AOL and Outlook nightmare

[click]

We have Exch. 5.5 sp3 on an NT4 sp6. A couple of months ago a user wanted to use Outlook from home. I have help them out in the past by having them right clicking on the outlook icon, and typing the server name, their name, and then clicking on Check name. I also have to tell them to add the name of the server to the hosts file. No problem.
This particular user connected with AOL, and I went through the steps, and all went fine. About a month later she called me and said that it was telling her that she had the wrong user name and password. We came to the conclusion that she was typing her email address, instead of her login name. She corrected it and no problem. Today she called and all she gets is "The exchange server is not reachable" however, she can get to OWA, she can ping it, etc. She tried typing the IP address, instead of the server name, and the same error. I got on a computer at work with XP and the same office version, except that the ISP was AT&T, and went through the same steps and got through fine, but hers would not get past the "check name" Any suggestions? Thanks for the help. Click

 

[jonarden]

Perhaps test to see if it IS an ISP problem? If your organization has a non-AOL dial-up account (possibly for remote users with laptops) and if the user can follow your instructions and enable dial-up access to that other ISP on the home PC, see if a connection can be made to access corporate e-mail. If the same error occurs, and you could access that users e-mail account via ATT using another computer, its likely a home workstation configuration issue. These are sometimes tough because you don't know what (firewalls, spam blocking software, malware, etc.) the home user may have on their home PC. FYI, medium privacy settings in Zone Alarm Pro running on Win XP (to block some cookies and pop-ups ads) can block OWA access.

 

[MyGalSal]

I would be interested to know how many people have experienced this problem within the last 7-14 days? I am using Exchange 2000 and Outlook XP with AOL as my ISP. It worked fine prior to this last week (give or take a few days.) I have done extensive testing, and it appears that AOL may have some sort of a "block" in place as I am able to use Outlook 2000 and Outlook XP if I use a different ISP. The message I get is that it can't find the Exchange Server and do you want to retry or work offline.

 

[click]

Thank you for your reply.
Jonarden: She can access OWA fine, the problem is regular Outlook. I will try to see if she can connect through another ISP. Kind of tough, though for most AOL users, but good idea, thank you.
MyGalSal: That is exactly what I was looking for, it seems that AOL must be putting some kind of a block on certain ports, or something, I hope that enough users complain so that it can get fixed. Thank you. Click.

 

[MyGalSal]

Yes, OWA works just fine for us to. I checked another forum with a similar post and it appears that the problem with AOL and the full Outlook client started on or about May 18th 2003. It appears that AOL maybe blocking port 25 to external mail servers. At this point we are considering dropping AOL and going to Earthlink. I talked with Earthlinks tech support and they said they do not block port 25 from going to external mail servers and they did not have any plans to do so. It would be nice if AOL took notice of this problem. I called AOL's tech support but I received the standard "we do not support the use of other email clients...blah blah blah."

 

[click]

Well, that takes care of AOL!
Now going back to OWA, I should not have said "works fine" Lately (outside)users have to constantly type their user name and password, even two maybe even 3 times on the same message. It seems that it times out about every minute and 1/2 or so. Users are getting sick of it. Is there anything we can do to change this? Click.

 

[strategygeek]

I'm happy to find others talking about this, but it is a sad circumstance under which to meet.

I run an Exchange server in WAN mode for my company--all of my co-workers work from home. Beginning sometime May 15th my AOL subscribers were no longer able to connect to the Exchange server. At first I suspected that AOL was suffering temporary network difficulties, but it is becoming apparent that AOL has changed its network policies in a manner that prevents Outlook from connecting to Exchange. I have since set up temporary dial-up accounts for some of my co-workers with one of the national discount ISPs, and they have been able to connect immediately using this other ISP.

Unfortunately this is not an effective long-term solution. Has anyone received any meaningful information from AOL regarding this issue (I'm not holding my breath)? I'm not an AOL user myself, so I haven't been able to contact them directly. I'd rather not have to conference call them and ask one of my users to suffer through all the technical support nonsense, especially if I have no chance of getting a meaningful answer.

While I'm here I'll clarify a few of the technical details in case any of you need them in the future. First, a quick port rundown:

* For Outlook to work in "online" mode, it initially contacts the Exchange server's service host on port 135, which responds to Outlook by giving it the ports on which Exchange is currently listening.
* The actual communication of messages, etc. occurs over a couple of dynamically assigned ports in the 1024-1600 range.
* Port 25 (SMTP) is not used by Outlook to communicate with Exchange unless you've set up a POP3 account that uses your Exchange server as an outgoing server. Outlook does use Port 25 to send outgoing messages for any POP3 accounts.
* If I had to guess, I would guess that AOL is blocking traffic on port 135 (at least) because it presents a number of security risks. I had to get the ISP who hosts our servers to make exceptions in their network policies to allow traffic on port 135 for our servers.

Regarding other ISPs, I am an Earthlink DSL user as are several of my co-workers. Our unanimous experience is that Earthlink does limit traffic on port 25. If outgoing mail doesn't travel through their own mail servers it doesn't get out. They do this to limit SMTP abuses on their network. It's not a show-stopper because you can configure your POP3/SMTP accounts to use the Earthlink mail server(s) as the outgoing server. It is a minor support headache. On the other hand, Earthlink does not block any of the ports used by Outlook and Exchange, and my Earthlink connection has been very reliable.

If anyone learns more about AOL's disposition to this problem, please post your findings. Thanks for your help.

 

[finbib]

Pretty ironic, considering AOL owns Earthlink!!!