ratelimited - unable to connect to pop3 server

[ed_meyer]

I have been trying to track down a problem that I have, sometimes several times a week and lasts for sometimes several hours. Sometimes I can't get my emails. I get error 0x80042108, Outlook is unable to connect with your incoming (pop3) server.

Pings to mail.mydomain.com come back fine.

tracert works great to missy.gendns9.com.

Server loads are fine <1.

Any other ideas I can try to locate where my problem is? This has been a periodic problem for close to a year now. My ISP is Hughes satellite, and I would never rule them out as the cause. I just want some way of proving where the problem is. Thanks for any ideas anybody might come up with.

[Alexander]

Hello,
please, try to execute the following command:

telnet missy.gendns9.com 110


It will show you whether your can connect to the pop server or not.
Also, you can find useful information at I can't send email, but I can receive it - GlowHost Web Hosting Forums

[ed_meyer]

Ah-Ha, The telnet command came back with - Could not open connection to the host, on port 110: Connect failed. Hughes insists that they don't block any ports, but I've always had my doubts. Funny thing is that it will start working again, hopefully any time now.

No problems getting a telnet connection using a different port. Can I safely switch to using a different port for my pop3 connection?

[Matt]

110 is the port to use. It sounds to me like you are being firewalled. How often are you checking email and how many computers check for email using the same public IP address?

[ed_meyer]

I check my email maybe a dozen times throughout the day, my wife does also from her computer. When it's down for one of us, it's down for both. Because of the satellite ISP structure our IP is NAT'd, that can act very similar to a firewall. Sometimes it's nice to not have to worry much about anybody seeing me from the dangerous outside internet world. I don't even run any kind of firewall on my network.

I really appreciate the help, I'm coming to the conclusion that there's not much more I can do about it but, mutter under my breath (!*&@%^ satellite). I wish I had another option besides 22k dialup.

[Matt]

Next time it happens open a ticket at the helpdesk as soon as it happens and provide us with the problematic email addresses and we can check the firewalls here.

I was suggesting perhaps there is a block on this end because if your mail program is set to check for emails too frequently, the server may temporarily blacklist your IP for a short while.

Typically if your mail program is set to check every minute it is too frequent, especially if you have multiple machines on the same public IP set this way.

If the above applies to you, you might try a setting like every 5 minutes or so.

[ed_meyer]

OK, thanks for the info Matt. BTW port 110 on missy.gendns9.com is back for me and my emails just started working again just fine...

Thanks...

[ed_meyer]

Email problem happened again. I did as you suggested Matt and opened a help ticket. Your fine tech staff have identified the cause. Too many attempts to connect from my IP... My problem is that I only received 2 emails and couldn't even send 1 today. I am posting this to help any other satellite internet users. We normally share an IP with who knows how many other users. Satellite pipes are quite expensive to operate so they pack in the users. This problem makes me nervous to resell hosting in my resellers account. How can I tell someone they can traffic up to 500 emails an hour, when I can't send even 1 in 3 hours. Anyway, I have been frustrated with this problem many times and for any other satellite internet users out there. That's one of the reasons you can have problems with your emails.

Thanks to the whole Glowhost tech staff for helping me figure this out. It has been a head banger

[Matt]

Its pretty unlikely that your IP is being used by others to make SMTP connections to the server since it is a relatively small server and only a handful of users use satellite Internet the odds are it is directly related to you.

Ratelimiting generally occurs for the following reasons:

1. Incoming SMTP connections that violate RFCs (this is usually spammers and broken MTA)
2. Incoming SMTP connections that do not send QUIT
3. Incoming SMTP connections that have recently matched an RBL
4. Incoming SMTP connections that have attacked the server
5. Hosts which transport messages with spam score from SpamAssassinTM is greater than 20.0.

So I would start crossing items off the list. Like number 5 for example. Was the email you sent before you were Ratelimited Spammy by nature? Lots of HTML, images, spammy words? If not, then move on down the line.

I can tell you it is not number 3 because I looked up your IP at Spamhaus and Spamcop and you are not listed. So 5 and 3 are gone.

1 and 2 are your most likely causes.

Also regarding the 500 email per hour thing, you are confusing that with the number of emails you can send off from the server in an hour. You can't possible send 500 emails in an hour with a standard email program, you would use a script for that and that script would be unaffected by ratelimit since the script's IP is on the server versus the IP which is getting ratelimited, which is your IP.

I'd try another email program or update the one you have to see if it fixes the problem as a start.

[ed_meyer]

Thanks Matt for more leads and information so I can better understand what is happening.

This is how it went on my end today. - I started up my computer (only one on here) and got 2 emails from 2 yahoo groups. I wrote an email to my wife ( 1 sentence & 1 link) and it wouldn't send. I am using outlook (up to date). My wife uses outlook express (also up to date). We are both on different accounts under my reseller plan. When one of our emails is down, both of our email accounts don't work. Bottom line is that I got my email once today, and never did get to send even my first.

I rebooted my satellite modem and luckily got a different IP so now both our emails are working fine. I am trying to go through your list of reasons. Do you know if Outlook & outlook express send a quit? Also I'm not sure about reason #1. I'll have to look up those acronyms.