Here's a really stupid question. How do you set up this router to email its
logs to an AOL address? I've set loads of these routers to send to other
addresses via other SMTP servers, but I can't make it work to AOL.

Email address <screen name>@aol.com
Outgoing email server SMTP.uk.aol.com

I've tried with authentication disabled and with it enabled using the user's
screen name and password.

Without authentication, there's no error message in the log but the email
does not arrive.

With authentication turned on, I immediately get an error "use port 587 for
email". Given that the email facilities built into the router don't allow a
port to be specified, what do I do? THe user doesn't have any other email
account whose SMTP server I could use. I'm reluctant to configure it with my
ISP's SMTP server and my username/password for authentication, though this
probably would work.

Martin wrote on Thu, 9 Jun 2005 17:16:21 +0100:

Apparently if you set the email address to use the same domain name as the
SMTP server the logs will be discarded, hence no error when you don't use
authenticated SMTP:

http://kbserver.netgear.com/inquira/...er_id=81661911

"In some circumstances NETGEAR routers check that the source and destination
of email messages are not the same. If this happens, the router's logging
messages are discarded. (The Reference Manual is not clear on this.) An easy
way to solve this is to choose a different email server for the router's
"Send to This E-mail Address" field. So if "Your Outgoing Mail Server" is
mail.myisp.com (as shown in the manual) then DO NOT use yourname@myisp.com
for the "Send to This E-mail Address" field. Instead, use an email account
you have on another server, such as hotmail. E.g., make the send field
yourname@hotmail.com. The other way to solve this is to explicitly open the
ports for SMTP and POP, 110 and 25. By default, these ports are closed on
NETGEAR routers. (Other, non-NETGEAR related email problems are also solved
by opening these ports.)"

It suggests that opening the SMTP and POP3 ports will cure this - and as the
email is going to an AOL address on the AOL mail server it should accept it
mail for delivery on port 25.

Dan

"Spack" <news@worldofspack.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3gr9rpFe0ik0U1@individual.net...
This KB entry begs the question: "Why does the router check the domain of
the destination address against the domain of the SMTP server?" Surely the
usual way that emails would be sent would be to the user's own email address
which will be on the same ISP as is being used to connect to the internet.
Not everyone has the luxury of a separate email account.

It works for my setup but that is because by chance I define my email
address as xxx@yyy.f9.co.uk (I could equally well have defined it as
xxx@yyy.force9.co.uk which is a synonym) whereas the SMTP server is
relay.force9.net.

The KB entry vaguely refers to opening ports 25 and 110, but what exactly is
involved in doing this? I presume I'm opening *outbound* ports. Do I simply
add a new rule with

Service: SMTP (25)
Action: Allow always
LAN user: Any
WAN user: Any

The dropdown service list doesn't mention POP (110), but I presume it's SMTP
that I need to open anyway and that the KB's reference to POP (110) is
irrelevant to my problem.

Martin Underwood wrote:

Try :-

SMTP
Port 587
Allow always
LAN "IP of Router"

"NBT" <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:d8c0eb$d4n$1@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
Ah. So it doesn't use port 25. Trust AOL to be different. Have they never
heard of standards?

Bugger it! The router doesn't offer port 587 as an option. I really don't
want to have to open up all the ports just to allow non-standard SMTP
traffic to get through :-(

I presume it's going to be the same for the customer's DG834G V2 as it is
for my DG834GT that I've just checked.

Actually it's worse than that. Even if I was able to open up port 587,
wouldn't the SMTP program in the router than sends the logs still try to use
the proper port 25 - it's not configurable.

Martin Underwood <me@privacy.net> wrote:

: Bugger it! The router doesn't offer port 587 as an option. I really don't
: want to have to open up all the ports just to allow non-standard SMTP
: traffic to get through :-(

Just add it! While the DG834G has a built-in list of "well known services"
and their ports you can add others. For example I added VNC on port 5900
and I can then refer to it by name in the firewall rules.

In article <42a98ed2$0$2316$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net>, Martin
Underwood <me@privacy.net> wrote

[Port 587]
RFC 2476 perhaps?

--
Bob Evans

Martin Underwood wrote:
Just define your own custom port, then open that.

--
[ste]

NBT wrote on Fri, 10 Jun 2005 12:18:19 +0000 (UTC):

Only if you are attempting to send message to a non AOL address. If you are
sending to an aol.com address then port 25 without authentication will work
fine (or else no AOL.com user would ever receive any email).

Dan

"[ste parker]" <imaginey@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3gtjrjFdciquU2@individual.net...
Unless I'm missing something, you can't do that. The dialogue box has a
drop-down for the "Service" (ie the port) and does not allow the port number
to be typed in as an alternative:

http://www.martinunderwood.f9.co.uk/netgear%20rule.jpg

Or am I being a pillock?

"Anthony R. Gold" <not-for-mail@ahjg.co.uk> wrote in message
news:9m4ja151aan50ast9je6j7pe79pnpvu8t9@4ax.com...
I'll try that, but I suspect that I'll fall foul of the Netgear's idiotic
rule that you cannot send to an address which is in the same domain as the
SMTP server's.

