Email Connectivity

I won't go on about how technology gives us so many options to communicate or how being a yahoo who twitter's their facebook can make people notice your facebooks' google eyes...

But I share a few thoughts about the classic email headaches that folks, including me, run into in our daily grind. Specifically, this article is a response to a very intelligent and savvy computer user who is simply frustrated with something that seems like it should be a no brainer; yet no one has produced an intelligible response to his pleas for help.

Now, I admittedly don't have all the specifics but I can share some of the things I know that might help you either solve your issue or simply circumvent the problem altogether with alternative solutions.

The email I received:

Big Brother - or Bully?

The fact is, the advice this fella has been given is correct but why? The reason is kind of technical but can be summarized by saying that the standard smtp mechanisms used on the internet are often policed by our service providers.

I have a terrible story about how AT&T completely shut down all of Jegas managed emails outgoing from our servers because they bought SBC Global and without warning enforced this new policy that simply broke our systems by stopping emails generated by them. Picture this: Jegas, LLC hosts your website and your contact-us page emails you when visitors to your web site wish to contact you. Well, our servers send an email to you so you are in quick communication with your web site's visitor. AT&T said after I discovered the problem, they made the change awhile ago when they took over and I'm only allowed to have 10 email "from" addresses and I must go through a registration process for each of them to confirm they are really mine. Needless so say, we switched providers and also moved all our servers off site increasing bandwidth and eliminating the same issues even if our current ComCast commercial account starts getting policed.

Next, there is another level of policing I think that is worse: Attempting to use the SMTP server provided by your email account's provider is simply blocked! This is what is happening to our troubled anonymous friend above. It works like this: SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) normally uses port 25. (I think of ports like phone extensions, and ip addresses and domain names as phone numbers to keep things simple). Well, many service providers such as Comcast, AT&T, Cox simple do not allow you to use Port 25 to talk to outside SMTP servers. Once more, when you call them you get various answers about; worse they blame your email provider! Then when you contact the email provider, they are like, "No, not true... but we hear that a lot. We have smtp servers here running for you, your service provider is probably blocking us" (translation: stopping port 25 traffic) ... it goes backforth and the service provider will say - we don't block your email provider, they just say that so you use our smtp server and not theirs... (yeah, it can get this bad trying to resolve this stuff)

Now I believe in standing up to the bullies but I'm also a believer in managing energy being more important than managing time: learn how to get along or run will save energy... oh and probably time also.

What do I do if I must keep this email account?

Well, like the support folks told our anonymous friend, enter your provider's smtp email credentials. Example, if you have: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and a password, etc.. enter the same smtp credentials for the outgoing server on your troubled email account.. and you solve the send issue. By using the conduit that is policed by your provider, you might get through, literally using their smtp server to send your email as your other email account. Now, if you find, like our anonymous friend, that only one account needs this provincial treatment, the problem could lie with your internet provider or your email's account provider. Hard to tell with certainty and trying to point the finger and make technical support  calls might just waste your energy with little to no payoff.

If you are still having trouble, look for an online email provider or solution that allows you to "connect to" and read email from your other email accounts. Because these types of email services reside on the web somewhere else, chances are good you've just circumvented your internet provider from being a parental middleman policing your data.

"But I like Outlook!" - I suspect someone will say this and thats Ok, the suggestion above about changing the smtp credentials usually works.

If you're like our anonymous friend, Outlook isn't always going to be available on the road... or perhaps from your mobile phone/pda. Using a web interface for your email at least gives you a fair amount of consistency regardless how you access it or where you are physically when you do so.

Also, ask your email account's provider if they have an SMTP email server running at a different port than 25; tell them you suspect your provider is blocking you from using their smtp server and you'd like to use theirs directly if possible, after all... you are likely paying for it.

What if I'm simply annoyed with my provider, should I change?

