AT&T Northeast → Re: SMTP auth issues for Torrington @sbcglobal.net user?

Ma Bell was killed off in 1984, and she isn't coming back. What currently exists is more of a zombie, or a Frankenstein monster.

All email is now handled by Yahoo! severs, despite the aliases:

C:\Dig>nslookup outbound.att.net
Server:  homeportal
Address:  192.168.42.1
 
Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    smtp.att.mail.fy4.b.yahoo.com
Addresses:  68.142.198.51
          98.138.84.52
          67.195.15.5
Aliases:  outbound.att.net
          smtp-att.mail.yahoo.com
 

Both POP3 and SMTP service had some issues with certificate expiration recently. I have no idea if that is the problem you are having.

Yep, I was just being snarky. Mostly because it let me imagine the idea of "whups, lost access to a regional auth DB," which ... well, the history that results in the possibility of that sort of federation existing makes me wince and giggle in equal parts. 'Nothing personal!', just mind-boggling.

FWIW, if you notice, the various permutations of the various SMTP servers once/currently favored do resolve to slightly different permutations of CNAMEs with different addresses, so there was room to wonder if one might've dropped some such association while another did not.That sounds promising - I'll have a look into it, although it made it to the point in the SMTP handshake to be rejected (or so the client seems to claim), so not so sure it'll be the culprit.

Anyhow, still an open issue until the wrench in the works is located or it magically goes back to working.

The ATT SMTP issue to be issue specific to Apple Mail:

»discussions.apple.com/me ··· 19946537

Cheers, found that thread in an earlier stage of its evolution, I believe.

So yay, we've got an interaction between one single mail client that happens to be the popular-default on its platform, and ... a slight indication that either of AT&T or Yahoo are possibly maybe aware of it should-have-been-fixed-a-week-ago?

The lack of technical detail is impressive (not that I expect a lot on Apple forums, and right now the last post seems to be an "I made toast and suddenly I got some mail so making toast must be important" red herring - or at least, I walked my user through the same to no avail, and POP was still fine for her while SMTP is the issue) ... kind of amazed they'd leave the entire? Apple userbase in the lurch for so long, but if I had to choose 2 or 3 corporate entities that would have to interact to resolve an issue...

Oh well, more searching for me. Apparently it's still a problem because no bolus of previously un-sendable mail has made its way to me yet.

[How's life for iPhone customers? Does iOS even use POP+SMTP in the default configuration?]