Three.ie SMTP

jamesd

Have three data modem and cannto get email to go out from outlook express - what is three's smtp server? Or what servers can be used?

jamesd

Bump anyone?

ttm

Just been sorting out some mail problems for someone and discovered that three.ie block ALL port 25 traffic that doesn't go to its own mail relay.

So you can't use port 25 on with a 3 IRL modem even to connect to your own webserver (if you own a website) and send mail as you might normally by authenticating to your own server.

I haven't checked this recently but in my notes I have

mail-relay.3ireland.ie

as the SMTP server for 3 IRL

Interestingly that information is NOT anywhere on 3's website

Q for someone to prove me wrong :pac:

jamesd

Thanks , will give this a try later. I searched their site and mailed them and no answer at all.

jamesd

Thanks TTM - sorted so that was my good deed done for the day yesterday.

bonger

Hi,

Forgive me if I am posting a to the wrong thread but I believe that my problem is linked to this.

I am a 3 customer and am having issues sending emails from my Nokia E72 when connected to the 3 network. I can send without any issues when connected to my eircom wifi at home.

My email account is on my own Blacknight hosted domain.

When I (TRY to) send emails through the 3 network, my email just sits in my outbox and doesn't send.

Could this be an issue with my outgoing mail settings?

I have tried the following SMTP servers:
mail.blacknight.com
mail-relay.3ireland.ie
smtp1r.cp.blacknight.com
netac45.vie.hosting.nokia.com

but none of these work!

I have also tried changing my outgoing port to 587 as I have read elsewhere that this would help but again no luck! :-(

I have just spent the last half hour being swtiched between 3 customer service and technical support teams but it's obvious that neither knows the solution to my issue. :-(

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks!

ttm

bonger wrote: »

Hi,

Forgive me if I am posting a to the wrong thread but I believe that my problem is linked to this.

I am a 3 customer and am having issues sending emails from my Nokia E72 when connected to the 3 network. I can send without any issues when connected to my eircom wifi at home.

My email account is on my own Blacknight hosted domain.

When I (TRY to) send emails through the 3 network, my email just sits in my outbox and doesn't send.

Could this be an issue with my outgoing mail settings?

I have tried the following SMTP servers:
mail.blacknight.com
mail-relay.3ireland.ie
smtp1r.cp.blacknight.com
netac45.vie.hosting.nokia.com

but none of these work!

I have also tried changing my outgoing port to 587 as I have read elsewhere that this would help but again no luck! :-(

I have just spent the last half hour being swtiched between 3 customer service and technical support teams but it's obvious that neither knows the solution to my issue. :-(

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks!

It was a similar problem I was looking at when I posted a reply for jamesd.

Problem was that a friend couldn't send email on my network via an Eircom account but could using a 3 dongle. His mail server had been setup to listen on port 26 as well as the more normal port 25. My network only allows SMTP traffic on port 25 but the guy who set up his website knew that 3 won't allow any traffic on port 25 that doesn't go to mail-relay.3ireland.ie so had set up his mail server accordingly.

So log into your hosting account and see if you can change/add an additional port number for your mail server, or check with support to see if there is a second port already setup.

Then test by telneting to that port, like RUN>telnet mailservername 25
or RUN>telnet mailservername 26 if you try to telnet to port 25 to your own email server from a 3 account you'll get nothing try it, then try the same from your eircom account.

If you think that port 587 is setup for SMTP then RUN>telnet mailservername 587 from both ISP's and see if the mailserver respondes.

Use telnet to check out any other ports as a diagnostic tool as its quicker than changing the port numbers in your mail client. You can also run several sessions at the same time so you can check one port while waiting for a responce to another.

Hope that helps, here would be as good as any to post any questions and how you got it working on 3.

btw mail-relay.3ireland.ie has know to have its off days so try it again and don't forget you don't need to authenticate to it so don't use the username and password that you would use with your own mailserver as that will screw things up.

Edit> But don't ask me how/if you can use telnet on a Nokia E72 doubt you can so you will probably will need to test from a laptop.

bonger

Hi ttm,

THanks for your reply.

Contacted blacknight on the port number:
"Your mobile provider most likely has restrictions on sending emails out through their network, but your internet provider at home might not have those restrictions. You can try using port 587 instead of 25 as your Outgoing\SMTP port on the phone to see if that helps get around 3's restriction."

Tried using 587 and still no luck. Don't know what to do now and definitely don't want to waste my time calling 3 Tech Support back!! Feel like I'm banging my head off a brick wall every time I call 3. Their support team don't seem like they have a clue what they're talking about.

One of them actually asked me have I tried turning the phone off and on again!!! :mad:

ttm

bonger wrote: »

Hi ttm,

THanks for your reply.

