Zoneedit forwarding too slow for redundancy plan?

[george]

thanks, spooon. I'll check it out.

a good, free forwarding service would work, too, if there are any out there.

[george]

Follow-up: It looks like the google service is just in beta and targeted toward specific organizations. I applied online, and they may or may not get back to me. I'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I'd still welcome any suggestions!

[Shelded]

Zoneedit seems to use some sort of rolling outage method to swap servers and IPs, if you check the DNS on your domain there you will see your two servers taking turns as the main one or even going offline... who knows what they're doing. But until recently I got along with the slowness.

Anyway, if you try mydomain.com you will get similar features/service there. Meaning, it's occasionally unreliable but it's free, and they do funny things with servers, too.

Using the enom forwarding caused extreme delays too but now it's been quite some time since I tried so maybe it's improved.

If you are desperate you can pay for pobox.com and you will not be disappointed.

It's not much money to bump your Fastmail account up to Enhanced and host the MX there. When FM IMAP goes down my virtual alias there keeps feeding the gmail account I have backing it up. Since you control your domain you can fall back to zoneedit if needed, or back to your registrar. The MX record moves very quickly.

[Shelded]

I have been shopping for years to find suitable replacements for ZE and MD, something charging perhaps $10/year for DNS with mail forwarding, but not yet settled on any which seem to be right. Reliable ZE would be great, but I think if I gave them $10 I would get the same service I do now and be out my $10.

[kastaway]

Originally posted by Shelded
I have been shopping for years to find suitable replacements for ZE and MD

Now I have a real problem, and I'm not seeing a solution:

• I paid a big chunk of change for years of Enhanced service with Fastmail.
• Now I discover that the service is perennially unstable, going down very often, and requires users to have personal redundancy plans.
• But the plans all center around one of two solutions: control the domain MX pointers from ZoneEdit, or forward all email to GMail.
• Obviously, avoiding being indexed by GMail is a prime factor for paying for email in the first place, so let's cross that off for 50% of all FM users. That 50% has been receiving advice to use ZE here, for a long time from a lot of people.
• But now an old-timer is telling us that ZE is not feasible.

This is a problem. Ideas?

[george]

Here is a redacted transcript of my correspondence with zoneedit (they were very quick to reply, within a few hours). It's not exactly encouraging (delays are due to volume, and they don't imply any changes that will fix it):

Response (Grace A) - 11/16/2006 12:36 PM
Dear Sir,

The mails are delayed because the mail server has a lot of mail to process. However, rest assured that all mails will be delivered to the destination address

Customer (xxxxx) - 11/16/2006 09:55 AM
Hello,

I have been using your DNS services for a few years now and they have
been great for the most part. Lately (the past few weeks), however,
I've been seeing lots of delays in mail forwarding, ranging from a
few minutes to up to 24 hours in some cases. Some messages come
through right away, but others see delays.

The problem is not on the email provider end, because I see the same
exact delays with different email services receiving the same
messages.

The domain is xxxx.net.

Any help or guidance would be most welcome.

Thanks,

xxxxx

[sarf]

Originally posted by kastaway
[*]Now I discover that the service is perennially unstable, going down very often, and requires users to have personal redundancy plans.

Define 'very often' . Are you always prone to such hyperbole?
Your obsession with rubbishing fastmail goes well into 'pathologically disturbed' territory.

[kastaway]

Originally posted by sarf
Define 'very often' .

October 27-November 2.
November 10.
November 10 (again).
November 15.

Maybe we can debate terminology, but it seems a moot point....no? Anyway, my post was about what to do in our situations, without a reliable email provider, if the suggested personal means of shoring up FM, like ZE, are no longer available?

[davidbstanley]

Pesonally I would not use any forwarding service. I used to, but was caught out quite badly. About 18 months ago the company I used (not ZE) had a server problem. The resulting backlog on their servers touk almost a month to clear - they seemed to give a low priority to clearing it. I think using a forwarding service just doubles your risk of failure.

I was one of the lucky ones that was not affected by the recent outage. I have my own domain and a backup Runbox account. My only backup plan is switching MX records - not perfect, but it is the best solution I know. I only needed it once, last year.

[Shelded]

The thread is about ZE and its usability in redundancy. The current delaying problem is not made worse because we use it in redundancy plans. So really we should be asking whether ZE can work for us at all. If the problem passes, it is a moot point, just as FM's problems are moot points.

