down, check out www.Mailreader.com

This is the second times I was asked by our customers why they do not get a Read Receipt from their recipient. To confuse the matter even further, they have also checked the Deliver Receipt option too in their Microsoft Outlook.

Read receipt feature found in Outlook Express

This is my reply:

“Apparently, you have checked both the Deliver & Read Receipt features when sending out your message. I must admit, they are obsolete and can be confusing sometimes. This is the reason why you can’t find the same features in Gmail, and in our Webmail as well.

A Deliver Receipt give the sense to sender that your email has reached the mailbox of your recipient. But, in actual fact, it is not. It arguely means the email reached the recipient’s mail server, and thing can still go wrong. To further confuse the situation, not all server will trigger a Deliver Receipt, again this is not a full proof features.

The Read Receipt is more or less having the same problem. Your recipient will be prompted to send a Read Receipt when they open your email. But this happen to Outlook and some email clients only, not on those with Gmail or many of other webmail users. Also, Outlook client can manually turn off this features and you will never know if they have read the message.

I am sorry to say that, I would suggest you to not using the two features.

Instead, if a message is not delivered, you should get a returned mail. Without a returned mail, your email should go through and reach your recipient’s mail server. Assuming no problem on their mail server, your recipient should most probably receive your message.”

I was talking to one of our customer of email hosting today. Apparently, she can’t receive any email to her mailbox because of accidentally turned off the ‘Save a copy after forwarding’. The mailbox supposes to forward all email received, and save a copy.

She tried without any luck after I have fixed the problem for her. That is when she asked me again and I tried, it works smoothly. Couldn’t believe it, she tried again and this time everything works fine.

‘Can I have a picture of you?’ She asked

Astonished at first, but I am soon to find out that she teasingly want to have my picture put on their PCs to serve as ‘門神’. Ancient Chinese way of protecting the safety of home.

門神是中國住宅和佛教道教寺廟大門處的神像，亦見於朝鮮、越南，主要貼在大門或後門，佛教道教寺廟也會在山門處設有門神塑像。門神是木版年畫的主要題材之一。民間傳說最廣的是左右門分別貼的是秦瓊與敬德（尉遲恭），單門則貼的是魏徵或是鍾馗。

DNSstuff helps you to configure, monitor and fix problems with your domain and email. This health check tools provide insight into your email hosting server with more than 100 tests. Enter your domain name to run the health check now!

Your email hosting can not work without DNS. The Mail Exchange (MX) records defined in the Zone file inside your DNS server tell where your email should go to. Usually, there are two DNS servers where one serves as backup. For those mission critical one, it is not surprised to see more than two nameservers been used.

Even wonder why your email or your friend’s email been marked as Spam? Apparently, your mail server has marked it as Spam and moved them from your Inbox to the Spam Box, or simply add the line [SPAM] in front of the subject of your email.

Of course, you can safelist/whitelist that particular email address so that it will not be marked as Spam in future. But, this does not solve the problem forever, and it works to your mail server only.

To know why, check the header of the Spamm’ed mail. In Outlook Express, right click on the email and view the Message Properties. Find the line which contains the score of your Spam. Usually, anything more than 6 are marked as Spam. Higher marks means this email do not pass most of the Spam tests.

If you are keen on what test the email failed, check this out

No doubt, both email and web hosting services need a domain name to work properly. Your broadband and web hosting service providers told you that the email services are freebies. It is bundled together and require less attention than the product they are selling!

Yet, many of us are spending more time emailing than visiting our own corporate website!

Technically speaking, email and web hosting are two completely different services, except that both of them share the same DNS servers. DNS servers host zone file that contains pointing information for both email and web requests.

This means, you can host your email with one service provider while web hosting with another.

If you have 10 questions to be included in your email, send out one at a time. Never start writing the rest 9 emails until you hear reply to your first message. Keep them short always! Never send out all 10 questions in one email.

POP

Best when you will be primarily accessing your email from a single location, like your office or home. When you leave your office or home, you can still access your email from a web browser.

Messages are downloaded to your computer, so you don’tneed to worry about exceeding the size of your mailbox.

When accessing your email account through a web browser, you may not see previous messages that were downloaded to your desktop email client.

IMAP

Best when you will be accessing your email from multiple locations.

Allows you to create portable folders. These folders will appear in each email client you use to access your account. Your account will look the same at work, at home, and at your friend’s house.

Because your email messages are stored on the server, you must monitor your mailbox size and delete messages to avoid exceeding your mailbox size.

Gmail just announced the unique new features, which expect to solve the problem of forget-to-logout, especially when you using public computers.

One need not to be unsured again! You can check your status from your Gmail, and logout any session if you want. How I wish I have one for my mum for her kettle, so we won’t have to turn back half way everytime when we are going somewhere.

You are using email clients such as Outlook or Outlook Express. Your notebook is not with you, and you have some old email to retrieve from your Webmail. The default setting in Outlook Express download all messages from the incoming mail server and remove them from server. That means, it leave no copy of messages in the server. If, you have huge space and you might run into some similiar case above, check ‘Leave a copy…’. It can help!

Just one thing, keeping too many email in your email server, might slow down your Outlook Express. Everytime when you download the message from the server, it takes some little longer time to initiate.

You have something to discuss, but your team members are scattered in different locations, working on different timezone… One good thing I like about discussion through email is, a loose questions get the feedback from those who has time for a quick reply. This can in fact, save time in face-to-face meeting, yet proven to be more productive. For sure, this might not work in all cases, especially if the team members are not used to this. This is an culture to nurture.

The one and only reason - this can only happen when you have lost the ownership of your domain name (the address after ‘@’). Therefore, remember to renew your domain name.

If you are using Free webmail service such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail. Theoretically, you have no rights to their domain name, you can be removed from owning any mailbox on violation of their terms.

TM, in their official press release described the act to block all 3rd party as one of the step to fight Spam. Following this, most of the companies in Malaysia who is using Streamyx broadband are affected after switching to smtp-proxy.tm.net.my. Problem including email delay and lost.

One of the latest updates I have received is, email delivered / delayed through smtp-proxy.tm.net.my is also marked as Spam by many major free email service provider including Yahoo Mail!

For those who wish to change to new corporate-branded email address, but still wish to receive a copy of email sent to your jaring mailbox, you can write officially and fax to Jaring, together with your request printed on your letterhead. I have done once, and they responce and it works! Just to share, I am not too sure if are still doing this for their users?

TM recently blocked all external SMTP except their own has forced everyone to switch and start using their SMTP. They claimed that this is one way for them to flight against Spam.

I am not sure to what extend this can help flighting Spam, but it has becoming a bottleneck now. The TM new rules block only port 25. Therefore, Spammer can still change their SMTP to different port and continue the so-called spamming activities.

But, true is - TM’s SMTP was no longer able to handle the increasing load of email delivering requests. Email delay problem occurs from 5 hours to a day.

Check your SMTP, if it points to smtp-proxy.tm.net.my, then you might want to consider printing out your email and send by Post, it could anytime faster :)

1. Make sure your mailbox space can cope with this. When come to estimating the storage space you should have at least, do include days when you don’t access your email, especially during your holidays.

2. Handling your email become a nightmare when averagely you have at least more than 100 emails a day. Email clients or webmail without Conversation view can be a setback now. Slow webmail can cause serious problem too! Keyboard shortcut of email clients can move you further with extreme increase of email loads!

3. Reducing your email. This is the hard part! Online business is about Testing. New marketing plan and features on your website, are introduced in a faster pace. Testing means you are learning everyday. Without sharing of email, this can be a problem.