My hosting provider has acknowledged a problem at their end. Their message was a masterpiece of uninformative communication: Thank you for contacting Customer Care. The issue you are reporting with respect to your email has been resolved. We recently experienced an issue with our mail servers that affected multiple customers. The issue you reported is a direct result of this. Your affected email account(s) should be functioning properly at this time. We appreciate your patience in this matter. Please contact us again if you have further questions or concerns. Regards, Customer Care -- Bruce Miller, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada bruce [ at ] brmiller [ dot ] ca; (613) 745-1151 In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known. attributed to Thomas Pickering, retired US diplomat, born 1931 >________________________________ > From: Bruce Miller <subscribe [ at ] brmiller [ dot ] ca> >To: Technical mailing ListOCLUG <linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca> >Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 1:10:54 PM >Subject: [OCLUG-Tech] Strange e-mail bounce message > >I have been having strange e-mail reliability problems today. > >I am a Rogers customer. I use a personal domain which is hosted in the USA. It has worked for me with only the rarest hiccoughs for between five and ten years. Today, little mail has got through. One friend has forwarded me a bounce message. It shows that the message was rejected at the hosting service's gateway as "Relay access denied." This baffles me because the whole purpose of using that hosting service is to relay all e-mail addressed to my personal domain, depending on the username, to either rogers.com, gmail.com or both. The failure is not total. Some mail is getting through. > >Can anyone help me to understand further what is happening. > >Precisely because mail to my domain is not getting through normally, please cc any replies to me at rogers at brucemiller1 at rogers.com > >Thanks in advance for any insights. > > >