Not necessarily. First off, switching is a hassle with interruptions, scheduling, billing issues and downtime: you must really want to change. Second, regardless of how freely services are said to be  available, competition, free trade etc.. the truth is, from your house you have only a few choices to get internet:

• Satellite - ties up a phone line typically for uploading and the satelite is used for downloading. It works, but seems kind of hokey to me.(That's a professional term, no laughing ) - decent download speed.
• DSL (Fancy phone line mechanism) - decent upload and download speeds, though I've had better results getting a commercial cable account... but that's just my opinion, I admittedly was happy to lose AT&T after my issue with them described above.
• Dial-up (Slow phone line mechanism) - considered out of date, this form of communication is great but not suitable for today's typical internet bandwidth requirements. There is a time and place still for dial up technology but internet browsing is not it in my opinion. e.g. server to server last resort notification and control systems, dedicated direct system to system communication to avoid using internet infrastructure for security reasons etc.
• Cable - the wires used to carry cable television are utilized for internet connectivity and the speeds are usually pretty good.
• Fiber Optics - you can have your own fiber optic line run to your house or business if its available in your area. This option costs a lot of money and is really only suitable for the very well off household or business consumer who needs the absolute highest end connectivity speeds and service. Chances are you'd get this from AT&T and one can only hope that when you pay this much for service,they don't police you unless you're a spam maniac email abuser who deserves to get shut down or blocked for the general good of all the other folks using the internet responsibly.

Is there a better way?

I go back to recommending you find an email provider that has a web interface you can use. Most allow using either their web browser interface or Outlook... so switching to one of these email providers doesn't necessarily mean you can't use Outlook. It does however mean you should understand how Outlook works a little. For example, if your outlook is configured to "delete email from the server" when it downloads them, then logging into your web browser interface will show you an empty inbox if your Outlook "clean house". I've often left my Outlook on, configured to automatically download emails, and while on the road tried to get emails people would send me just to see them in the web interface one minute and (*poof*) gone the next.

I'm not a huge cloud advocate. I believe there is a time and place for everything and I worry that people are being told to migrate all their data online to clouds... but I digress. Back to topic, these web based email services are in fact "cloud" computing: I mean that when you use an email provider that has one of these web browser email reader/write tools (called an email client) the email server is not at your house. The emails are not really at your house... they are at someone else's house. 

Again, using Outlook is one way to to bring these emails "home" so you can save them on your harddrive, and there are other tools for this also - your results may vary.

One other solution is to simply ask your email account's provider how you can forward your emails from that account to another account. Though not ideal for all situations, it could be just the thing to prevent you from dropping the ball when an important client emails you something that must be responded to in a timely manner.

IMAP

What is IMAP? I don't know... but I like it! 

With IMAP email servers, you can keep your email sorted in folders, download what you want, allow a colleague to manage your email all without fear of "losing an email". It's one stop shopping, and it definitely is the cloud computing scenario, but with a decent IMAP server and web interface, you can survive without Outlook.

Toss in a free desktop tool called SeaMonkey v2.0 and you get a completely free desktop email client, capable of managing IMAP email and or smtp, a Mozilla Web Browser, address book, and a simple web page composer. I personally use this tool and I can't watch Netflix movies with it, but for running my business and developing web applications, and checking email and doing online research etc.. it's great: everything in one program = SWEET!

What about if I get a FREE email account, that has IMAP and SMTP

Sweet, but take into account nothing is free in this world: why is it free? You really should ask yourself. Are these folks appending advertisements at the end of each of your emails? Are they an advertising company whose best interest is served by collecting data that helps them sell more advertising? (often crossing the line in what we think folks should do with the data they collect about us?)

You don't care? Yeah.. get the free one; you can't really complain however if their system goes down, it's not like you're paying for it. 

Get what you pay for!

Jegas, LLC offers a self help kiosk for folks like you who need internet services to simply work and are capable of helping themselves.

• No Advertising
• Mobile Phone Web Interface
• Web Browser Interface 
• Contact Management
• Integrated Group Calendar
• SMTP compliant
• IMAP compliant

Check out our email plans here: Jegas, LLC - Hosted Email at https://www.jegas.net

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