Clustered Openfire passing packet server-to-server, but why?

I see some odd errors in my Openfire log and I haven’t yet been able to figure out what they mean. See below…

2010.02.18 10:38:16 [org.jivesoftware.openfire.session.LocalOutgoingServerSession.createOutgoingSes sion(LocalOutgoingServerSession.java:258)] Error trying to connect to remote server: markit.partners(DNS lookup: markit.partners:5269)
java.net.SocketTimeoutException: connect timed out

2010.02.18 10:38:16 [org.jivesoftware.openfire.session.LocalOutgoingServerSession.createOutgoingSes sion(LocalOutgoingServerSession.java:258)] Error trying to connect to remote server: partners(DNS lookup: partners:5269)
java.net.UnknownHostException: partners

The JID in the packets I’m sending use 127.0.0.1 as the domain, which is the name of the server as shown in the admin console. I confirmed that this is correct by using Spark to receive messages from my test script (which sends to user@127.0.0.1). Thus, markit.partners is not anywhere in my configuration or the packets I’m sending. This leaves me to assume that somehow Openfire is finding this via DNS. How/why does this occur?

Also, based on the source this means that Openfire is trying to use a server-to-server connection here. Why would it do that if the message ‘to’ field is user@127.0.0.1? I’m running a cluster of two nodes, both which automatically took name 127.0.0.1. My test script sends the messages directly to the IP on one cluster node. So why I’m inclined to assume Openfire is doing a DNS lookup I’m not sure why it would bother to do so. After all, the message was sent directly to a node and the domain in the message matches that node’s name.

Thoughts?

/etc/hosts file entry possibly?

This is not caused by DNS. Someone is sending a packet that has a JID of which the domain value is markit.partners.

A common cause for issues like these is a bug in (client) code that causes a username to be sent where a JID was supposed to be sent. If someone is using the username markit.partners, and the client incorrectly addresses the username instead of the JID (markit.partners instead of markit.partners@127.0.0.1 in your example), you will get messages like the one you described in your log.