Are there special settings for e-mail on a new Eircom connection?

The_Conductor

I'd like to ask your patience and forebearance with this, as its probably going to be quite long- its detailing an issue involving Gmail and Mac OS and changes that seem to have happened after moving from one ISP (Fastcom) to Eircom.

My relatively young father (76) is addicted to Apple/Mac products and is having some issues. I don't use Mac OS at all (I've never had an iPhone, I'm an Android/Windows guy), and am having some issues trying to assist him.

Up to very recently he was using an over-the-air broadband provider (Fastcom) in Co. Sligo, in a very remote area, but was experiencing increasing difficulties with his connection (which his IP phone also uses). He had a 10-15Mb connection- which sort of did his needs. The issue he was experiencing involved line of sight with the broadcast tower a few miles away- as the remote area he is in is heavily forested- and as trees grow, obviously his line of sight diminished.

We persuaded him that a fibre connection was the future- and he went to a whole lot of trouble digging a 1.2km trench with culverts and ducting- to facilitate a new fibre optic cable be brought to the house from the main road (he is that far off a main road).

Eircom subsequently came and gave his efforts a pass mark, and spent two days bringing the cable to the house, brought in a modem- and he now has a brand spanking new 150Mb connection (its nothing that I'd be boasting about- but its over 10 times his previous connection speed).

He has attached his old wifi router to the Eircom box (its a reasonable enough Netgear Nighthawk that I gave him) and presto he is up and running again.

However........

E-mails that were sending instantaneously previously on his Macbook are now dribbling out of his laptop over 5-10 minutes, and bugging the crap out of him.

His laptop is a brandnew Macbook Air which he bought in Sligo a couple of months ago, before Level 5 lockdown was reimposed- and it is otherwise zippy as hell with its new found speed.

Eircom are giving him the run around and blaming the fact that he is using wifi rather than a wired connection to the router, to explain why e-mail is dribbling out of his laptop- when a few days previously on a 10Mbps connection- they were positively zooming.

He is just using Gmail- nothing unusual- but I can't get out of him whether he has an e-mail client, or is using a website or what.

Given no changes have occurred on his laptop and wifi setup- both of which are otherwise working fine- it would seem to me that there must be some e-mail settings that are specific to Eircom that need to be input into his laptop so the current default config is customised to better reflect the needs of his new ISP.

Any suggestions/tips/ideas gratefully accepted.

Note- I am in Dublin- so I'm going to have to try to do this remotely with him........

Thankyou for bearing with me.

ED E

He is just using Gmail- nothing unusual- but I can't get out of him whether he has an e-mail client, or is using a website or what.

This you need to do, we cant really help you with that part.



IF the issue is with SENDING email not receiving it and everything else is fine we can infer:
He IS using a client
He's using SMTP which depends on the ISP

Swapping from client to web browser will instantly fix his problems. Or you can remote in and set the Eir SMTP server. (mail1.eircom.net)

The_Conductor

He just got rather frustrated trying to explain to me how he was using e-mail- I'll try him again later this PM and report back.........

babelfish1990

The_Conductor wrote: »

He has attached his old wifi router to the Eircom box (its a reasonable enough Netgear Nighthawk that I gave him) and presto he is up and running again.

Plugging the old router into the new Eir router is not a good idea. Having two routers on the network is likely causing IP address conflicts. Ask your father to plug his laptop directly into the Eir router using an Ethernet cable. If the email works, it will prove that the second router is causing the problems. In that case, ask him to remove the second router and migrate to the Eir WiFi settings. If he needs better WiFi coverage to cover the house, don't use a second router - get a Mesh WiFi system.

CoBo55

babelfish1990 wrote: »

Plugging the old router into the new Eir router is not a good idea. Having two routers on the network is likely causing IP address conflicts. Ask your father to plug his laptop directly into the Eir router using an Ethernet cable. If the email works, it will prove that the second router is causing the problems. In that case, ask him to remove the second router and migrate to the Eir WiFi settings. If he needs better WiFi coverage to cover the house, don't use a second router - get a Mesh WiFi system.

Good luck trying to get a 76 year old man to setup a mesh system over the phone... I'd say he's using an email client to handle his emails and as ED said earlier the outgoing server needs to be changed.