Custom domain on Outlook.com cannot consistently receive inbound email

08. November 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Hotmail, Outlook.com · Tags: , ,
Hi,

I set up a custom domain on Outlook.com last week and so far have had very inconsistent results in receiving email to this domain or any of its user accounts.

The MX record is set to that given on domains.live.com and has updated fine, there is a valid SPF record and both have propagated via DNS.

I can receive some mail to the account, but the bulk of my sending tests (and those of others) have failed but the reason I am concerned is that they fail with the message that they cannot connect to the host:

Generating server: AMSPR04MB116.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com
Receiving server: emea01-internal.map.protection.outlook.com (10.174.64.25)
<snip>
11/8/2013 2:05:47 PM - Remote Server at emea01-internal.map.protection.outlook.com (10.174.64.25) returned '550 4.4.7 QUEUE.Expired; message expired'
11/8/2013 1:56:19 PM - Remote Server at emea01-internal.map.protection.outlook.com (10.174.64.25) returned '450 4.7.0 Proxy session setup failed on Frontend with '441 4.4.1 Error encountered while communicating with primary target IP address: "Failed to connect. Winsock error code: 10060, Win32 error code: 10060." Attempted failover to alternate host, but that did not succeed. Either there are no alternate hosts, or delivery failed to all alternate hosts. The last endpoint attempted was 137.117.224.218:25''

Gmail also fails with a similar message:

The recipient server did not accept our requests to connect. Learn more athttp://support.google.com/
[(0) <snip>. [137.117.224.218]:25: Connection timed out]

What is concerning is that that IP address (137.117.224.218) is not associated with the MX record domains.live.com requires for my domain, as that resolves to the following:

9b2ed3d204a2e245bc81251b8df996.pamx1.hotmail.com has address 65.54.188.109
9b2ed3d204a2e245bc81251b8df996.pamx1.hotmail.com has address 65.54.188.78

The other concerning thing is that I cannot send email between Outlook.com accounts on this domain either - I would have thought that that was a purely internal thing and work irregardless but evidentally not!

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Regards
Richard