Change the Hop Count limit

This article applies to:

• Trustwave MailMarshal (SEG)

Question:

• How do I change the allowed Hop Count value in MailMarshal SMTP?
• Log message: Hop count limit exceeded.
• Receiver log shows messages to local domains being refused with "554 Too many hops"

Background:

By default MailMarshal enforces a SMTP hop count limit of 25 hops. Any message that has more than 25 Received: entries in the headers is suspected of being looped between servers.

Before changing the limit, examine email headers and routing to verify that the large number of hops is legitimate.

Procedure:

Warning: Using the Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Trustwave cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Make sure that you back up your Registry prior to making any changes.

To change the hop count limit:

1. On the Array Manager, edit the Registry (10.X: use Advanced Settings in the Management Console)
2. Navigate to the SEG Receiver key:
   • In version 8.X: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Trustwave\Secure Email Gateway\Default\Receiver
   • 10.X: value names have the prefix Receiver. (Receiver dot).
   • For full details of the location for each product version, see article Q10832.

Data Type = DWORD
Value Name = MaxHopCount
Value (Decimal) = the required number of hops

3. To apply this change:

   1. Restart the Array Manager service.
   2. Commit configuration changes and verify that each email processing server shows configuration current.
   3. Restart the MailMarshal Controller service on each email processing server (this step also restarts the email processing services).

Notes:

The Default part of the Registry path could also be Default(1) or similar.