Does Videotron have a greylist of user IP addresses?

[kirklanduser]

Hello, recently all my emails sent from my home take exactly 6 minutes to reach their destination. It doesn't matter if I use the email client on my PC, my iPad, or even use the Videotron webmail application CourrielWeb, if the email gets sent via my home modem, it gets delayed.

If I move to another residence in another town, emails sent out from that location using my iPad or CourrielWeb pass in seconds. My email account has not changed, only the IP address of the modem at the different residence.

I read today that greylists are used by some internet service providers to slow down, but not totally block, the transmission of emails originating from a source that is under suspicion, but not blacklisted.

Being on an ISP's greylist is reported to cause a fixed transmission delay between 5 and 15 minutes, so it is not surprising that my delays are always exactly 6 minutes.

No one at Videotron support has been able to explain my 6 minute delay, only that a delay of 6 minutes is not unacceptable in a world where email transmission times can vary according to many factors.

So have you ever experienced email transmission symptoms similar to being on a greylist, and if so, how did you resolve your problem?

Thanks for any comments.

[kirklanduser]

Today I telephoned Videotron technical support for the 4th time in 3 weeks and this time I asked about the existence of a greylist at Videotron that I might be on. I was told that the 6 minute delay for my outgoing email is due to my email passing through a central agency not belonging to Videotron which blocks or delays emails based on the reputation of the source IP address.

Videotron Technical support sent me a link to the Cisco TalosIntelligence website. I assume that I got this link because Cisco is a supplier of some of Videotron’s email server infrastructure. According to the Cisco website, my IP address has a status called “neutral”, instead of being either “good” or “bad”.

I opened a ticket at Cisco asking that I be removed from their greylist in case they had one. The Cisco robot, which apparently doesn’t read text written by a human being, automatically answered me saying it could not process my ticket because my "neutral" status is already good enough to allow my emails to go through.

I also learned by discussing my situation on a forum devoted to questions about IP address blacklists, that there does not exist a central facility through which all the emails in the world go through, including the emails that I send to myself. The forum moderator told me that it is Videotron alone, or in collaboration with a partner (like Cisco), who has created a Videotron greylist and Videotron is uniquely responsible for delaying my emails based on my IP address.

How can I appeal my case again to Videotron technical support when the 4 experts at Videotron appear to not know if their own infrastructure has an internal greylist or not?

Has anyone succeeded in getting Videotron to replace their home gateway IP address with a different one?

[kirklanduser · Accepted solution]

[SOLVED]

Today Videotron technical services told me to power off my modem and let the battery drain down to zero during the next two days. That would force a new IP address to be assigned.

Before doing this, I connected my PC directly to my modem and I noted that a new IP address was assigned and that my emails transmitted in seconds. That told me that my old IP address was at fault.

I decided to un-clip the battery pack on the bottom of my Arris TM822 G modem and unplug the 115 VAC power cord.

Then I powered the modem back on and I noticed that my old IP address was restored. Perhaps if I had left my modem un-powered overnight, I would have been assigned a new IP address the next morning.

I chose a faster method. I went into my D-Link router and I cloned the MAC address of my PC to the MAC address of my router.

After rebooting the router, I have a new IP address and my emails transmit in seconds.

My new IP address is also on a blacklist at SORBS and SPAMHAUS, but not on a grey list of Videotron.

So it is the MAC address of the device connected to the modem that affects the value of the IP address that Videotron assigns.