Much to my dismay, Barracuda Networks doesn’t work very well. If you are having delivery problems with no bouncing, or emails just disappearing into a black hole somewhere this may help you. Summary: email is black holed when filtered through Barracuda Network’s service at barracudaCentral.org.

This site is hosted on a static IP. I need one for many reasons. Our mail is ISP hosted, so they take care of being good email citizens. It’s a thankless job and well worth my monthly ISP subscription.

According to barracudanetworks.org, they black hole mail from my static IP regardless of the fact it’s earthlink email!

Ranting aside, I discovered the nature of the problem using a free web-based email provider.
1. Everything worked fine with the generic web-based email address. Hmmm.
2. So then I used the ISP’s web-based email GUI (while at home) to send an email. Worked fine.
3. Then I used an email client on my laptop at home and get a bounce from Barracuda Networks because my IP address isn’t trusted. Huh? Well, as every email admin knows, my public IP is buried in the email headers.

Right. So, I waste some time figuring out how to notify them. It’s non-obvious and a business tactic that Organized Crime would be proud to use. Because, you know it’s a shame something bad didn’t happen to that email message on its way to one of our customers…. Even though Barracuda isn’t supposed to delete email. Ever.

But the problem still isn’t solved. The email from the friend was being black holed on its way to an Earthlink email address when my static IP is in the headers.

While I understand that it is a messy problem, Barracuda Networks is taking the laziest, most destructive route.

1. Sending email into a black hole. Users start getting the sense email just doesn’t work.
1a. Violating the SMTP standard.

I’m sure the Barracuda equity holders have no ethical problem with this, but they are undermining the Internet’s potential by breaking the SMTP standard regarding undelivered mail.