SMTP Monitoring with NodePing

2023/08/22 by Leave a comment

In the world of email communication, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) plays a crucial role in ensuring the seamless delivery of messages. However, like any other technology, SMTP is not immune to issues that can disrupt email flow and affect business operations. To maintain a healthy and reliable email infrastructure, it is essential to monitor SMTP servers continuously. In this blog post, we will explore how NodePing can be used to monitor for SMTP functionality, packet loss, blacklisting, deferred queues, and MX/SPF records.

NodePing is a versatile and powerful server monitoring service that allows businesses to monitor their infrastructure’s performance and uptime. With its extensive range of monitoring checks, NodePing provides an excellent solution for monitoring SMTP servers and ensuring they are operating optimally.

Monitoring SMTP Functionality

Verifying the functionality of your incoming SMTP server is crucial to ensure that it can receive emails without any hiccups. NodePing’s SMTP check allows you to periodically test your SMTP server by trying to send a test email to a designated email address. If the test email is accepted, it indicates that your SMTP server is functioning correctly. In case of failures, like timeouts or server errors, NodePing will promptly alert you, enabling you to troubleshoot and rectify the issues.

Monitoring Packet Loss

Packet loss can severely impact the performance of your SMTP server and lead to email delivery delays or failures. NodePing’s ICMP PING check is a valuable tool to monitor packet loss and routing issues to to your SMTP server. By regularly performing ping tests, you can assess packet loss trends and determine whether network-related issues are affecting your email delivery. If a failure is seen, NodePing automated diagnostics will send you MTR results so you can quickly troubleshoot where the issue originates. Addressing packet loss problems promptly will lead to a smoother email experience for your users.

Monitoring SMTP Blacklisting

Blacklisting can be detrimental to email delivery, as it prevents messages from reaching their intended recipients. NodePing’s RBL check allows you to monitor your SMTP server’s IP addresses against popular DNS-based blacklists (RBLs) such as Spamhaus and Barracuda. By configuring blacklisting checks at regular intervals, you can quickly identify if your server’s IP addresses have been blacklisted, enabling you to take immediate action to resolve the issue and maintain a good sender reputation.

Monitoring Deferred Queues

When your SMTP server is unable to deliver emails to the recipient’s mailbox immediately, it sits in the deferred queue. If emails in your deferred queues are piling up, you likely have a delivery issue. NodePing’s PUSH check can watch your deferred queues and send you notifications if they rise above what you’re comfortable with; allowing you to investigate and resolve the underlying problems before they escalate.

Monitoring MX Records

MX (Mail Exchange) DNS records play a crucial role in email delivery by specifying the mail servers responsible for receiving emails for a domain. NodePing’s DNS check allows you to monitor the MX records of your domain to ensure they are correctly configured and that your DNS servers are responding with those records properly. Regular checks of MX records help you keep incoming mail flowing.

Monitoring SPF Record

Your SPF record is actually a TXT DNS record that specifies which servers are allowed to send email from your domain. If that record is missing, compromised, or your DNS servers aren’t responding, sending email may be blocked or delayed. NodePing’s DNS check will make sure your SPF record is available and hasn’t been hacked. That will keep your outgoing mail flowing.

In conclusion, email monitoring is essential to ensure the reliability and efficiency of your message communications. NodePing provides a comprehensive suite of checks that empower you to monitor for blacklisting, SMTP functionality, packet loss, deferred queues, along with MX and SPF records. By leveraging NodePing’s monitoring capabilities, you can proactively identify and address issues affecting your SMTP server’s availability and performance, leading to better email deliverability and improved customer satisfaction.

Remember, a robust email infrastructure is the backbone of modern businesses, and investing in reliable monitoring tools like NodePing with automated diagnostics is a step towards a smoother and more efficient communication system.

Start monitoring your SMTP servers with NodePing today by signing up for our free, 15-day trial and stay one step ahead of any potential email delivery challenges!

Filed under DNS, Email, Monitoring, PING, SMTP, uptime Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

RBL Monitoring

2013/01/15 by Leave a comment

What better way to top off our email monitoring enhancements than with a new check type! We’re happy to introduce our RBL check.

RBL, or DNSBL, stands for “Real-time Black List,” and is used to publish the addresses of computers or networks linked to spamming, malware, or other abuses which system administrators may want to block from accessing their networks.

There are hundreds of RBLs in existence, which use a wide array of criteria for listing and delisting of addresses. These may include listing the addresses of zombie computers or other machines being used to send spam, listing the addresses of ISPs who willingly host spammers, or listing addresses which have sent spam to a honeypot system.

If the IP addresses of your servers appear on these RBLs, there’s a good chance you’ll have difficulty interacting with networks that subscribe to these RBLs. For instance, if your SMTP server is listed, you’ll likely be unable to send email to the systems that use the RBL you are listed on.

You can use our new RBL check to ensure that your servers aren’t listed and to receive notifications if they do get listed, allowing you to quickly take steps to remove your addresses from those RBLs. You can find more details about which RBLs we check and how to set them up in our RBL Check documentation.

Adding RBL checking to our already robust email monitoring checks for SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4 will help you sleep at night knowing that email is flowing as it should be.

RBL monitoring checks are available to all NodePing accounts. If you don’t have an account yet, you can sign up for your free 15-day trial of our server monitoring service.

Filed under Email, Monitoring, NodePing Updates, RBL, SMTP Tagged with , , , ,

SMTP Check Enhancements

2013/01/02 by Leave a comment

We’ve rolled out some important enhancements to our SMTP check that will help ensure your email server is running as it should be.

Added enhancements include:

  • Non-standard ports
  • SSL/TLS support including certificate verification and expiration warning
  • STARTTLS support
  • AUTH with support for PLAIN, LOGIN, and CRAM-MD5
  • Mail acceptance verification including open relay notification

The SMTP check will now not only verify that your email server is running but can also optionally check to see if your server is an open relay or properly accepting mail for a particular email address.

The new open relay functionality will test to see if your mail server will accept mail for an address that should not be allowed. If your server is an open relay, we will send you a notification.

It’s also important to verify that your email server is not rejecting mail that it should be accepting. There are many reasons an SMTP server may reject email. The configuration may have changed or a particular mailbox may be over its quota. This enhancement verifies that your server will accept messages to an email address of your choice and send you a notification if it is rejected.

We’ve added extensive SSL/TLS support including STARTTLS as well as certificate verification and certificate expiration warnings. Simply set how many days in advance of the expiration you would like to be notified and we’ll send you an alert, giving you time to renew and install your new certificates.

The new optional AUTH support allows you to verify that users can log in and send mail using industry standard PLAIN, LOGIN, and CRAM-MD5 AUTH mechanisms.

You can find more information about our new SMTP check enhancements in our documentation.

These enhancements are available now to all NodePing customers. If you don’t currently have an account, please sign up for our free 15 day trial.

Filed under Monitoring, NodePing Updates, SMTP, SSL Tagged with , , , ,