SPF and PTR - In need of clarification

[criticman]

Alright, I am running Plesk 7.5.4 on RH9. The server is through GoDaddy.

I am managing only 29 domains presently.

After reading through EVERY search result I could find on PTR and SPF, I still have some questions as I found different information in each post.

Let's deal with PTR first.

So, since the NS servers are:
ns1.lonetreehosting.com
ns2.lonetreehosting.com

My understanding is that I should ONLY have PTR records setup for the domain lonetreehosting.com. Is this accurate? This is what I read in several posts. On dnsreport.com, it says:

The IPs of all of your mail server(s) have reverse DNS (PTR) entries. RFC1912 2.1 says you should have a reverse DNS for all your mail servers. It is strongly urged that you have them, as many mailservers will not accept mail from mailservers with no reverse DNS entry.

Basically, right now I have PTR on all of my domains based on something I had read before. Should I go back and remove them from all but lonetreehosting.com?

Also, I have 3 IP addresses - I use one as the main Plesk IP that only has the first ns1 on it AND my company's website. The 2nd IP has ns2 and half of the remaining domains. The 3rd IP has the other half of the remaining domains. Do I need to pick one domain per IP to have a PTR record?

Now for SPF Records

So, for SPF records, I presently tried the following in my DNS setup for one of my domains, Look2Find.com:

v=spf1 a mx ~all

The above is what I was given as output from the SPF Setup wizard (http://www.openspf.org/wizard.html).

Is this correct? It seems to me that it is not correct, and this message in the header from a test message I sent to my GMAIL account seems to confirm my feelings:

Received-SPF: softfail (gmail.com: domain of transitioning [email protected] does not designate 64.202.189.88 as permitted sender)

The above IP in the GMAIL received header is NOT my server IP (any of the three) or my ISP (Comcast Cable) IP. I am not sure where it came from. Does this header response mean the SPF record is not setup properly?

Here is what DNS Report says about the SPF record:

You have an SPF record. This is very good, as it will help prevent spammers from abusing your domain. Your SPF record is:
"v=spf1 a mx ~all" [TTL=86400]

Any input/feedback is more than appreciated. I am tired of some mail getting blocked by ISPs with SPF and PTR checking setup on them and my clients are fed up with it too.

Thanks.

 

[sallyanne]

No one has replied to this thread yet. It would be helpful if someone can confirm whether the string below is okay to add as a general SPF record for Plesk hosted domains:

"v=spf1 a mx ~all"

 

[criticman]

It seems to have worked.

 

[jamesyeeoc]

The IP address "64.202.189.88" belongs to GoDaddy, since your server is thru GoDaddy, you may want to check with them as to why it is being reported (if it's not assigned to you).

PTR records: When you have a PTR per domain, what will happen is that in the email headers, a 'random' domain on your server will appear in the headers, instead of a constant one (your hosting domain). So to prevent this, you will want only a single PTR per server, this being the main hosting domain of the server.

SPF records: That generic one should be fine, I use it as well. Just make sure it has double quotes around it ! Gmail reports:

Received-SPF: pass (gmail.com: domain of [email][email protected][/email] designates xx.yy.zz.aa as permitted sender)

In your case, it may be that GoDaddy is funneling all emails through their SMTP servers, check with them.