Hi all,

Thanks to your help it was a "piece of cake" to set up the small
wireless network in the home office. I'm using the modem supplied by
Optimum and a wireless Netgear WGR614 router with two of their USB
connectors for the clients and now all is 128 bit WEP with printer and
file sharing (the ZA firewall was problematic but now works). My
co-worker has to disable the wireless temporarily to dial up (very
simple two clicks) but once all of the email addys are changed and
announcements sent out to clients and site managers the need for dialup
will end (unless cable goes down).

Yesterday there was a problem with all of the phones in the office. Two
of them are cordless, the other on a fax machine wired. We had no dial
tones. The owner of the business and my co-worker immediately blamed it
on the wireless hookup but my research on the web indicated that this
usually is the other way around, that cordless phones can interfere with
WiFi. Is there any way that this can be proven to them? I thought of
changing the channel the Netgear operates on but didn't find the setting
for it in the config file (unlike with my AirPort Extreme where it is
easily located).

What was interesting, and that my completely non technically inclined
co-workers/manager overlooked is that dialup worked fine for three days
after the wireless install and then nothing. Four hours after the
phones died, the phones worked fine (with wireless still up). My guess
is that it was a phone line problem, not a WiFi interference problem.
How can I prove this to them and avoid having to go back to a wired
network? fwiw A call to Verizon was fruitless.

Thanks,

Karen

"Karen" <lalla@worstweb.not> wrote in message
news:10q8ksnp3fbtea4@corp.supernews.com...
[...sniped...]

You've provided the answer already. Because the wired phone was down at the
same time, the failure had nothing to do with the wireless network. If the
cordless phones and Wi-Fi were interfering, the wired fax machine would have
continued to work. The data you've provided strongly suggests the phone
line was down.

Did you call while the line was down (from a different line, of course)? If
you called when it was working, there was little they can do.

If it happens again, you can do a quick test by turning off the Wi-Fi
network. If the phones don't come back up, you've proved the Wi-Fi has
nothing to do with it.

-Gary

Karen wrote:

While wireless devices may interfere with each other, they shouldn't have
much effect on wired phones or fax. As for proving the point, simply turn
off all the wireless equipment for a few minutes. Also, do you have a PBX?
Or direct connection to the phone company? Do you have a demarc point,
where you can plug in a phone to verify the line is working?

James Knott wrote:
Thanks James, Gary

I may try that today when I go in though turning anything off seems to
provoke an anxiety there about not having "communications". The phones
going out really caused problems as well as blame. We have no PBX nor a
direct line to the phone company. Not aware of any demark point. We
tried a corded phone in the wall jacks and that didn't work either which
told me that it was the line, not the WiFi. It's a very small 2 person
office. The fax is a corded unit and that had no dialtone (obvious to
me it wasn't a wireless problem).

If things work today (with both wireless and the cordless phones) I'll
assume that I'm right that it's the phone company not anything I hooked
up. If they don't, well it's deduction/troubleshooting time.

Karen

Karen wrote:

You either have a PBX or direct line to to the phone company. There's no
other way, unless you're using VoIP. A demarc point is usually located
near where the phone line enters the building. It will have a pair of
jacks, one facing the CO and the other, your premise wiring. One other
possibility, is that some device has failed or "off hook". What happens,
if you try dialing in? If you hear ringing, there's likely a fault, that
opens the pair to your office. If you get a busy signal, it's either a
short on your line or a phone or fax that's off hook. The phone company
should be able to do a line test.


This is where demarc points come in handy. They allow you to point the
finger in the right direction.

Karen wrote:


You may be right, it may have been a phone line issue, especially (as was
already mentioned) the wired fax machine didn't work either. Did you unplug
the cordless telephone base stations from the phone line when testing the
line with the fax machine. Doing that would eliminate any issues about
interference from your wireless network to your cordless phones. If it
doesn't work then, it's a telco problem.

I run a wireless network here at home and wireless telephones, too. I can
tell you from experience that my 802.11b access point certainly does
interfere with my 2.4 GHz cordless phone (or it did.) I replaced the phones
with one of the true 5.4 GHz models and by doing so moved to a different
frequency. That solved the problem and got me a phone system which allows
me to transfer calls from handset to handset and to call other cordless
handsets like an intercom. Loss of communications with the base station was
one of the issues I found. And, not getting a dial-tone would be one of the
symptoms someone not technically inclined might report. The phone should
have said "out of range" if that happened though. Did it? Or did someone
look?

What is the frequency that your existing cordless telephones use (900 MHz,
2.5 GHz, 5.4 GHz)? And are you using 802.11b or the newer 5.4 GHz wireless
gear? If the frequencies are on different bands, you shouldn't have any
issues whatsoever.

Good luck on getting things solved.

And remember that just because wireless is the cool new technology does not
make it better than good old fashioned, fast, reliable, low-overhead,
secure, Ethernet. If you're in a building with other offices, you might
have experienced interference from an office nearby. Wireless access points
and telephones don't always play together nicely.

Rick

Rick Kunath wrote:
Thanks James, Rick,

The cordless "problem" wasn't. It was the phone company as all is
working fine now. Well not fine (will mention below). The phones btw
are 900 MHz (cheapies). It's a direct connection but since the problem
didn't occur again I'm assuming that it's the phone company working on
the lines. fwiw I'm running 802.11b with WEP and other than the
Thunderbird client that I migrated the mail to (I need to separate for a
few days the "new" cable email from the old dialup account) things are good.

