IP addresses to specify in SPF record

Could anyone confirm the IP addresses which need to be specified in the SPF record?

My domain name is europlayers.com and from what I can see the mail server that I use to send emails is this one smg03.internetmailserver.net (64.79.170.152). Is this correct? If so, will it always be the same ip address or can it change in the future?

I'm a bit surprised that DiscountASP doesn't make it easier to set the SPF record.

Thanks,

Anthony

 

It can change in the future.

There are way too many variables (like the IP changing as mentioned above). The only way to make it "easier" would be to impose a default spf record on domains and we do not want to do that. Anything beyond that becomes exponentially more complicated to automate. spf is easy to get wrong, and difficult to troubleshoot when it is. If you don't have a compelling reason to use it, I would recommend that you do not.

If you do need an spf record, you might want to consider using the gateway server names (e.g. smg03.internetmailserver.net) rather than the IPs. The names will not change.

 

Thanks for your reply

Yes I understand it's tricky but a fairly large number of mail servers are rejecting emails from my website (ie through Discountasp) because there is no SPF record and therefore treat my emails as spam.

Basically my goal is to make sure that my emails get through. Do you have any suggestions?

 

Email servers bouncing messages due to lack of SPF? That's not too clever, is it. You would have to be kind of...hmm, how do I put this delicately...stupid to run a mail server like that.

Anyway, if you are only concerned with having an SPF record for the sake of compliance to servers that require it, the safest thing to do would be to use a record that says all mail from the domain is valid:

"v=spf1 +all"

or

"v=spf1 ?all"​

Those are valid SPF records but they don't specify any source servers so the target server should never reject any mail from your domain.

That kind of defeats the purpose of SPF, but I'm not really convinced that SPF is having much of a positive effect anyway.

 

SPF = really bad idea nobody uses.

 

Well apparently someone is using it if mail is being rejected.

Though again, any mail server is rejecting messages for lack of an SPF record is either managed by rabid anti-spam zealots who don't really care about the users, or zoo monkeys.

Just saying.

 

I think SPF records can actually be a good thing to use if handled correctly, like anything really. It's an advanced move, and if you're not 100% sure of what you're doing, you're not going to be able to either troubleshoot it or set it up to do exactly what you want. Again, it's a useful tool in the right hands.

It can help you against spammers and spam filters, but if a host is requiring domains to have an SPF filter to get through, then it's a dumb move as a lot of the domains out there do not have SPF records due to the difficulty in the set up of these.

I've used them, but it wasn't something pretty and trust me, can be frustrating sometimes