Can anyone confirm this or offer any comments:
(I am not a fan of AOL either, so lets not go down that road).

Client is using AOL for travelogue Internet access to POP & SMTP hosted
email accounts.
Recently he complains that he can not send SMTP email while connected to AOL
(he used to be able to).

Is AOL blocking port 25?
He travels nationally & internationally and AOL has so many local numbers.

What are his options if AOL is now blocking port 25?
If he switches ISPs I think he will have a hard time finding another ISP
with as many access numbers.

Comments & suggestions welcome.

Thanks

As far as I know AOL does not have a SMTP server, their email system is
proprietary. Am I not correct?

<Harrison> wrote in message
news:63q630hcgke5kbkgj7vv996a2u1k8a17hp@4ax.com...

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 08:18:29 -0500, "Jack B. Pollack" <N@NE.nothing>
wrote:

As Harrison said, more likely, his ISP won't accept SMTP mail from
users on other networks. Try asking them.

There are many other national and international ISPs, including
prepaid ones. But if it's his home ISP that's not accepting external
SMTP traffic, none of those will work to send e-mail either.

Cheers,
dan

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 08:18:29 -0500, "Jack B. Pollack" <N@NE.nothing>
wrote:

Here's a couple ideas...

Sign your client up for one of the many "promiscuous" mail services
that don't care where you send your mail from and will let you use
their SMTP servers from anywhere.

Or install a little SMTP server directly on the laptop.
http://www.softstack.com/freesmtp.html is a good one. If you go that
route, though, you may run in to problems with AOL not forwarding the
mail...

Cheers,
dan

In article <1077110331.947035@news1.bigplanet.com>,
"Jack B. Pollack" <N@NE.nothing> wrote:

AOL will do one of two things with port 25 connections. Which depends
on a variety of factors, including the current phase of the moon and
the amount of pollen in the air.

1) AOL does nothing to port 25 connections. You can connect to any
non-local SMTP server that will let you in. Many will refuse non-local
connections, and many will drop mail from AOL sent in this manner.

2) AOL will redirect the connection to a local SMTP proxy that
features heavy rate limiting and will identify the sender's AOL screen
name in an X- header.

--
Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois
adamb@lull.org | Finger/Web for PGP & S/MIME
adamkb@aol.com | http://www.lull.org/adam/

Howdy!

"Jack B. Pollack" <N@NE.nothing> wrote in message
news:1077110331.947035@news1.bigplanet.com...
Yes.

Err - use his AOL mail account?

Use a web based email server?

RwP