How to Fix Too Many DNS Lookups?
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Last Updated: Reading Time: 2 min
A very common problem that SPF users face on a daily basis is the risk of generating too many DNS lookups that can make them easily exceed the SPF hard limit. This returns an SPF PermError result when DMARC monitoring is enabled and causes email deliverability issues. With industry experts coming up with solutions like SPF flattening services to mitigate this issue, PowerSPF actually delivers its claims and exceeds expectations. Read on to learn how!
Too Many DNS Lookups: Why Does This Happen?
The first thing you should understand is why you end up generating too many DNS lookups in the first place. This is because, no matter what email exchanger solution you use, your service provider adds more mechanisms to your record resulting in more lookups.
For example, if you use Google’s email exchanger, or Gmail, an SPF record like v=spf1 include:[email protected] -all actually generates a total of 4 DNS lookups. Nested includes also initiate more lookups and if you use several third-party vendors to send emails using your domain, you can easily exceed the 10 DNS lookup limit.
Is SPF Flattening the Solution? No!
The answer is no. SPF manual flattening can help you stay under the SPF 10 lookup limit, but it has its own set of limitations and challenges. If you flatten your SPF manually, it is simply replacing the include statements in your SPF record with their corresponding IP addresses to eliminate the need for lookups. This ensures that you don’t end up generating too many DNS lookups in the first place, thereby helping you stay under the 10 lookup SPF limit and avoid permerror . But problems with manual SPF flattening solutions are:
- The SPF record length can be too long (more than 255 characters)
- Your email service provider can change or add to their IP addresses without notifying you
- There is no dashboard to monitor email flow, change or update your domains and mechanisms, and track activities
- You need to constantly make changes to your DNS to update your SPF record
- Your email deliverability might be impacted due to the frequent IP changes
How do these affect you? Well, if your SPF record isn’t updated on the new IP addresses your email service providers are using, every now and then when these IP addresses are used your emails will inevitably fail SPF on the receiver’s side.
Dynamic SPF Flattening to Resolve Too Many DNS Lookups
A smarter solution to bid adieu to DNS lookups error is PowerSPF, your automatic SPF record flattener. PowerSPF is your real-time SPF flattening solution that helps you:
- Easily configure SPF for your domain with just a few clicks
- One-click instant SPF record flattening with a single include statement to enjoy automatic SPF include management
- Always stay under the 10 DNS lookup limit
- Auto-update netblock and scan for changed IP addresses constantly to keep your SPF record up-to-date
- Maintain a user-friendly dashboard wherein you can easily update changes to your policies, add domains and mechanisms, and monitor email flow.
Why rely on SPF compression tools that can provide temporary results with underlying limitations? Optimize your SPF Record and mitigate the SPF hard limit with Automatic SPF today! Sign up for PowerSPF now?
Domain & Email Security Expert at PowerDMARC
Ahona is the Marketing Manager at PowerDMARC, with 5+ years of experience in writing about cybersecurity topics, specializing in domain and email security. Ahona holds a post-graduation degree in Journalism and Communications, solidifying her career in the security sector since 2019.
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