Mail Nightmare - Need Advice

[mjgkramer]

About a week ago my internet access became a bit flakey - sometimes I could get on and sometimes not so my ISP (also my phone company) sent a tech out. He noted that the status light on the Paradyne DSL modem was winking, which indicated a problem so he replaced the modem. He also made sure that the connection for any device using that line had a filter on it. Everything seemed to be working (Firefox, Skype, Fugu, Mail) so he left.

Since the tech was here everything works except we can receive email but cannot send. We have five Macs running either OS X 10.3.9 (1 Mac) or 10.4.8 (4 Macs) and the Mail version that came with each of them - 1.3.11 and 2.1. We made no changes to the Mail parameters on any of the machines. I can ping the ISP's mail server (smtp.gvtc.com) with 100% success. I have spent hours over the past 5 days talking with the ISP's contract tech support in Kansas and they have concluded that the problem is in the Belkin router. I'm not convinced of that so I have not called Belkin yet, instead deciding to first check with you guys, who usually have the best answers.

Three of the 10.4.8 machines connect via Airport and the other through hardwired connections to a Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router Part #F5D8230-4 which has been in service since late August. I have powered it off and on numerous times and have reset parameters, which I had never altered, to factory settings. I have powered the DSL modem off numerous times to reset it.

This morning I ran Entourage 10.1.1 using the parameters from Mail which were picked up automatically by Entourage. I was able to send emails from Entourage with no problem.

What's going on? What do I have to do to get Mail to send emails?

[mattkime]

>>I have spent hours over the past 5 days talking with the ISP's contract tech support in Kansas and they have concluded that the problem is in the Belkin router.

I'd almost bet money that your router isn't the problem. In order to prove this, hook a machine directly into the dsl modem.

Set up a gmail account and set up entourage to work with it. Then your ISP can't blame your network.

[AlphaDog]

This is ringing a bell. I had problems sending mail when I got my iMac last Spring. I finally traced the problem to a POP number, but I can't remember the details, and I don't remember posting about the problem on the forum. I did do a forum search for "port outgoing" and found one message posted by someone else that hinted at the problem. Take a look at it, because it might give you a clue about what to look for in your set up. I'll poke around on this computer and see if I can find the spot where I needed to make the change and post back if I find it.

http://forums.macresource.com/read/1/102687/102755#msg-102755

Edit: OK, I found what I was looking for. Go to Mail>Preferences>Account Information, then look for Outgoing Mail Server and click on Server Settings. I had to change the port to 25 before I could get it to send mail. See what port yours is set to use.

No guarantees, but it cured my outgoing mail problem.

[swampy]

About two weeks ago I had very similar problems. Could receive mail, but couldn't send it. Hours on the phone with my ISP (Earthlink), who felt the problem was with the router. Bought a new router, same problems. At one point I couldn't even access the router through the browser.

Got bumped up to level two support at E'link. They had me check the settings on the Airport. (Two laptops work off the Airport, two desktops were hard wired to the router.) Turns out that somehow the Airport settings had gotten munged. The setting to turn OFF the Airport's ability to act as a router and assign IP addresses had gotten turned ON. So both the D-Link and the Airport were fighting each other over assigning addresses thus confusing all internet applications. Resetting the Airport to not act as a router solved my problems.

E'link also had me delete and reconstruct all my mailboxes. I was still using the old STMP format for outgoing server, but E'link had switched to STMPAUTH.

[mjgkramer]

AlphaDog - It is on Port 25 and has been all through this. Also, at one point they had me go direct from one of the Macs to the DSL modem and I could send emails. Through the router and it wouldn't send.

[AlphaDog]

[quote mjgkramer]AlphaDog - It is on Port 25 and has been all through this. Also, at one point they had me go direct from one of the Macs to the DSL modem and I could send emails. Through the router and it wouldn't send.
Sorry. I've now exhausted my list of suggestions. This isn't my strong point; I just got lucky last May.

[blusubaru]

This happened to me last week too. I gave up after Yahoo never contacted me for tech support and just reverted back to a four day old backup. It's been good since then. Many people have had the same complaints with Mail.app as being a terrible program. 95% of the time it's great for me. Hopefully there's a big fix coming around the corner with the new OS (though I'm saying the same thing for iWeb too).