Contacted blacknight on the port number:
"Your mobile provider most likely has restrictions on sending emails out through their network, but your internet provider at home might not have those restrictions. You can try using port 587 instead of 25 as your Outgoing\SMTP port on the phone to see if that helps get around 3's restriction."

Tried using 587 and still no luck. Don't know what to do now and definitely don't want to waste my time calling 3 Tech Support back!! Feel like I'm banging my head off a brick wall every time I call 3. Their support team don't seem like they have a clue what they're talking about.

One of them actually asked me have I tried turning the phone off and on again!!! :mad:

OK so the rules are simple......

TEST FIRST with telnet - RUN> Telnet yourmailservername 25

from Eircom connection (or any that works) to see what the respopnce is

So telnet mail.blacknight.com 25

gets a responce ...

220 mail.blacknight.com ESMTP

now we know that the mailserver is working as expected on port 25, nothing worse than wasting time on the clever stuff if the server isn't there to connect to.

Next we try> telnet mail.blacknight.com 587

BUT I that doesn't do anything for me from an Eircom connection so we can stop there as if it doesn't work from an Eircom account

But never give up as mail servers can get busy and not respond straight away, tried again and finally got a slowish responce from port 587 at blacknight.com 25

220 mail.blacknight.com ESMTP

THEN now we know the port is open connect to 3 and again try>telnet mail.blacknight.com 587

do this a couple of times and see if you get a responce if you don't then it will never work if you do the next stage is to change the port of your email client AND check that you are autenticating to it and the username and password is correct.

FINNALY if you've still totally failed don't forget you might need to add a rule to your firewall to allow you to use port 587 for email

Edit>My bad yet again, you can't telnet afaik from a mobile phone but port 587 should work fine, I'll try if from a 3 connection later as I'm interested in the problem myself.

2nd Edit>Tried using port 587 on the 3 network and I can telnet to mail.blacknight.com on port 587 no problem, so that means it should work for you from your mobile phone or at least I can't find anything that might stop it related to 3 or blacknight.

Walkman

This might sound stupid but have you tried downloading the email on 3 application and using that.

Edward G

TTM,
3 mobile was blocking port 25 for my outgoing email (my server address is via eircom.net).
I couldn't find the 3 SMTP server address and then stumbled across your post - it was the only one I found on the net that had the info I needed.
I can now at last send emails via 3 mobile - many thanks!!

ttm wrote: »

Just been sorting out some mail problems for someone and discovered that three.ie block ALL port 25 traffic that doesn't go to its own mail relay.

So you can't use port 25 on with a 3 IRL modem even to connect to your own webserver (if you own a website) and send mail as you might normally by authenticating to your own server.

I haven't checked this recently but in my notes I have

mail-relay.3ireland.ie

as the SMTP server for 3 IRL

Interestingly that information is NOT anywhere on 3's website

Q for someone to prove me wrong :pac:

bonger

ttm wrote: »

OK so the rules are simple......

TEST FIRST with telnet - RUN> Telnet yourmailservername 25

from Eircom connection (or any that works) to see what the respopnce is

So telnet mail.blacknight.com 25

gets a responce ...



now we know that the mailserver is working as expected on port 25, nothing worse than wasting time on the clever stuff if the server isn't there to connect to.

Next we try> telnet mail.blacknight.com 587

BUT I that doesn't do anything for me from an Eircom connection so we can stop there as if it doesn't work from an Eircom account

But never give up as mail servers can get busy and not respond straight away, tried again and finally got a slowish responce from port 587 at blacknight.com 25



THEN now we know the port is open connect to 3 and again try>telnet mail.blacknight.com 587

do this a couple of times and see if you get a responce if you don't then it will never work if you do the next stage is to change the port of your email client AND check that you are autenticating to it and the username and password is correct.

FINNALY if you've still totally failed don't forget you might need to add a rule to your firewall to allow you to use port 587 for email

Edit>My bad yet again, you can't telnet afaik from a mobile phone but port 587 should work fine, I'll try if from a 3 connection later as I'm interested in the problem myself.

2nd Edit>Tried using port 587 on the 3 network and I can telnet to mail.blacknight.com on port 587 no problem, so that means it should work for you from your mobile phone or at least I can't find anything that might stop it related to 3 or blacknight.

Hi ttm,
Thanks for investigating this!! Only just tried this now (I was away last week!). Unfortunately still no luck on this. I really can't understand it. My email just sits in my outbox no matter what port I use?!

I'm guessing it might just be a problem with the Nokia email app?! Thanks again for your help anyway!

Hi Walkman... DIdn't actually know there was a 3 email app! Will try that out now! Cheers!

bonger

Walkman wrote: »

This might sound stupid but have you tried downloading the email on 3 application and using that.

Legend! Didn't even know this app existed! I can finally send emails now!! Thanks for that!

alexphoenix

The Three.ie SMTP server is down and has been for a couple of days now.