There are varying aspects of reliability. Some of us look at delivery speed, others look at uptime, others look at some combination. ZE says they will deliver the mail. If your mail can't get through to them they will never know except that they can't make all the connections fast enough. I think they will have to adapt to the volume eventually, and I call that reliable.

Forwarding by itself is not reliable. The best reliability plan I think is one which has you put your own domain MX at Fastmail (or whereever) with a split forward to some other account; if there are prolonged problems at Fastmail you can pull the MX back to your registrar temporarily and use forwarding. You are never stuck.

This holy grail of redundancy is NOT something we can just "set and forget" it will take active response to the threats. If you choose not to fill this role you can delegate your MX to the folks at Everyone.net (a good service!) and settle for fewer features on your email account.

My reasons for wanting a better solution for ZE and MS is not simply for mail forwarding, it's a more complex mix of web forwarding, email, and DNS updates.

[Shelded]

kastaway, I waste my breath once more on you. You make a straw man out of your dichotomy of "control the domain MX pointers from ZoneEdit, or forward all email to GMail." You are looking for the dead dog before it's there.

Maybe it's an honest mistake so here: There are other providers other than Gmail

And if you have your own domain you don't have to use ZE at all, just park the MX at Fastmail. If you are using ZE you are apparently using mailforwarding and that is less reliable than using a split forward from FM to some other mail account.

[kastaway]

OK, it is essential (due to the shortcomings of FM) to have both backup (in case the FM servers are unavailable for login) and redundancy (in case the FM IMAP servers die).

I've got a 2GB Enhanced account. I paid for it. I don't want to pay again. Seems reasonable.

Now, there are precious few free providers with 2GB of space, right? Of those that exist, the hands-down favorite is GMail. However, they index personal emails for advertising purposes, and have no policy on retention. So the favorite free provider is not really possible. Who else provides 2GB? Hotmail, depending on account type. But their reputation is far inferior to GMail. That is a real problem, for online backup.

Now, how to both keep a backup current, and feed a redundant setup? Well, email forwarding is about the only choice. Because redundancy via switching MX addresses guarantees that you will lose hours of email in the next meltdown, as well as guarantee no access to your email store during the week-long outage. So email forwarding. But now we are seeing that the two favorite providers, ZE and MyDomain, are not reliable. That is a real problem, for redundancy.

And that makes it even more difficult to justify spending money on an FM account.

[Terry]

Originally posted by kastaway

And that makes it even more difficult to justify spending money on an FM account. [/b]

What rubbish.....on the last outage all my mail was being forwarded by f/m to my back up mailbox....and now they have an even better redundancy set up.

I suggest you pack up your marbles and go home.....or perhaps we should buy you a mailbox account somewhere else so you can go and annoy them....

[Shelded]

Originally posted by kastaway
[b]Now, there are precious few free providers with 2GB of space, right?

So use a 1GB account. Even Hotmail. Or use an ISP POP account you clean once a week.

Of those that exist, the hands-down favorite is GMail.

Not here it isn't. Can't stand it but it works as a garbage bin.

However, they index personal emails for advertising purposes, and have no policy on retention. So the favorite free provider is not really possible.

You decided for us that we mind the privacy concerns? And why need retention policies on an account you need for emergency use?

... redundancy via switching MX addresses guarantees that you will lose hours of email in the next meltdown,

Enom switches my MX instantly, not hours.

...as well as guarantee no access to your email store during the week-long outage. So email forwarding.

No, that's what you covered in email backup so there's no redundancy problem there.

[kastaway]

Originally posted by Shelded
So use a 1GB account. Even Hotmail. Or use an ISP POP account you clean once a week.

I don't need access to the last week of email, or one GB of email. I need access to *all* my email. If I knew what I would need to search for and locate from a remote location next week, then I could make better money as a fortuneteller, right?

Not here it isn't. Can't stand it but it works as a garbage bin.You decided for us that we mind the privacy concerns? And why need retention policies on an account you need for emergency use?

I think GMail gets very high reviews here, honestly. And I, for one, do mind the privacy concerns, chief among which is *unlimited* retention, (not lack of retention).

Enom switches my MX instantly, not hours.

Sure, minutes *after you realize* there is a problem. Great. For me, this past outage, that was hours after the meltdown was in full swing.

No, that's what you covered in email backup so there's no redundancy problem there.

I'm not sure you get it: I want/need/pay for access to all my email, from any internet-connected terminal in the world, at any time. I pay FM for that. FM takes the money but does not provide that. So as a group, we have been jerry-mandering solutions, but now those solutions, like ZoneEdit forwarding, are dying.

This is a problem, no?