XFOR: MSMI Mistakenly Returns NDR Instead of DR

SYMPTOMS

If you send messages from Microsoft Mail by means of the Microsoft Exchange MS Mail Connector Interchange (MSMI), thus using Microsoft Exchange to address recipients in foreign X.400 systems, you may receive non-delivery reports (NDRs). These NDRs may be followed by a read receipt (RR) or a reply that obviously shows that the message was delivered to the intended recipient.

CAUSE

Various X.400 Message Transfer Agents (MTAs) can be configured to send out Delivery Reports (DRs) for every incoming message. Because MSMI does not differentiate between DRs and NDRs, an NDR will be returned to you.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 4.0. This problem was corrected in the latest Microsoft Exchange Service Pack. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

   S E R V P A C K

MORE INFORMATION

The above described configuration on foreign MTAs might be necessary for User Agents (UAs) residing on various Legacy Systems. Such UAs might not be able to handle the PerRecipientFlag as defined in the X.400 standards. UAs receiving messages that contain a PerRecipientFlag, indicating that a Read Receipt was requested by the originating sender, would not be able to fulfill this request. As a common and valid workaround, some MTAs can be configured to reply to every incoming message destined for local delivery with a DR. These DRs do not contain a P2/P22 content. This missing content is the reason that MSMI mistakenly renders DRs as NDRs.