After spending several hours puzzling as to why my emails had not been arriving at their destinations, and testing the set-up, I called 3 Customer Service yesterday only to be told that there was no problem at their end.

My email service is with eircom.net and it was suggested that I should change my outgoing mail SMTP server settings from the correct setting (mail-relay.3ireland.ie) to mail1.eircom.net (which only works if you are an Eircom broadband customer) or to smtp.o2.ie (!), neither of which worked. I tried to explain to the technical support agent that the Eircom settings he gave me were only valid if you were accessing the server as an Eircom Broadband customer (this is to prevent spammers from using the server and is standard practice here in ROI). He told me that Eircom had given Three.ie this information, and to query the settings with Eircom.

I have been a freelance computer technician here in ROI for the best part of fifteen years and have often had to deal with SMTP settings over the years, so I think I know my stuff, and I was convinced that the information given to me was wrong, but the support call ended at that point.

A couple of minutes later, the phone rang and the technical support agent informed me that he had just heard from the engineers that the SMTP server was indeed down (and had been for over 24 hours) and would probably not be fixed until Monday at the earliest. He advised me to change my outbound server settings back to mail-relay.3ireland.ie as they had been before.

Fair play to the man for coming back to me with the updated news, especially as I had been pretty short with him regarding his incorrect advice previously. He was, after all, only relaying to me the inaccurate information supplied to him by his employers.

What I want to know is this:

How come three.ie (parent company CK Hutchison Holdings in Hong Kong, market capitalization around 40 BILLION euro) do not have some sort of fail-safe backup in place if their SMTP server goes down? And why should it take several days for the outage to be repaired?

How come their technical support staff are not aware of this outage 24 hours later? Could it be that no-one in the company NOTICED for 24 hours?

How come they did not (at the very least) send out a text message to all customers' devices informing them of the outage? They are quick enough to send out spam-type junkmail informing us of silly promotions through this medium.

I realize that this only affects the minority of customers using POP3 apps that store email messages offline on the customer's own device (eg Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird etc) and that those using webmail (Gmail etc) through their browsers would be unaffected. I was able to test my email accounts this way and they worked fine.

However, for a company that claims to be "Ireland's largest high-speed mobile broadband service", this minority represents a considerable number of people who have been inconvenienced.

All in all, it is just one more example of the shabby service we have come to expect from three.ie

alexphoenix

alexphoenix wrote: »

The Three.ie SMTP server is down and has been for a couple of days now.

After spending several hours puzzling as to why my emails had not been arriving at their destinations, and testing the set-up, I called 3 Customer Service yesterday only to be told that there was no problem at their end.

My email service is with eircom.net and it was suggested that I should change my outgoing mail SMTP server settings from the correct setting (mail-relay.3ireland.ie) to mail1.eircom.net (which only works if you are an Eircom broadband customer) or to smtp.o2.ie (!), neither of which worked. I tried to explain to the technical support agent that the Eircom settings he gave me were only valid if you were accessing the server as an Eircom Broadband customer (this is to prevent spammers from using the server and is standard practice here in ROI). He told me that Eircom had given Three.ie this information, and to query the settings with Eircom.

I have been a freelance computer technician here in ROI for the best part of fifteen years and have often had to deal with SMTP settings over the years, so I think I know my stuff, and I was convinced that the information given to me was wrong, but the support call ended at that point.

A couple of minutes later, the phone rang and the technical support agent informed me that he had just heard from the engineers that the SMTP server was indeed down (and had been for over 24 hours) and would probably not be fixed until Monday at the earliest. He advised me to change my outbound server settings back to mail-relay.3ireland.ie as they had been before.

Fair play to the man for coming back to me with the updated news, especially as I had been pretty short with him regarding his incorrect advice previously. He was, after all, only relaying to me the inaccurate information supplied to him by his employers.

What I want to know is this:

How come three.ie (parent company CK Hutchison Holdings in Hong Kong, market capitalization around 40 BILLION euro) do not have some sort of fail-safe backup in place if their SMTP server goes down? And why should it take several days for the outage to be repaired?

How come their technical support staff are not aware of this outage 24 hours later? Could it be that no-one in the company NOTICED for 24 hours?

How come they did not (at the very least) send out a text message to all customers' devices informing them of the outage? They are quick enough to send out spam-type junkmail informing us of silly promotions through this medium.

I realize that this only affects the minority of customers using POP3 apps that store email messages offline on the customer's own device (eg Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird etc) and that those using webmail (Gmail etc) through their browsers would be unaffected. I was able to test my email accounts this way and they worked fine.

However, for a company that claims to be "Ireland's largest high-speed mobile broadband service", this minority represents a considerable number of people who have been inconvenienced.

All in all, it is just one more example of the shabby service we have come to expect from three.ie

Please note that I have moved this post to a new thread under "Broadband" where it can be found more easily, so please post any replies there rather than here.

Thank you!