Either I'm an idiot or they're idiots: help with Verizon DSL and outgoing mail please

August 30, 2005 9:02 PM

My DSL-fu is failing me. How do I get Verizon DSL to let me send mail from my mac.com account?

I've followed all of the recommended settings. Set my smtp to outgoing.verizon.net. Set it to authenticate. But it's rejecting my (otherwise working fine) password.

Any tricks to setting up Verizon DSL to work well with other mail services?

Thanks for any clues.

posted by baltimore to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Um....Just configure your e-mail client for the .mac. I've done this from day one. Verizon is just your ISP; you don't tell Verizon anything about .Mac
posted by ParisParamus at 9:12 PM on August 30, 2005

smtp to outgoing.verizon.net

should be smtp.mac.com
posted by doctor_negative at 9:28 PM on August 30, 2005

Yea, you seem to be confusing Verizon-as-ISP with Verizon-as-mailhost. When you check your Verizon mail, you connect to a Verizon mail server to get the mail; when you check your .mac email, you need to connect to a .mac mail server.

The process of checking your email is completely separate from the process of actually getting on the Internet. The fact that Verizon happens to provide you with both Internet access and an email account doesn't change this.

So, like Paris said: you should be able to point your email client (Apple's Mail.app?) to mac.com while connecting to the Internet over Verizon DSL without a problem. If it's not implied, you should create two email accounts in Mail.app, one for Verizon mail and one for .mac mail.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 9:29 PM on August 30, 2005

You should try the mac.com server, though I wouldn't be surprised if Verizon blocked outgoing connections to non-Verizon mail servers (my old ISP did).

Have you tried using the Verizon server without authentication? You normally don't need it.
posted by cillit bang at 11:46 PM on August 30, 2005

Basically what cillit bang said.

I suspect that Verizon is preventing you from relaying e-mail. I have the exact same problem with BTopenworld: I can collect mail from my server but when I want to send I have to use BT's server. A google search for relaying denied may turn up some relevant/useful information.
posted by alby at 2:03 AM on August 31, 2005

If Verizon is blocking port 25, you just set your smtp address to the correct Verizon one and everything should work. However, many ISPs don't use authentication with username/pass, rather, they check for fully validated activity on the pop server (therefore within their overall authentication server system, which the pop ties in to, I believe) from a specific IP address. If they haven't seen it sometimes the smtp will fail. So if you have your email program set to check an email address you get from Verizon on a regular basis, even if you're not using it, I think it should work out.
posted by mikel at 4:25 AM on August 31, 2005

Thanks to everyone for offering ideas, most valid and good.

It was late and I was frustrated when I posted, so I didn't give enough background to make it clear that I wasn't confused about ISP vs mail passwords, etc. So ten points from baltimore for an ill-formed question.

But, to put an ending on this story for the Google cache, the whole problem was that the SMTP server, which requires authentication, was choking on my primary Verizon email account (which I'm using only for SMTP), but when I created a sub-account, everything was fine. So chalk it up to the gremlins in the machine. If this were going to be an account I used a lot, it would matter to me to fix the primary account, but as it is, it's much more painful to try to understand the offshore tech support guy's heavily accented voice (and, before you get the wrong idea, his English is WAY better than my Hindi, but that doesn't make it any easier for my western ears to extract the words from his rapid-fire speech) than it is to simply fail over to account number two.

As always, thanks AxMe!
posted by baltimore at 4:38 PM on August 31, 2005