OK - this is probably going to sound dumb, but I have had a problem SENDING email ever since I got the Comcast BB cable hookup.
I am using my OLD DIAL-UP email account at my dial-up ISP (which I keep for backup when CC goes down) because that is the email address on all my cards and letterheads and I am too lazy to change everything. Now, I can READ my email through the CC-BB hookup just fine, but whenever I try to SEND email I get a message that says (roughly) "the transfer was refused".
If I am authenticated by my old ISP to allow me to GET email, what else do I need to do to get them to allow me to SEND email? I have been told (by my ISP's tech support) that I need to enter the name/IP of the Comcast email server, but I can't seem to get an answer to WHERE I would get that info, or where I should enter it if I had it.
In connection with email, the instructions for setting up the Linksys router (I am planning to get one shortly) on this board refer to needing to get the email server address (to enable email on Comcast systems) by pinging WWW by itself. When I do that I get :
http://www.comcastpreview.net [66.45.79.133]
What in b----- is that? And is it the name/IP address I need for Outlook Express to get my email SENDing to work? If it IS what do I do with it, if it is not, how DO I get the email to go to my OLD ISP through Comcast cable?
Any help will be greatly appreciated, because I am missing something here.
Roy
Comcast & email access
Right - I am using good old Outlook Express - it is set up for the old ISP ( mail.pa.net and smtp.pa.net ).
Actually Comcast tried three different times to get my email account working- in fact, to get ANY account working there - I can not log onto the Comcast website either, because it says my password is not valid. Each time they gave me a password and in two cases even checked the account by logging onto it themselves. However, I could not access the account any of those times using the password they claim worked for them. Three strikes & your out, as far as I am concerned. I don't know what the problem is there but I gave up on getting it fixed and just continued to use my old dial-up ISP email account. My wife has HER personal email account there AND her business email account as well. It would be nice if these were on Comcast and we could stop paying for the old ISP but I simply don't have the time to play with Comcast tech support any longer.
That is why I would like to get the email to work in BOTH DIRECTIONS through my PA.NET ISP account(s). If I can SEND email through Comcast to PA.NET the way I can RECIEVE email from PA.NET it would be workable.
Roy
Actually Comcast tried three different times to get my email account working- in fact, to get ANY account working there - I can not log onto the Comcast website either, because it says my password is not valid. Each time they gave me a password and in two cases even checked the account by logging onto it themselves. However, I could not access the account any of those times using the password they claim worked for them. Three strikes & your out, as far as I am concerned. I don't know what the problem is there but I gave up on getting it fixed and just continued to use my old dial-up ISP email account. My wife has HER personal email account there AND her business email account as well. It would be nice if these were on Comcast and we could stop paying for the old ISP but I simply don't have the time to play with Comcast tech support any longer.
That is why I would like to get the email to work in BOTH DIRECTIONS through my PA.NET ISP account(s). If I can SEND email through Comcast to PA.NET the way I can RECIEVE email from PA.NET it would be workable.
Roy
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Robot Army
- Member
- Posts: 42
- Joined: Tue Jul 09, 2002 2:35 pm
- Location: Maryland, USA
Try using the combination of "mail.pa.net" for your incoming mail server and "smtp.comcast.net" for your outgoing mail server. No authentication against the SMTP server is necessary. Try it, and let me know if it works.
When a problem comes along...You must whip it.....When something's going wrong...You must whip it....Whip it good...
Originally posted by Robot Army
Try using the combination of "mail.pa.net" for your incoming mail server and "smtp.comcast.net" for your outgoing mail server. No authentication against the SMTP server is necessary. Try it, and let me know if it works.
Now thats a hell of an idea.
Bone, Brain, And Co*k
Silence For My Revelry
Silence For My Revelry
Thanks for suggesting that - I had sort of thought about trying exactly that just to see what would happen.
If it were only MY email account I would feel free to tinker, but since my wife's business account is on the same ISP I had hesitated to experiment.
I'll let you know what happens.
If that works I am really curious about the apparent LACK of authentication on the SMTP service - that would suggest that I could POST email through anyone's ISP email account and I find that hard to believe. In any case - a really great experiment.
More later - - - - -
Roy
If it were only MY email account I would feel free to tinker, but since my wife's business account is on the same ISP I had hesitated to experiment.
I'll let you know what happens.
If that works I am really curious about the apparent LACK of authentication on the SMTP service - that would suggest that I could POST email through anyone's ISP email account and I find that hard to believe. In any case - a really great experiment.
More later - - - - -
Roy
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Robot Army
- Member
- Posts: 42
- Joined: Tue Jul 09, 2002 2:35 pm
- Location: Maryland, USA
I *think* the way is works is that your "authentication" is your IP addr. In other words, the SMTP server "recognizes" your ip addr. in the packets sent to it as coming from a machine within the range of IPs given out by Comcast, so it forwards your mail.
Cheers!
Cheers!
When a problem comes along...You must whip it.....When something's going wrong...You must whip it....Whip it good...
Results of the experiment
Yhanks all for the advice - it induced me to experiment with this.
OK - here are the results of the experiment:
I changed the OUTGOING email server to: smtp.comcast.net
Now mail goes in both directions, just the way it should. I hope someone here with more information on Outlook Express and email servers in general can explain what is going on here.
As you suggest R.A. the server must recognize the IP in the packets themselves, but I would really like to understand the process. I am going to go poke around on the Microsoft Knowledge Base site and see if there is any info on this.
Thinking about the Digital Copyright Act - I seem to remember that there is a section in there which says (sort of) that if a piece of email has your IP address on it it is ASSUMED under law that YOU are the author - no excuses. If that IS the way the law is written then we should be d... sure that there is actually a way of authenticating an email post as coming from YOU and not from someone else "relaying " to your account.
How about it - any legal types here?
Roy
OK - here are the results of the experiment:
I changed the OUTGOING email server to: smtp.comcast.net
Now mail goes in both directions, just the way it should. I hope someone here with more information on Outlook Express and email servers in general can explain what is going on here.
As you suggest R.A. the server must recognize the IP in the packets themselves, but I would really like to understand the process. I am going to go poke around on the Microsoft Knowledge Base site and see if there is any info on this.
Thinking about the Digital Copyright Act - I seem to remember that there is a section in there which says (sort of) that if a piece of email has your IP address on it it is ASSUMED under law that YOU are the author - no excuses. If that IS the way the law is written then we should be d... sure that there is actually a way of authenticating an email post as coming from YOU and not from someone else "relaying " to your account.
How about it - any legal types here?
Roy