said by Gork:I appreciate your help, NetFixer . I saw that other post but jumped to the conclusion they were blocking customers' mail servers only on that port. I now understand the thread is about everything on port 25 being blocked, even to their own mail servers. I receive my bills from Comcast online only and do not recall ever being notified of this change. It also seems important enough it should be easily accessible information on their web pages, ESPECIALLY in a message once the customer logs into their account!
I've had so many problems with Comcast lately and this is just one more.
I went through the same eleven years ago, when SBC moved to block port 25 to their customers. Despite that SBC sent out an e-mail notice (I still have my copy), many customers claim that they did not receive notification.
I don't usually check web sites for other ISPs, and my experience with accessing Comcast from a non-Comcast account for technical issues, lately, is that it isn't easy to navigate; but Comcast has long offered access via port 465, with SSL, for customers who might be on the road, and attempting access from a different ISP, one which blocked port 25 to servers other than their own. Port 25 blocking is ubiquitous among U.S. ISPs; Comcast was the last holdout for at least the last six, or seven years.
Thank God the company I purchase email hosting from uses port 587...
All the free ESPs that offer SMTP access, and the larger pay services as well, offer either port 465 (which normally requires SSL), or port 587 (recommended by RFC since 1998; and sometimes requiring TLS, per that RFC); or both (Gmail is both).
EDIT:
I was able to use port 465 once I enabled SSL encryption.
That is just about standard.
Just a history of the RFCs governing "Mail Transfer" (server-to-server) and "Message Submission" (user-to-server) since SMTP was first defined in 1982:
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821 (August, 1982) Mail Transfer
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc822 (August, 1982) Mail Transfer
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2476 (December, 1998) Message Submission
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2821 (April, 2001) Mail Transfer
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822 (April, 2001) Mail Transfer
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4409 (April, 2006) Message Submission
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321 (October, 2008) Mail Transfer, Current
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322 (October, 2008) Mail Transfer
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6409 (November, 2011) Message Submission, Current
»
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6854 (March, 2013) Mail Transfer, Current
Comcast is probably the last major U.S. ISP to come into compliance with RFC 6409.