US Telco Support > AT&T > AT&T DSL > [Services] Email issues

[Services] Email issues

Yeah! Every so often they get wound up and start the password routine.

Sometimes it takes a few tries to get them to accept it although nothing has changed on my end.
I guess the Ides of March are here and it's time to for them to party.

reply to heels_fan
I am having same problem this morning.

Yep...It started again for me this morning..

Takes lots of patience to work through it.
I wish I could understand how a company as huge as they are along with all the attendant resources, can provide such crappy service....and at usurious prices at that.

reply to heels_fan
This is a Yahoo issue. It started when Yahoo took over mail. I was told this by tier 2 support. It will go away. I have not had it happen in a while.

They also advised logging into your mail via att.com, they said it somewhat re-verifies your user name and password. Is this blowing smoke, don't know because the last time it happened to me I did it and all stopped.

reply to heels_fan
Beginning at ~07:30 CDT this morning (03/27) I see many "invalid username or password" entries in my hMailServer logs for att.net and bellsouth.net accounts. My Windows mail server polls several att.net and bellsouth.net accounts using the fpostoffice.isp.att.net server every 5 minutes 24/7. Due to the persistence of my mail server's polls, a connection is always eventually established and any mail in the inbox(es) gets downloaded. This is still happening @ 17:00 CDT, but I had not really noticed the problem until I read this thread and looked at the mail server log.

I can certainly see why this would be quite annoying for someone using a standalone email client (or if you were waiting for an important email to arrive). Anyone who really depends on the AT&T/Yahoo! email alliance has my empathy, because that used to be where I temporarily stored all of my incoming email before my local email server downloaded it.

I do want to thank you for starting this thread because it reminded me to check my email server logs, and I found several POP3 and SMTP dictionary attacks. I can now add the IP addresses of the offenders to a permanent block list (instead of using the mail server's auto-ban feature, which is more CPU intensive than a static block at the firewall).
--
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

When governments fear people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

I found this interesting....

When mine goes out, which it keeps doing, if I forward an existing email to myself, it sends it and when I go to get mail, it begins to work again.

reply to heels_fan
I sent and email from my Gmail acct to my bellsouth account. The first time I hit the receive button, it came in....no error.

But anytime after I hit the receive button, I get the user/pass error msg.

Wonder if David or anybody over in the Direct Support forum can help?
--
everyone is born ignorant. some are born stupid, others achieve stupidity and the rest have stupidity thrust upon them.

reply to burris

reply to heels_fan
As I previously reported, I was using fpostoffice.isp.att.net for the mail server, and I was seeing many, many authentication errors in my hMailServer logs (and was still seeing them until a few minutes ago).

I did some telnet tests and found that (at least for my old att.net and bellsouth.net accounts) I could consistently get access with no authentication errors by using the (now officially recommended) inbound.att.net. I changed the settings in hMailServer (and in my SeaMonkey email client) and now I am not getting any authentication errors.

It would appear that AT&T is trying to force everyone into using inbound.att.net for POP3 access. FWIW, inbound.att.net is actually just a CNAME alias for a Yahoo! email server.

C:\>dig inbound.att.net
 
; <<>> DiG 9.9.2 <<>> inbound.att.net
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 24650
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
 
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1280
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;inbound.att.net.               IN      A
 
;; ANSWER SECTION:
inbound.att.net.        683     IN      CNAME   pop-att.mail.yahoo.com.
pop-att.mail.yahoo.com. 141     IN      CNAME   pop-att.mail.am0.yahoodns.net.
pop-att.mail.am0.yahoodns.net. 142 IN   A       98.139.213.175
 
;; Query time: 0 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.9.2#53(192.168.9.2)
;; WHEN: Thu Mar 28 23:45:37 2013
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 136
 

reply to heels_fan
This is now Friday, and I'm still experiencing email issues...which began on Monday for us. I think this is the longest period of time I've ever experienced this problem. Usually it's resolved in a day or two.

reply to bcfromfl
I still share the problem.

I called AT&T yesterday and they told me because I could access the webmail, which I don't want to do, that the problem was my client and not AT&T.

I do agree with you, but if that's the case, why don't they just shut down the pop servers and make webmail a must....which of course, I will then find another ISP.

It would be nice to get honest answers from them, but as you know, that's not part of their vocabulary.

What I forgot to say was that although I get the login error window every time I try to do so, the email seems to download regularly as soon as it hits their servers.

The current symptom seems to be a lag problem with the email server connecting to the authentication server. If you (or your email client) keeps retrying, eventually the connection is made and you can reach the inbox. As I said in my original post in this thread, I didn't know there was a problem until I read this thread and checked my hMailServer logs. hMailServer just kept retrying until it got through, so I was in the dark about the problem (but changing to a Yahoo! server seemed to fix the authentication errors I was seeing). I also tried checking my att.net and bellsouth.net email accounts from my cell phone, and found that I also had to change the built-in email client to point to Yahoo! servers in order to not get authentication errors. I think that the reason that webmail does not have the current problem is because it is a Yahoo! server instead of an AT&T server.

I don't know why using a Yahoo! email server seems to work with no problems (at least for me), but a legacy AT&T/RBOC server has problems. It is very strange that a Yahoo! email server has no problems reaching the AT&T authentication servers, but a "real" AT&T server has such a low priority that the connection times out. I am assuming that it is a lag problem because when I do telnet tests to a "real" AT&T server, there is a noticeably delay before I get the authentication failure, but if I use a Yahoo! server (or inbound.att.net which is just a DNS alias for a Yahoo! server), the authentication is immediate.

If AT&T really is trying to force users to only use Yahoo! email servers, they could easily just change the legacy AT&T/RBOC email server hostnames to be DNS aliases for Yahoo! servers as they have already done with inbound.att.net and outbound.att.net.
--
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

When governments fear people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

reply to NetFixer

webhost:/ # dig inbound.att.net
 
; <<>> DiG 9.7.6-P4 <<>> inbound.att.net
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 7631
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
 
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;inbound.att.net.               IN      A
 
;; ANSWER SECTION:
inbound.att.net.        383     IN      CNAME   pop-att.mail.yahoo.com.
pop-att.mail.yahoo.com. 112     IN      CNAME   pop-att.mail.am0.yahoodns.net.
pop-att.mail.am0.yahoodns.net. 71 IN    A       98.139.213.175
 
;; Query time: 35 msec
;; SERVER: 75.75.75.75#53(75.75.75.75)
;; WHEN: Fri Mar 29 18:40:27 2013
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 125
 
webhost:/ # telnet inbound.att.net 110
Trying 98.139.213.175...
Connected to inbound.att.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop101.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
quit
+OK
Connection closed by foreign host.
 

webhost:/ # telnet mail.bellsouth.net 110
Trying 204.127.217.17...
Connected to mail.bellsouth.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK (frfwpxc06) Maillennium POP3/PROXY server #71
user username@bellsouth.net
+OK
pass password
-ERR [AUTH] invalid user/password (error 999)
quit
+OK bellsouth.net closing POP3 channel
Connection closed by foreign host.
 
webhost:/ # telnet inbound.att.net 110
Trying 98.139.213.175...
Connected to inbound.att.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop110.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
user username@bellsouth.net
+OK password required.
pass password
+OK maildrop ready, 0 messages (0 octets) (1289)
list
+OK 0 messages (0 octets)
.
quit
+OK server signing off.
Connection closed by foreign host.
 

Tried switching to inbound.att.net, but would not work at all. At least with mail.bellsouth.net, it will eventually download email on the second or third try. We can only get email to our Dominant account -- both the others nothing the entire week...password failures.