Question : OCS Federated Contacts DO NOT show presence?

We are running OCS R1 Standard in an Edge configuration.  I have enabled federation with partner domains and the default clearinghouse domains (AIM, Yahoo, and MSN).  We are able to successfully chat with contacts in the "allow federation partner domains" list, however presence does not work.

Any contact in Communicator that is not from our local domain has the following message in reference to presence.

"Cannot get presence for this contact because the domain can't be reached"

When running the validation wizard the portion concerning partner federation passes and show's the partners access edge IP address.

What would cause this lack of presence?

Answer : OCS Federated Contacts DO NOT show presence?

I have resolved this problem by fixing the Front End properties of the Pool Server.

I had an entry under FQDN on the Federation tab, of the Front End properties which was incorrect.  This option should be BLANK unless you use alternate federation routing.

Since an entry was in this box the Pool server sent all federation IM's to a blackhole.