OOF Exchange 2007 external domain

Firstly, upgrade to Exchange 2007 SP3 and if the problem still exists we will troubleshoot after that.

Installing it is really easy:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982423

ok i cant install it until after hours.  Ill give it a shot.  thanks

Thanks, the reason I say go straight to SP3 without troubleshooting is because quite a few times after hours of troubleshooting I get: " we installed SP3 and it is working now. 0 points for you."

lol, i give the points even with no resolution.  i mean these are unlimited points so who cares ;)

Well to be honest I care. You should only give points for solutions or assisted solutions. This in time will make EE a better place to find answers instead of all the cr4p links that get unearthed when you do a search for an answer to your problem.

i guess so but closing a question is such a PITA that I dont care.  Also I feel like EE has gone downhill in the last couple years anyway. :(  Seem to be a lot of crap "experts".  I also notice that I almost never get more than one person replying to a topic because experts are, i assume, trying to not step on each others toes or something.  So idiot L1 guy makes a stupid useless comment on a topic and no real experts ever even look at it.
ymmv etc et.
ill post back if SP3 doesnt fix it.

ok, fingers crossed.

yea that didnt fix it.  but looks like its the smarthost issue.  Now how do I relay via DNS or through a non idiotic smarthost for just OOF messages?

looks like its sending an OOF.  No report of the smarthost dropping the connection but I've seen Cox just drop emails into space when they dont like them.  I sent tests from a couple different accounts and checked my spam filters on both sides.  Its not getting hung up by anything I have control of.  

Have you tried changing your Internet send Connector to send via DNS instead of a smarthost?

yea they got on a spam list a while back and its always been an issue with some bigger clients that dont accept mail nicely from little sbs guys even with all the rdns, spf etc.  Unfortunately they dont use my spam filtering service or I could relay through there.  
I would like to be able to Just send the OOFs through DNS.  Is that possible?  If a couple OOFs get blackholed or caught in a spam filter its not such a big deal but I cant move the main connector.

Sorry, it doesn't look like you can set a Send Connector to only send OOFs via DNS

You should test the Send Connector sending via DNS out of hours for 15 minutes just to verify that the smarthost is the issue here...

its the smarthost.  Cox.  I set it to send via DNS and the OOFs went out fine.  Changed it back and they stopped again.  Ill contact cox but dont hold out much hope.

Thanks for the update and the points. Good luck with Cox.