email outage - for info

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 16:38:56

I just confirmed with idnet support that there is a problem sending emails from idnet.com. idnet are aware and working on it. Some email addresses work ok and some don't. There were no other posts here and nothing on the network status page so I thought it might help other users for me to mention here. idnetters is the first place I look to see if something is my problem or idnet's.

Noelle · May 17, 2017, 16:44:12

I have spent the entire afternoon with the support and they told me that nothing was wrong on their side. I can receive emails but not send any. They told me that it's because I use Windows Live Mail. I installed Thunderbird and the same happened.
Do you get a quota error? I get one. I get a message telling me that my quota has been exceeded.

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 17:42:17

Hi Noelle,

I don't get a quota error. On Thunderbird I get "Login to server smtp.idnet.com failed." On iPhone I get "username or password incorrect"

Some of my email addresses work fine (I have 9 or 10 of them!) and some fail. It had been like that for maybe a couple of hours when I contacted suppport, I asked if they were aware of a problem sending emails and they immediately said yes and they had only just become aware.

Noelle · May 17, 2017, 17:54:51

I contacted them earlier, around noon. And they spent the whole afternoon calling me back telling me to install Thunderbird. It was a nightmare. I'm thinking about leaving them and get a cheaper ISP.

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 18:14:42

Don't jump in haste, Noelle. I have always found support helpful and idnet to be a very reliable ISP. It's always going to be frustrating if you happen to be the first to report a problem. Any ISP will initially assume the problem is at your end.

I'd give them a while to fix the problem. I will certainly post an update when my failing email send is working again.

In case your problem is unrelated, have you checked that you are not close to quota? (I'm not).

Noelle · May 17, 2017, 18:33:51

Is the problem solved on your side?

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 18:42:18

No, Noelle, it's not working yet.

Noelle · May 17, 2017, 18:51:16

My quota is 2 per hour: that's what I get when I connect to my page but Idnet told me my quota was OK on their side.
Do you think my problem come from this quota issue? In this case, what should I do?
I have no problem with my iPhone or with the Webmail, only with WLM and Thunderbirds.

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 19:34:47

Quote from: Noelle on May 17, 2017, 18:51:16
My quota is 2 per hour: that's what I get when I connect to my page but Idnet told me my quota was OK on their side.
Do you think my problem come from this quota issue? In this case, what should I do?
I have no problem with my iPhone or with the Webmail, only with WLM and Thunderbirds.

I'm not sure what you mean by "connect to my page". What page? On the idnet portal, when I look at my quota, it shows 100MB for each email address and the amount I have used up. A storage quota is all I see. The quota you mention seems to be time related and I don't know where that comes from. Maybe some knowledgeable person will pipe up.

In the meantime, I would be inclined just to wait and see if idnet fix something. Mine is still not working.

Quote
I have no problem with my iPhone or with the Webmail, only with WLM and Thunderbirds.

My problem is on all devices and platforms. But at least I know the problem is at idnet's end, especially as the addresses that work do so on all devices and the ones that fail do so on all devices. And idnet said they have a problem.

Simon · May 17, 2017, 19:48:06

I don't know why IDNet wouldn't have mentioned this if it was an issue, but email quotas - the number of outgoing emails you can send in a given time period - is affected by whether you have a 'weak' or 'strong' password. I've never heard of it being as low as 2, but it might be worth logging into your IDNet account and checking your email passwords if you have a quotas issue.

Simon · May 17, 2017, 19:51:45

I can confirm that I cannot send emails from at least one of my IDNet accounts. This is from my phone and I'm getting a certificate error, but that doesn't mean that's what the problem is! It seems it cannot connect to the SMTP server.

Noelle · May 17, 2017, 20:03:54

My password is fine, I just checked it - I remember your post from 3 years ago.

On my Idnet portal, here are the info I found:

Mail Storage 100MB 17.03MB
Outgoing Messages Per Hour 2 0
Outgoing Recipients Per Hour 250 0
Outgoing Restriction Reason Default

On my side, my outgoing emails work from all platforms except WLM and Thunderbirds with a quota error - quota per hour exceeded. It stared around lunch time. It doesn't make sense as I can send 10 emails in a row from my phone.

Well Simon, if you have a rational explanation, I'm all ears

Simon · May 17, 2017, 20:31:34

Quote from: Noelle on May 17, 2017, 20:03:54
My password is fine, I just checked it - I remember your post from 3 years ago.

That's very good. I can't remember my posts from three days ago!

It's probably a server glitch, and it's picking up something from some email clients which is making it go doolally. Rational? Who ever said computers are rational?