Since setting up Thunderbird as the new email client I'm continually
getting the message
"Sending of password did not succeed. Mail server optonline.net
responded: Authentication failed"

I checked online and all of the passwords are correct. I did not set up
the account to require authentication for smtp. The username that I
have in the account is the primary, not one of the sub account email
addresses. When I start up Thunderbird it just goes after the pop and
produces the above error message. Emailing this machine from the other
computer (with my account on Optiononline) all works fine. It's just
when it tries to get email from the optonline "pop" that the problem
arises. Any ideas? I'm also going to post this to a mozilla NG to see
if anyone there has any ideas. It's a bit maddening and I've been told
that Optimum doesn't support Mozilla products. An email to them (from
my working account) came back telling me to go to their website.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all of the help here.

Karen

Karen wrote:

One thing you can do, is run Ethereal, to see what's happening on the
network. Compare that system, with another that works.

Ethereal is a free download and is available for Linux and Windows.

Karen wrote:


Most ISPs do not require authentication on their SMTP servers, so I think
your settings are right for your outbound mail. Some do require pop access
prior to doing an SMTP send, though.

I am guessing that the password and user should be (based on your ISP's web
site) sent in plain-text, so make sure that you don't have any of the
secure authentication boxes checked in Thunderbird.

Are you sure that you are using the correct password for the account are
trying to access? Is is set for plain text? Are the passwords different for
the different email boxes (they should be)?

POP3 is pretty standard. Thunderbird should work. I've used it on lots of
POP3 mailboxes.

You are sure that you are routing your POP3 traffic out on the cable
connection and not the dial-up connection? (The POP3 should still work
either way, but the SMTP will fail.)

Rick Kunath

Rick Kunath wrote:
Rick, James,

I checked the password (it only asks once for Thunderbird) and it is
fine. Unfortunately they insist on using the same psw for all 4
accounts as they lean towards "simplicity". The problem happens when I
open the app and it's apparently only a POP3 problem. The POP account
is set for mail.optonline.net (but is set for the ATT dialup in Mozilla
Mail and wonder if that's interfering). It also was looking for the SMTP
of att.net which I believe I fixed. I'll check the plain text but think
that was also modified. The secure authentication boxes are unchecked.

The strange thing is that on the machine I use (with only one email
account) Thunderbird works fine both sending and receiving. I made the
settings identical, with the exception of the psw which I wanted to be
different. The psw and username is that of the primary email account.
I rechecked on the Optimum site to make sure all was OK.

Unfortunately I'm not that familiar with Ethereal even though I
installed it a while back on my home laptop. I'll use it as a last
resort as I'm not sure they will look at "learning" it as a paid job
function (go figure!). I never had the need for protocol analysis during
my brief time as a network admin (mostly Novell years ago).

Anyway, thanks

Karen

Karen wrote:

What happens if you do a manual POP3 mail retrieval on the affected account,
after the initial startup? Does it still fail?

It shouldn't.

Do you have separate email accounts setup in Thunderbird, or are you
attempting to merge all of them? I've used up to 4 separate email accounts
with Thunderbird, 3 POP3 and one IMAP, with no interaction issues at all.
You can specify POP3/IMAP and SMTP settings on a per account basis, and use
separate folders for each account.

Cable or dial-up ISP?

Different why? Because of the dial-up vs. cable ISP?

Is this machine doing dial-up and cable routing of traffic?

Rick

Rick Kunath wrote:
Rick,

A manual POP retrieval also fails with an "authentication" problem. I
removed the automatic d/l and the problem still occurs. What is strange
is that sometimes it works but only with one account (which is not the
primary). I set up one of the problem accounts on the machine I use
(also Thunderbird) and it works fine. Checked web-mail and there is
nothing "clogging" the account.

Thunderbird is set up for four different accounts. I started thinking
late yesterday that it might have been cause by the "import" of all of
the email from Mozilla Mail. All of the .slt account folders have an
ATT string as their name. Something might have been imported (like the
account access information) that wasn't intended. Perhaps the migration
might be for an identical provider but I'm unsure of which file contains
that data so will probably have to do a manual copy/paste of the folders
once I manually set up the accounts. Hopefully this will work. Optimum
support was useless (as expected).

The machine I use is cable only. No dial up was ever configured. My
psw was different well, because I wanted it to be I'm pretty
fanatical about security on my home XP laptop (the Mac I usually don't
worry too much about) and think it horrendous that the "keys to the
kingdom" at work is protected by only one password.

The other machine does both dial-up and cable routing, but not
concurrently. I think though that it's the "import" that is causing the
problem and the directory names hint at that. I'll know later on.

Sorry that this in part is so off topic.

Karen

Karen wrote:
I suspect that you'll have everything working again as soon as you delete
the existing mailbox folders and re-create the accounts from scratch in
Thunderbird. You'll want to make sure that you set T-Bird to use separate
folders for the various accounts if you intend to keep mail separated and
easily control the from address and sending account.

I've been doing just what you are trying to accomplish successfully with
Thunderbird.

Rick Kunath

Rick Kunath wrote:
Rick,

Thank you and to all who assisted me with this. I saw that the folder
names inside the .sit file reflected the carrier and this meant that the
"import" was only applicable if there were no changes with it.
Recreated the accounts manually, copied/pasted the folders from MozMail
to Thunderbird (which had cable POP/SMTP) and all seems well. The only
problem seems to be a "glitch" (maybe not) in Thunderbird that doesn't
retrieve all of the accounts (just the first on the list) when the "Get
Mail" icon is clicked. That's easily overcome though by clicking the
"Get All Messages".

Karen

Karen wrote:
The only
I think this action works like this:

"Get Mail" will get the mail for the account currently highlighted. (I'll
bet the first is, right?)

"Get All Messages" queries all accounts for new mail.

It is handy to have this set this way if you use multiple mailboxes and
don't want to download all messages from all of them.

You can set an option to automatically check an account for new mail on
Thunderbird startup per-account, and enable interval mail checking on a
per-account basis if needed.

Rick Kunath