Thank you Jon -- J. Hellenthal The fact that there's a highway to Hell but only a stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.

On Sep 9, 2025, at 09:10, Jon R Kibler via Outages-discussion <outages-discussion@outages.org> wrote:

Hi All, To those asking for additional information yesterday, I was not able to determine more than I had posted. I contacted Mullvad, and I received a great explanation of what was occurring: All traffic on port 53 (so dns) is hijacked and rerouted to the locally ran dns server that each of our vpn servers have.This is to avoid users leaking dns traffic by mistake. This will also break dig +trace. There are some known domains which block vpn servers very aggressively, usps.com is one of them unfortunately. If you enable the option "custom dns" in our Mullvad VPN app (set it to whatever you want) it will remove the dns hijacking and you can run your dns utilities without any blocking/hijacking/interference. This explains everything. I hindsight, I should have guessed this is what was going on, but, hey, yesterday was Monday... so that's my excuse for being so dense.

Thanks for everyone's feedback. Jon K -- Jon R. Kibler On 9/8/2025 at 8:21 PM, "Jon R Kibler via Outages-discussion" wrote:All, Thanks for the replies. I'm kinda at a loss as to where the problem is. I'm using Mullvad's filtered DNS, and even with all filters off, USPS.COM fails to resolve. I have no issues with any other domain. However, the error has now changed from SERVFAIL to TIMEOUT. The only thing I can conclude is that USPS.COM (or, edgekey.net, or akamiaedge.net, ...) is blocking all Mullvad DNS servers for some reason. What is interesting however, is, from the `host tools.usps.com` below, I lookup tools.usps.com and it times out. If I lookup wildcard.usps.com.edgekey.net I get name resolution. $ host tools.usps.com;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached$ host wildcard.usps.com.edgekey.netwildcard.usps.com.edgekey.net is an alias for e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net.e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net has address 23.60.1.81e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net has IPv6 address 2600:1403:c400:138d::1983e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net has IPv6 address 2600:1403:c400:1383::1983 So, it must be something usps.com specific—unless someone else has another idea. Also, when I do a `dig +trace` it hangs forever, then eventually times out after listing the root-servers. If I learn anything interesting from Mullvad I will follow up with a discussions post. Thanks for all the feedback. Jon K

On 9/8/2025 at 5:53 PM, "Andy Ringsmuth via Outages-discussion" wrote:Seems OK for me from Lincoln, Nebraska, as of 2:53 p.m. CDT:

$ host tools.usps.com tools.usps.com is an alias for wildcard.usps.com.edgekey.net. wildcard.usps.com.edgekey.net is an alias for e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net. e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net has address 23.217.76.111 e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net is an alias for e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net.0.1.cn.akamaiedge.net. e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net.0.1.cn.akamaiedge.net has IPv6 address 2600:1406:3a00:783::1983 e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net.0.1.cn.akamaiedge.net has IPv6 address 2600:1406:3a00:791::1983 e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net is an alias for e6531.dsca.akamaiedge.net.0.1.cn.akamaiedge.net. $ host usps.com usps.com has address 56.0.134.100 usps.com mail is handled by 10 mxb-0038fd02.gslb.gpphosted.com. usps.com mail is handled by 10 mxa-0038fd02.gslb.gpphosted.com. ---- Andy Ringsmuth andy@andyring.com

...

On Sep 8, 2025, at 2:18 PM, Jon R Kibler via Outages wrote:

Apparently the USPS is having DNS issues... $ host tools.usps.com

Host tools.usps.com not found: 2(SERVFAIL) $ host usps.com Host usps.com not found: 2(SERVFAIL) Not having issues with any other domain... Jon K

______________________________________________ Outages mailing list outages@outages.org Sign up for an account https://lists.outages.org/accounts/signup/ To subscribe send an email to outages-join@outages.org To unsubscribe send an email to outages-leave@outages.org To contact the list owners outages-owner@outages.org Archives https://lists.outages.org/archives/list/outages@outages.org/

Thank you for using Outages Lists! For post outage discussion, please redirect to outages-discussion@outages.org

______________________________________________ Outages-discussion mailing list outages-discussion@outages.org Sign up for an account https://lists.outages.org/accounts/signup/ To subscribe send an email to outages-discussion-join@outages.org To unsubscribe send an email to outages-discussion-leave@outages.org To contact the list owners outages-owner@outages.org Archives https://lists.outages.org/archives/list/outages-discussion@outages.org/

Thank you for using outages-discussion Lists! ______________________________________________ Outages-discussion mailing list outages-discussion@outages.org Sign up for an account https://lists.outages.org/accounts/signup/ To subscribe send an email to outages-discussion-join@outages.org To unsubscribe send an email to outages-discussion-leave@outages.org To contact the list owners outages-owner@outages.org Archives https://lists.outages.org/archives/list/outages-discussion@outages.org/

Thank you for using outages-discussion Lists! ______________________________________________ Outages-discussion mailing list outages-discussion@outages.org Sign up for an account https://lists.outages.org/accounts/signup/ To subscribe send an email to outages-discussion-join@outages.org To unsubscribe send an email to outages-discussion-leave@outages.org To contact the list owners outages-owner@outages.org Archives https://lists.outages.org/archives/list/outages-discussion@outages.org/

Thank you for using outages-discussion Lists!