SPF temperror
The SPF result when a temporary error, usually a DNS timeout or server failure, stopped the check; a later retry may succeed unchanged.
What it means
temperror means the receiver could not finish the check for reasons expected to be transient, almost always DNS: a timeout or a SERVFAIL from one of the servers it had to query. RFC 7208 says a receiver that rejects for this reason should use a temporary 451 reply with enhanced code 4.4.3, so the sender retries.
The cause can sit on either side, in the sender's DNS or the receiver's resolver. Repeated temperrors for one domain often point to an authoritative nameserver that is slow, unreachable or broken for some record types.
Gmail has a related deferral when its DMARC check hits a DNS failure.
Related terms
On this site
Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
- RFC 7208: Sender Policy Framework (SPF), section 2.6.6rfc-editor.org
- RFC 7208: Sender Policy Framework (SPF), section 8.6rfc-editor.org
All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes