Travel Technology - New laptop owner question...Help w/ sending email on the road

I use Earthlink as my ISP...and Outlook as my email "organizer. When I am connected to anything other than my setup at home I can receive email via the Outlook program but cannot send it....I have to go through the website of Earthlink.....Is this common for using wifi connections other than my own home setup? Or does my outgoing server connection need to be readjusted to accommodate these 3rd party wifi connections.....

Sometimes ISPs will block outgoing email connections if they think it is spam or something screwy in general. My corporate email uses two different servers/domains for email and I needed to change the port settings in Outlook before I could send email from home.

I would call your help desk and see if they can help walk your through changes.

Try www.no-ip.com. For a modest amount of money you can send email from your email program.

Check out SMTP.com (http://www.smtp.com/).

It might offer a solution.

Michael
http://www.biztrip.com

I use Earthlink as my ISP...and Outlook as my email "organizer. When I am connected to anything other than my setup at home I can receive email via the Outlook program but cannot send it....I have to go through the website of Earthlink.....Is this common for using wifi connections other than my own home setup? Or does my outgoing server connection need to be readjusted to accommodate these 3rd party wifi connections.....

Check the setting for your outgoing email server (SMTP) and enable SMTP authentication, enter your earthlink email username/password there and you should be good to go.

You will also have to change the SMTP server to the Earthlink authenticated SMTP server.

http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?s=st%3D476%2Ce%3D0000000000208473480%2Ck% 3D3829%2Csxi%3D6&article=resid7280

Disregard the tips for other services at the moment, no need to pay for something you can get for free off your own provider.

change SMTP to smtpauth.earthlink.net

also, very important: make sure your login name for smtp is

david4455@earthlink.net

and not

david4455

Perhaps they have changed their policy, but several years ago I tried earthlink. It worked fine in the U.S., but I could not send email while abroad. I followed this through several levels of escalation at customer service.

No dice. They simply would not allow me to send from Europe for fear of spam.

So, if foreign travel is in your plans, ask about that.

Best wishes,

Teacher49

Depending on your home ISP's policies, you may have to change the settings in your email software to specify the hotel's SMTP server address. Call their help desk to get that info. Or install a software SMTP server on your computer, such as Postcast Server. http://www.postcastserver.com/

Perhaps they have changed their policy, but several years ago I tried earthlink. It worked fine in the U.S., but I could not send email while abroad. I followed this through several levels of escalation at customer service.

No dice. They simply would not allow me to send from Europe for fear of spam.

So, if foreign travel is in your plans, ask about that...
No longer an issue. I've done it regularly for a few years now. Follow pynchonesque's instructions. There's more in the Support section of Earthlink's Web site.

Depending on your home ISP's policies, you may have to change the settings in your email software to specify the hotel's SMTP server address. Call their help desk to get that info. Or install a software SMTP server on your computer, such as Postcast Server. http://www.postcastserver.com/

Installing a home SMTP server isn't a very wise option as many other ISP's like AOL and Comcast block all email that was sent coming from a mailserver running locally.

I believe everything you need to know, which has been stated above, is at the firwst uestion on this page:

http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?article=4491

It's real common for ISP's to do this, earthlink explains why (and what to change your settings to to fix it) on the page above

To minimize the sending of junk email, EarthLink does not allow non-subscribers to use our outgoing (SMTP) email servers. If you are an EarthLink subscriber, but you are connected to the Internet using another provider (office network, hotel network, international roaming), you will need to use our Authenticated SMTP server, which allows us to identify you.

I believe everything you need to know, which has been stated above, is at the firwst uestion on this page:

http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?article=4491

It's real common for ISP's to do this, earthlink explains why (and what to change your settings to to fix it) on the page above

To minimize the sending of junk email, EarthLink does not allow non-subscribers to use our outgoing (SMTP) email servers. If you are an EarthLink subscriber, but you are connected to the Internet using another provider (office network, hotel network, international roaming), you will need to use our Authenticated SMTP server, which allows us to identify you.

My settings are set to their recommendations....I will call "India" and see what they say.......

change SMTP to smtpauth.earthlink.net

also, very important: make sure your login name for smtp is

david4455@earthlink.net

and not

david4455


yes, this is the issue, you need to use the SMTP settings, but,

but, as has happened before in the past, for the past three days, this has not been working with my settings at all. nothing has changed, there have been no notices, but the SMTP authentication is failing, even though i have the SMTP authentication setup just as they describe.

I think what happens, is they are updating the SMTP servers, and they don't properly authenticate. Try dialing up over the earthlink dialin numbers, that usually works for me during these periods.

Are you using a firewall on the laptop? If so try disabling that and trying. You may be masking your IP or something it needs.

So I literally called India... and they had me change my "server port number" from 25 to 587 ( who knows what that means).... found in the advanced settings of my email account..... unfortunately I can't test it until the next time I am out with my laptop.......

One would think that if that was the issue they would just put it in their instructions. It's real common to have to change from the standard SMTP port of 25 to 587. Duh.

One of my providers (SBC) does it too, but they explain it in their instructions:

SBC Internet Services (SBCIS) is taking positive steps to help combat junk email and spam. In addition to network upgrades, free spam filtering and anti-virus software, SBCIS is implementing outbound email SMTP port controls to ensure that its network is as reliable as possible for our Members.

As announced in the September 2004 Member newsletters, SBCIS began filtering direct outgoing email connections using Port 25 (SMTP) to non-SBCIS/Yahoo mail servers from Members using dynamic DSL and Dialup connections. Port 25 filters are widely used by many ISPs to combat junk email and spam from mis-configured and virus-infected computers.

SBCIS Members using SBCIS or Yahoo! mail servers for outgoing email are not impacted by this filter. Incoming email connections are also not affected.
Members using a private company, university or hosting provider mail server will not be able to send outgoing email from dynamic DSL and Dialup connections until one of the following actions are taken:

Contact your mail hosting provider for information about using Port 587 for sending authenticated outgoing email. Since December 1998, Port 587 has been the Internet standard (RFC2476) port for authenticated email submission for mail clients and is supported by most major mail hosting providers.

Thanks for posting the above....I thought she just pulled the numbers out of a hat to get me off the phone.....