At present I've got

username = XXX@aol.com
outgoing server = smtp.uk.aol.com

I presume the router finds that both end "aol.com" and quietly discards the
email. I presume it will also do that if the outgoing server is
"mailin-01.mx.aol.com". I could try replacing the domain name of the SMTP
server with its IP address. Maybe that will fool it into letting the email
go out ;-) Let's hope the router doesn't do a reverse lookup and then match
the email address against that :-(

This is a classic case of Netgear documenting a restriction rather than
removing the restriction or giving a proper workaround like the use of the
IP address instead of the server name. Given that most people will want to
send to an email address which is on the same domain as the SMTP server for
their WAN connection to their ISP, they really should allow email to get
through.

"Bob Evans" <news@eedl.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:XbSDPAfTcZqCFABo@cygnus.eedl.demon.co.uk...
What does that say? Does it permit SMTP on ports other than 25? If so, it's
bad luck on simple SMTP mailers such as the one built into this router for
emailing its logfiles which can't have its port configured.

Martin Underwood wrote:
Thats why you need to define one first. Go to services (the option
below firewall rules) and add a custom service for the port(s) you want
then go back to firewall rules and add a service - your newly defined
service will be at the top of the dropdown.


--
[ste]
"Throw me your matches 'cause I like to burn stuff"

"Anthony R. Gold" <not-for-mail@ahjg.co.uk> wrote in message
news:tf5ka15sdqn8h3v2shk53o0qv3inrj1dkb@4ax.com...
It's not in the reference manual. That's half the problem. It's on a KB
entry that Spack quoted earlier in the thread:

[begin quote from Spack]
Apparently if you set the email address to use the same domain name as the
SMTP server the logs will be discarded, hence no error when you don't use
authenticated SMTP:

<http://kbserver.netgear.com/inquira/default.asp?ui_mode=answer&prior_transaction_id=15 7861&action_code=5&highlight_info=16778045,372,375 &turl=http%3A%2F%2Fkbserver.netgear.com%2Fkb_web_f iles%2Fn101237.asp&answer_id=81661911>

"In some circumstances NETGEAR routers check that the source and destination
of email messages are not the same. If this happens, the router's logging
messages are discarded. (The Reference Manual is not clear on this.) An easy
way to solve this is to choose a different email server for the router's
"Send to This E-mail Address" field. So if "Your Outgoing Mail Server" is
mail.myisp.com (as shown in the manual) then DO NOT use yourname@myisp.com
for the "Send to This E-mail Address" field. Instead, use an email account
you have on another server, such as hotmail. E.g., make the send field
yourname@hotmail.com. The other way to solve this is to explicitly open the
ports for SMTP and POP, 110 and 25. By default, these ports are closed on
NETGEAR routers. (Other, non-NETGEAR related email problems are also solved
by opening these ports.)"

It suggests that opening the SMTP and POP3 ports will cure this - and as the
email is going to an AOL address on the AOL mail server it should accept it
mail for delivery on port 25.
[end quote from Spack]

In article <42a9f7ae$1$2346$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net>, Martin
Underwood <me@privacy.net> wrote
Why not read it and find out?

If you don't know where to look then <http://www.ietf.org> is a good
starting point.

I would not have mentioned it otherwise

Possibly, if the mailer in question can't handle direct-to-MX sending
and the ISP concerned requires authentication prior to message
submission to its smarthosts.

--
Bob Evans

"Bob Evans" <news@eedl.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:B3+GEDbkKErCFAYf@cygnus.eedl.demon.co.uk...
Thanks you. I wasn't being lazy - I just wanted a URL to a site that
contains definitions of RFCs. I reasoned that searching for "RFC" on Google
might return a VERY large number of *references* to them, in addition to
actual definitions.

RFC 2476 only mentions ports 587 and 25 fairly briefly. I presume one of the
cross-referenced documents goes into port usage in greater detail.

I thought at first that 587 was a port that AOL had plucked out of thin air,
but at least it is enshrined in the RFC. The paragraphs that describe it are
a bit confusing: they say

[quote]
Port 587 is reserved for email message submission as specified in
this document. Messages received on this port are defined to be
submissions. The protocol used is ESMTP [SMTP-MTA, ESMTP], with
additional restrictions as specified here.

While most email clients and servers can be configured to use port
587 instead of 25, there are cases where this is not possible or
convenient. A site MAY choose to use port 25 for message submission,
by designating some hosts to be MSAs and others to be MTAs.
[end quote]

which makes it sound as if port 587 is the normal port for email submission,
whereas I understood that port 25 was the normal one that a client should
connect to on an SMTP server. Maybe I need a crash course in what exactly
MSAs and MTAs are!


I ask a sumple question - and find that it's a lot more complicated that I
thought. To go back to my original question, I asked it also on Netgear's
forum and had a reply from someone who said that he'd been able to configure
the router to email its logs to an AOL address by AOL's SMTP server... only
to find that the emails were rejected because AOL treated them as spam :-(

Looks as if the ability to send the router's logs by email to AOL addresses
via AOL's SMTP server may not be possible - unless anyone's managed to get
it to work! This is a bit of a shame since I was hoping to use the email
logs to diagnose why a customer's router occasionally locks solid (no lights
at all on the router, not pingable etc). By the time the router has locked,
the only rememdy is to power it off for a while, which deletes any log info
that could have helped the diagnosis.