Hi. I've recently been having problems with my ISP. It seems that they are 'hijacking' all my outgoing emails, and only some of them are getting through (I verified this by setting my SMTP server to microsoft.com, and the email was sent, but didn't show an error).

Does anyone know of a GOOD UK ISP that doesn't do this? Its prooving to be a pain in the arse, and I am loosing quite a lot of work because of it :(

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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Eh? I don't follow you. Explain how your ISP is 'hijacking' your mail??

- wil

Well, I have been having problems ever since transfering to Freeserve. Alex has been looking into it for me, as I have a GHost server, which GT obviously maintain.

We run a few tests, one of them being where I set the outgoing SMTP server to microsoft, with my existing username/password being set to the correct combination. The email got sent, and I *didn't* get a password prompt, asking me to enter a 'valid username/password' (which you would expect, if you were trying to download off someone else's mail-server).

Does that make a bit more sense?

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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Well, not all SMTP servers ask for username,password authentication before sending, albeit I'm sure Microsoft's does.

- wil

A few ISP's now route all traffic on port 25 through their own SMTP servers (Comcast does this I believe). On the upside it allows them to stop virus mail or hijacked computers from sending out spam as all mail goes through their servers. On the downside, you have to deal with the reliability of your ISP's mail server, and sophisticated users can't use their own mail server.

Cheers,

Alex
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Wow! I had never heard of that being done before. Does Andy's ISP also block other ports then and could not move his own mail server onto a non-standard port?

- wil

>>>Does Andy's ISP also block other ports then and could not move his own mail server onto a non-standard port? <<<

Yeah, thats a good idea. Not sure how easy/possible it is to do though?

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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Have you looked into eclipse, they provide my broadband and SMTP and seem to be pretty good.

I will say that sometimes you can't get mail for and hour while they are probably ding something at their end but it is very few and far between (most ISPs seem to be doing something or other).
Eclipse seem to be pretty relaxed about stuff so it might be worth looking at.

From what my customers say i would steer clear of AOLrgds
Kevin

Cheers
KevM

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. I'm getting ADSL in 1 month 4 days ... so at least I have that to look forward to :) (one of the joys of living out in the sticks).

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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