By the way, not being funny, but are you sure your Outgoing Messages Per Hour is 2 and not 20?

Just another thought - maybe there's a security issue with some email addresses being spoofed and used by spammers? But that wouldn't be rational either, as why would it only affect some email clients? I guess all we can do is wait and see what IDNet say in the morning. I have emailed them with my own issues, so I suggest anyone affected does so as well.

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 21:11:45

They are definitely doing something now at idnet. My user/password error has gone away and so I got past the smtp login. The failed email account succeeded in sending an email to one of my other addresses (with a different provider) and it did actually get delivered. The next time I tried sending to the same address, the email failed but this time the error was that the destination email address was rejected by the server. Thereafter, every email I sent failed as the destination email address was rejected (whatever emaiil address I tried to send to).

I don't know exactly what goes on at idnet's email server but it appears it goes through a several stage authentication process. First, it authenticates the login to the smtp server. If that works, it authenticates the destination address, perhaps by an email equivalent of DNS for http. Possibly it authenticates quota at another stage.

No doubt, the techs are trying to fix whatever authentication faults are present but they haven't quite got there yet.

My advice to you, Noelle, is still just wait.

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 21:17:33

Quote from: Noelle on May 17, 2017, 20:03:54
My password is fine, I just checked it - I remember your post from 3 years ago.

On my Idnet portal, here are the info I found:

Mail Storage 100MB 17.03MB
Outgoing Messages Per Hour 2 0
Outgoing Recipients Per Hour 250 0
Outgoing Restriction Reason Default

On my side, my outgoing emails work from all platforms except WLM and Thunderbirds with a quota error - quota per hour exceeded. It stared around lunch time. It doesn't make sense as I can send 10 emails in a row from my phone.

Well Simon, if you have a rational explanation, I'm all ears

That's interesting. Mine just shows
Item Quota Current Usage
Mail Storage 100MB 10.64MB

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 21:24:08

Quote from: Simon on May 17, 2017, 19:48:06
I don't know why IDNet wouldn't have mentioned this if it was an issue, but email quotas - the number of outgoing emails you can send in a given time period - is affected by whether you have a 'weak' or 'strong' password. I've never heard of it being as low as 2, but it might be worth logging into your IDNet account and checking your email passwords if you have a quotas issue.

That may well be right, I can't argue. But the portal declares some of my email account passwords are "extremely weak and not allowed" but the email works fine and there is no hourly quota, just a storage quota. The same password on a different email account does not give that complaint about weakness.

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 21:32:31

Quote from: armadillo on May 17, 2017, 21:17:33
That's interesting. Mine just shows
Item Quota Current Usage
Mail Storage 100MB 10.64MB

Well, that is the case on that email account. I just checked another of my email accounts and it shows an hourly quota too:

Quotas
Item      Quota      Current Usage
Mail Storage      100MB      69.57MB
Outgoing Messages Per Hour    3      0
Outgoing Recipients Per Hour    3      0
Outgoing Restriction Reason    Default

That is on one of the ones that work ok (at the moment).

There is no pattern correlating password strength with quota display or whether the email is working or not - at least not on my accounts.

I stick with my suggestion that there is currently some authentication error and idnet are trying things to fix it. Meanwhile (Noelle), best not to worry about the quota issue.

armadillo · May 17, 2017, 21:58:14

My email accounts are now all working.

Noelle, you might want to try again - but don't be too worried if it isn't solid yet!

Simon · May 17, 2017, 22:50:40

Yes, all seems to be working here now.

Noelle · May 17, 2017, 23:23:37

It still doesn't work

armadillo · May 18, 2017, 00:02:35

So mine and Simon's are working but Noelle's isn't yet.

Noelle, I think you should try after 10 am and see how the land lies then. If it's still not working, call support again. At least they will be clued up on what they found wrong and what they did about it and they should know what to do about yours.

Noelle · May 18, 2017, 11:49:54

Still not working today. I received an email from support telling it would work around 10am but it doesn't. It works fine from my iPhone but not from Thunderbird on my computer.

Noelle · May 18, 2017, 12:40:57

OK it works except now Norton is blocking my outgoing emails. I have disabled the scan of outgoing emails and now everything works.
I have contacted Norton and Norton told me that the issue comes from my ISP

Noelle · May 18, 2017, 12:54:10

I just had Idnet support on the phone and the issue is not solved for all customers. It should be OK tonight.

armadillo · May 18, 2017, 16:50:59

Looks like they have had a challenge solving this fault! I would be interested to know why an ISP issue can affect Norton's outgoing scan. Let's hope you can turn it on again when idnet have finished the fix.