Answers to common FOPE Bounced Mail Message Questions
This topic contains answers to common questions asked about bounced messages.
**1. ** What does "Relay Access Denied" mean?
Sometimes an e-mail message needs to be transferred or relayed across multiple computers or servers on the Internet to reach its intended destination. For security purposes many computers or servers on the Internet restrict the IP addresses or domains they accept electronic mail messages from. If a computer or server on the Internet refuses to transfer a message, the server creates an error message that is returned to the sender of the refused message.
The most important pieces of information included in bounce messages of this type are the sender and recipient addresses, date of delivery, and the host name or IP address that rejected the message. Some message variation occurs because the default information can be customized by the administrator of the bounced message's mail server.
To resolve bounced-message issues, the administrator of the host that rejected the message must be contacted. This is a result of filtering by the receiving server's protection, not FOPE.
Two examples of bounce messages are shown here:
Example 1:
From: System Administrator
Sent: Day, Month Date, Year Time
To: Sender E-mail Address
Subject: Undeliverable: Subject from the original message
Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.
Subject: Subject from the original message
Sent: MM/DD/YYYY Time
The following recipient(s) could not be reached:
Recipient E-mail Address on MM/DD/YYYY Time
There was a SMTP communication problem with the recipient's e-mail server. Please contact your system administrator.
<Host name="" that="" rejected="" the="" message="" #5.5.0="" SMTP=""; 554="" Recipient="" E-mail="" Address="" >: Relay access denied>
Example 2:
From: MAILER-DAEMON [MAILER-DAEMON]
Sent: Day, Month Date, Year Time
To: Sender E-mail Address
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
This is the Postfix program at host Server that rejected the message.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.
For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.
The Postfix program
<Recipient E-mail="" Address=""> : host Host name that rejected the message [IP address that rejected the message] said: 554 <Recipient E-mail="" Address=""> : Relay access denied (in reply to RCPT TO command)
A complete list of Reply Codes can be found in RFC (Request For Comments) 821, while a complete list of Status Codes can be found in RFC 3463.
**2. ** What does "Delivery Status Notification (Delay)" mean?
When the server that handles incoming electronic mail messages for a recipient is busy or unable to accept messages, the undelivered messages is placed in a queue on the host or server that is being used to deliver these messages. In these cases, a notification is generated to alert the sender of the delay in delivery.
The most important pieces of information included in bounce messages of this type are the sender and recipient addresses, date of delivery, and the name or IP address of the host where the message has been delayed. To resolve this issue, the administrator of the intended recipient mail server must be contacted. This a result of filtering by the receiving server's protection, not FOPE.
Here is an example of this type of notification:
From: Administrator of Host where message is delayed [E-mail Address of Administrator for Host of where message is delayed]
Sent: Day, Month Date, Year Time
To: Sender E-mail Address
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Delay)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE.
Delivery to the following recipients has been delayed.
Recipient Addresses