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I have registered an .au.com domain name with a domain provider here in Australia and have created successfully a Google Apps email account using the domain (Google Apps have confirmed my MX records are correct and I have received test emails from .COM.AU addresses as well as from GMAIL.COM addresses). However, upon opening a Disqus and Twitter account using that email address I'm having difficulty receiving emails from those organisations. This has been a problem that has persisted over the last couple of days.

When I dig rs.au.com on my terminal I receive the following information:

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3-P3 <<>> rs.au.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 58329
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;rs.au.com.         IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
rs.au.com.      300 IN  A   184.169.142.209

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
rs.au.com.      172800  IN  NS  ns-357.awsdns-44.com.
rs.au.com.      172800  IN  NS  ns-642.awsdns-16.net.
rs.au.com.      172800  IN  NS  ns-1434.awsdns-51.org.
rs.au.com.      172800  IN  NS  ns-1581.awsdns-05.co.uk.

;; Query time: 197 msec
;; SERVER: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
;; WHEN: Thu Apr 19 10:07:35 2012
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 180

And when I dig rs.au.com through an EC2 US instance I receive the following information:

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> rs.au.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 4929
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;rs.au.com.         IN  A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
au.com.         180 IN  SOA ns4.au.com. postmaster.mail.au.com. 2012032205 7200 1800 604800 21600

;; Query time: 20 msec
;; SERVER: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
;; WHEN: Thu Apr 19 00:07:42 2012
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 83

Could the problem I'm having with receiving emails from Disqus and Twitter be due to the conflict of the Authority Section as shown above?

Thanks for any help, Ryan

PS - I have checked "Spam" folder and no emails are there.

EDIT (21/04/12):

I still appear to be having some problems with receiving email even after consulting with my domain registrar who state that everything is fine on their end. They ran the following command on their terminal and I received the following reply:

dig ns rs.au.com @ns1.au.com =

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> ns rs.au.com @ns1.au.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 57379
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 4, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;rs.au.com.                     IN      NS

;; ANSWER SECTION:
rs.au.com.              180     IN      NS      ns-1434.awsdns-51.org.
rs.au.com.              180     IN      NS      ns-1581.awsdns-05.co.uk.
rs.au.com.              180     IN      NS      ns-357.awsdns-44.com.
rs.au.com.              180     IN      NS      ns-642.awsdns-16.net.

;; Query time: 4 msec
;; SERVER: 203.55.143.11#53(203.55.143.11)
;; WHEN: Fri Apr 20 08:16:50 2012
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 164

   Both those name servers do not show NXDOMAIN in the status. It could
be the resource record cached in the isp at that end. You can attempt to
re-delegate the name servers again, but if it is a caching issue then
re-delegating may not help. I have also pinged those nameservers and
they are pinging.

I then tried resetting the nameservers and even upon doing that I still have problems with receiving email from Twitter, Akismet (etc).

Any ideas?

rs77
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1 Answers1

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The au.com domain has two nameservers that serve it. One (ns4.au.com) correctly handles your domain. The other (ns1.au.com) does not. I would talk to the folks at au.com if it's been more than a day or two.

From ns1.au.com:

  ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 27330

  ;; QUESTION SECTION:
  ;rs.au.com.                     IN      NS

But from ns4.au.com:

  ;; QUESTION SECTION:
  ;rs.au.com.                     IN      NS

  ;; ANSWER SECTION:
  rs.au.com.              180     IN      NS      ns-357.awsdns-44.com.
  rs.au.com.              180     IN      NS      ns-642.awsdns-16.net.
  rs.au.com.              180     IN      NS      ns-1581.awsdns-05.co.uk.
  rs.au.com.              180     IN      NS      ns-1434.awsdns-51.org.

The issue is the NXDOMAIN, not the different authority.

David Schwartz
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  • Thanks for your help David. I initially asked my registrar about this problem and they said the nameserver settings were correctly pointing to mine. I'll follow them up re: `ns1.au.com`. Will keep you posted. Thanks again! – rs77 Apr 19 '12 at 04:54
  • According to my domain provider there are no problems with the `ns1.au.com` domain pointing to my nameservers (as demonstrated with their correspondence which I've added to my initial post above). I've reset my nameservers and acquired new ones and I still seem to be having the problem. – rs77 Apr 20 '12 at 22:41
  • At least for me, right now, `ns1.au.com` appears to be dead. That's better than it returning nonsense. However, they really need to get their act together. Right now they only have one functional nameserver and it seems like it took them an awfully long time to notice that the other one was returning junk. – David Schwartz Apr 20 '12 at 22:46
  • I'm glad I'm not alone. When I run the same command `dig ns rs.au.com @ns1.au.com =` on my terminal I also get a dead response. How were they able to get a response? I'll go back to them again. Thanks David! – rs77 Apr 20 '12 at 22:59
  • Hi David, my domain registrar still isn't having any issues with receiving a response from `dig ns rs.au.com @ns1.au.com` it appears everybody else is!? They believe the issue is with our DNS provider. They even asked if I could ping their `ns1.au.com` server but when I do I get IP address `218.185.51.135` and subsequently "timeouts" - they state that I should be seeing an IP address of `203.55.143.11`. Why am I getting a different IP address when pinging their `ns1.au.com` server? Is it my DNS??? Thanks for your help! – rs77 Apr 23 '12 at 10:05
  • No, it is not your DNS. It is theirs. If you want proof, do `dig ns1.au.com @203.55.143.11`. You'll get back an IP of `218.185.51.135`. So their own nameserver doesn't believe the nonsense they're telling you and you shouldn't either. – David Schwartz Apr 23 '12 at 20:00
  • The latest response from my domain registrar is: "If you are getting a timeout, it will either be an issue in the zone file that you are holding, or it will be a stale zone file that is cached on the internet, and the bigger the ISP doing the caching the more widespread the issue." Do I contact Amazon, who I use as my server (via Route53), about this issue, or is this an ISP issue? Thanks yet again! – rs77 Apr 28 '12 at 10:05
  • Their nameservers are returning incorrect and inconsistent information for their own zones! Look at the output of `dig ns1.au.com @203.55.143.11`. I can't believe that a registrar has no interest in fixing their own broken zone. Check out their [domain validation report](http://www.dnsvalidation.com/au.com). – David Schwartz Apr 29 '12 at 01:24
  • Thanks again David! I gave my registrar the ultimatum. Last chance, if it's still not fixed am moving elsewhere. Thanks again. I wish I could award you more than just a tick for helping us out! – rs77 Apr 29 '12 at 10:58
  • As an update to this entire saga... the registrar fixed the issues listed on the DNS Validation site, but sadly, I still am not receiving any emails from Twitter to this email account. =( – rs77 May 27 '12 at 08:20
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    As a FINAL update, the emails are now working from Twitter. I guess I just had to wait for everything to propagate. Thanks again for your help David!! – rs77 Jun 09 '12 at 07:06