AOL smtp/pop issue - It was all going so well....

Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2002
Posts
7,676
Migrated the first home user over to AOL today and it was all good, i'm starting to think 'Hey this isn't so bad, 6+mbit downloads, quick browsing, fast email, surely this can't be the company i've hated with a passion since the days of 9600bps modems ?' then they got me.

The user in question basically uses his connection to reply to email in a timely manner when he's not in the office, the odd bit of remote desktop once in a while, as such we've had a hosted domain with smtp for a few years now and it's been great. Users log in to smtp.bob.com, grab mail and reply with the normal [email protected] address, that is until now.

AOL - in a valiant attempt to prevent spam - intercept any port 25 request and re-route to the AOL smtp servers.

Fine I can cope with that, it's Monday don't panic, the world's still in weekend mode. So what about hitting 1025 instead of 25 that's bound to work right ? No. Ok then as a short term fix how about you just let me spoof the display address and the from address and we're all good till I can look into the 578 authentication options, that's got to work right ?... No.

So come on someone else must have had this before, my hosted domain only seems to allow connections on 25 and not 1025 and i'm still looking into the authentication options but they aren't exactly quick to reply this time of day, anyone got a suggestion other than web mail or using an aol.com mail addy ?

I'm half considering going home tonight setting up pop/smtp on a non standard port at home and redirecting from that but for some inexplicable reason i don't think that will work ?
 
Citrix/terminal services machine somewhere? Failing that a VPN tunnel? Or see if you can setup SSL encrypted email connection for outgoing and as well as incoming email?
 
VPN is ideal but sadly if the office link goes down i'm hanging out to dry. Going to call it a night and set up a linux box at home and map an obscure external port over then see if AOL will let me bounce mail off that box short term till I come up with something more stable.
 
If this really is an issue have you looked at a dedicated server? It might be overkill but possibly other uses you could use for the box? Also have you asked your host its possible they are already running SMTP on a weird port for this very reason?
 
Result! Host rurns a non standard port for just such situations, changed to that and it's all good. Thanks for the suggestions gent's they were much appreciated as after 12 hours @ work i'd lost perspective and was looking at overly complicated solutions to a quite simple problem.

Cheers :D
 
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