Error sending to AOL - Did not receive SMTP greeting from host This document details a problem when sending to AOL.com. Users may receive a delayed message notification saying 'Did not receive SMTP greeting from host'. The same error can also be seen in the domain.mri file for aol.com.

If you are able to send to other domains without a problem then this issue may be due to your firewall blocking or filtering ESMTP commands.

To test for the problem, attempt to telnet to one of the AOL mailservers on port 25.

Determining an AOL.com mail server IP address

• Open a command prompt
• Type 'nslookup' and press Enter
• Type 'set type=mx' and press Enter
• Type 'aol.com' and press Enter
• From the results you will see a number of IP addresses. Select one or two for further testing.

Check the AOL.com greeting from your MailSite server

• Open a command prompt
• Type Telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 25 (replace xxx with an IP address obtained from the nslookup)


• If you see several lines of stars, the problem is likely with your firewall. Check your firewall documentation on how to turn off ESMTP inspections.
• An example of a correct greeting is:
  
  220-rly-xl06.mx.aol.com ESMTP mail_relay_in-xl6.5; Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:46:43
  220-America Online (AOL) and its affiliated companies do not
  220- authorize the use of its proprietary computers and computer
  220- networks to accept, transmit, or distribute unsolicited bulk
  220- e-mail sent from the Internet. Effective immediately: AOL
  220- may no longer accept connections from IP addresses which
  220 have no reverse-DNS (PTR record) assigned.