Too Many Hops on ironport c350

angfeglandagan · ‎04-10-2008

Hi Guys,

Can someone advise me on what these error message means on ironport ?What was the cause?

Final-Recipient: rfc822;validuser1@domain.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0 (permanent failure)
Remote-MTA: dns; [ironport's ip address]
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 5.1.0 - Unknown address error 554-'Too many hops' (delivery attempts: 0)
Reporting-MTA: dns; ironport.example.com.

thank you so much

Donald Nash · ‎04-10-2008

"Too many hops" means just that: the message has passed through too many mail servers on its way to its destination, and has been bounced to prevent a potential mail loop. This may be due to a mail loop, or it may have other causes. The only way to find out is to analyze the Received: headers of the message.

Erich_ironport · ‎04-10-2008

By default the IronPort "Hop Limit" is 100 hops, so as Don pointed out this is most likely a looping issue.

FYI - Exchange 2000 & 2003 have much lower hop limits and can sometimes trigger in non-looping situations. I believe the Exchange limits were 20 and 30 respectfully based on version.

Basically a "Hop Limit" is an anti-looping error trigger based on counting how many "Recieved:" headers are in the message.

Erich

angfeglandagan · ‎04-11-2008

Hi,

Im using POSTFIX 2.0 as email server...

angfeglandagan · ‎04-11-2008

Postpix is configured to have a load balancing setup.

for example:

virtual ip: 192.168.1.5

physical ip: 192.168.1.7
192.168.1.8

public ip : isp1 = 11x.111.65.xx
isp2 = 202.xx.195.xx

I already configured the firewall rules to point to the ironport all smtp traffic.
then ironport will forward it to POSTPIX.

On the postpix..i configured to relay to Ironport.

I added an mx record for the ironport as the primary mx then the mail server as the secondary.

mx record config
10 - ironport
20 - mailserver

regards,
capt. winters