Wi-fi and SMTP

Apologies if I'm repeating old questions, or if I should have looked for an FAQ etc. Am rather pushed for time unfortunately.

I have an Apple Mac Powerbook with a wireless card. All works fine at home. When I travel, I often use wi-fi hotspots, but I'm not able to send emails although I can receive them fine.

I'm assuming that it's because my computer doesn't know the details of the relevant SMTP server - is that correct? In a given situation, how can I find these details? I'm about to visit a friend who, like me, has a wireless network at home so I'd like to be able to send emails in the usual way rather than messing around with webmail etc.

Thanks.

Reply to
Alan
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It might be because your ISP will only allow email sending when you are connected to its servers. The work-around is to use web based email. (which you said you didn't like) Many ISPs have gone this route to prevent spamming from its servers. Mine has... SBC.

Reply to
DanR

Alan, I have the same problem when I use my laptop on the road. My home internet provider is Cablevision, and I use Outlook Express to send and receive e-mail. When I am away from home I can receive e-mail but not send it. The way I got around this is to setup a free Google e-mail account which allows you to send and receive e-mail using a POP3 e-mail client. I than configured Outlook Express with two e-mail accounts, "optonline", and "gmail". When I am home I set the "optonline" account as the default, when on the road I sent the "gmail" account as the default.

The gmail web site has instructions to setup the gmail account in Outlook Express and other e-mail clients.

Tony

Reply to
Tony Marsillo

... snip ...

.. snip..

My ISP limits sending emails to when I'm connected via the broadband line in the house ,too.

I have overcome that problem when I'm out and about by installing a mail client that sits on a spare PC at home (I used MailEnable but there will be others available). The PC is always on while I'm away and, because my ISP supplies a static IP addresss, I can send emails to the SMTP service running on the spare PC; in turn, it simply forwards them to my ISP for delivery in the usual way.

Note: this SMTP service is giving me "mail relay" - what the spammers want to use - so as well as a tight firewall, I have a very long username/pssword combination. Interestingly, I was checking the logs in the early days and as well as the usual hackers trying to get onto the mail server, I noticed my ISP trying a whole series of tests to ensure they don't have a mail relay on one of their lines.

Reply to
Ben Clay

Ask your ISP whether they offer access, perhaps using authentication or on a non-standard TCP/IP service port number for their customers to use when making connection from off their network.

Folks with dynamically allocated WAN IP addresses have just the same ability by using an address service such as DynDNS. One of the hosts on the LAN will run a client program such as DynDNS Updater and that allows the home network to be addressed by domain name from anywhere.

Tony

Reply to
Anthony R. Gold

The simplest solution is to get a Gmail account, which will give you access to their authenticated SMTP server. Simply change your existing email software to use the Gmail SMTP server rather than your ISP's server. After you make that one-time change, you will be able to send email whether connected at home or on the road.

That said, there are circumstances when you will still be stymied. Some public networks block the usual ports used for sending mail, and at least one ISP that I use (at a friend's house) will not allow use of any SMTP server except theirs. In 99% of the cases, though, switching to the Gmail server will solve your problem.

Reply to
Dave Rudisill

I have solved this problem for myself by getting a POBOX.COM address. This allows me access to their SMTP authenticated server and I can send email from any location worldwide (and have done so). See -

for information.

Reply to
RWEmerson

This sounds like a good idea and you can always change to "reply" address to your original email address. So when you receive email on the road via your original provider you can reply via Gmail but by changing the "reply" address in the Gmail account... people that then reply to that message will be sending to your original email address. For the most part this is transparent to who your corresponding with. (or is it whom)

Reply to
DanR

What is happening is you ar enot 'logged in' to your ISP's mailserver or the hotpsot is blocking port 25 (this is an anti-spam measure some ISPs take, sort of helps deal wuth customer computers being taken over by bots). Aside from Gamil and the other free web mails, see if your mail server (ISP) can be configured to also listn on a different port. Then if 25 is blocked 'who cares I don't use it' applies.

My host supports this as my ISP blocks 25, so my host (I don't use my ISP for anything but connectivity and usenet) allows me to submit outgoing mail on a different port along with the usual ID confirmation etc. Works great when I travel, at home etc. ISPs don't look at the type of traffic, they just block certain ports, get off them and you are good to go.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

To save a bit of money look at a 'low proced' webhost. Most include email accounts in the package and more then a few will allow you to use something other then port 25 for outgoing mail (making you immune to the hotspot's ISP filtering). You can find webhosts these days for less then $20.00 annually.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico
[POSTED TO alt.internet.wireless - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

Which ISP? I've not heard of any ISP that blocks Authenticated SMTP ports.

You can even use your non-Gmail address when sending through GMail *if* you add that non-Gmail address to your Gmail account.

Reply to
John Navas

Well, now you have: snowcrest.net.

I can't use smtp.vzwmail.net, mail.escapees.net, or smtp.gmail.com when I use that ISP. Fortunately, their own SMTP server (mail.snowcrest.net) does not require authentication as long as you are connecting to the Internet through them.

I beat my head against the wall for days before you told me about that some months ago. I should have mentioned it in my earlier post.

Reply to
Dave Rudisill

Hmm, you are spokes person for on of them, BellSouth soon to be AT&T blocks port 25 for residential customers except through their relay. Surpirsed you didn't know this about your boyz.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico
[POSTED TO alt.internet.wireless - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

Have you tried Nmap ? What does it report for "nmap -p 465 smtp.gmail.com"?* Otherwise, what happens if you open a CMD window, and run "telnet smtp.gmail.com 465"?

  • Here's what I get: | >nmap -p 465 smtp.gmail.com | | Starting Nmap 4.03 (
    formatting link
    ) at 2006-05-01 14:31 Pacific Daylight Time | Interesting ports on 64.233.167.111: | PORT STATE SERVICE | 465/tcp open smtps | | Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 5.017 seconds
Reply to
John Navas

Read more carefully: I wrote "Authenticated SMTP ports" (465 in the case of Google Mail), not the standard SMTP port (25).

And FYI, I have no connection to new at&t, SBC, BellSouth, or any other carrier.

Reply to
John Navas

Most ISPs block outward connections to SMTP servers, regardless of whether the user agent is prepared to perform authentication. Maybe you are you confusing authenticated SMTP with secure SMTP.

Tony

Reply to
Anthony R. Gold

Pacific Daylight Time

I'll give it a try when I am up in that part of the country, which will be later this week. It's a friend's house, where we park our RV while visiting a couple times a year.

Reply to
Dave Rudisill
[POSTED TO alt.internet.wireless - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

There's no practical way for an ISP to block outbound SMTP connections except by port, as in the case of blocking port 25, which is what I was referring to. Authenticated SMTP is usually configured for a port other than 25, as in the case of some services using port 587, which isn't a secure port (as in the case of port 465). There's no point in blocking port 587 (with regard to spam), since it isn't used for message *delivery*, only for message

*submission*.

RFC 2476 "Message Submission" (Standards Track):

| 3. Message Submission | | 3.1. Submission Identification | | Port 587 is reserved for email message submission as specified in | this document. Messages received on this port are defined to be | submissions. The protocol used is ESMTP [SMTP-MTA, ESMTP], with | additional restrictions as specified here.

See also:

| 3.3. Authorized Submission

Reply to
John Navas

Well you sure seem to 'love' them, I can of course google up dozens of posts where you included cingular in your tag.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

Again, read more carefully (and objectively).

Reply to
John Navas

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