email server connecting through router

[iroller]

I don’t know how much sense this will make but any ideas would be appreciated. We have a Windows 2000 server running MDaemon e-mail server. Up to last week we were sending and receiving mail through a dial up connection. We now have ADSL and after some struggle I’ve managed to get the mail to send and receive through a router and an ADSL modem. The problem is it doesn’t work for very long. After about 6 hours a Winsock error occurs because the router/gateway can’t be reached and then it appears to me that the network card locks up and I can’t get any mail in or out without doing some minor alteration to the network card such as adding a DNS number to it and clicking OK. Then we’re back in business again. Throughout this the router/gateway can be pinged.

 

[fortress22]

Check with you isp. Some isp don't allow you to have an smtp server. If this is the case you will have to configure your users to send emails to the isp's smtp server and check for new mail on your server. The second issue is that you will need a static public ip address.

 

[iroller]

Thank you for your ideas. We actually have static ip and smtp account with the ISP. The solution appears to have been quite simple. I have a SMC Barricade router connected to a Zoom ADSL modem with ethernet connection. The Zoom ADSL modem also has a router but the SMC is able to prevent certain IP address from accessing the internet and this is useful in the school that I work. Both have NAT which I had left on. Switching off the NAT on the Zoom modem has seemed to work. The system worked all last night and appears to be getting mail in and out happily today. I'm not sure how secure that leaves the network but hopefully everything will be OK. I'm sorry if the solution should have been obvious to me and maybe having wasted anyone's time. Then again maybe someone else will have a similar problem and find my mistakes useful and time saving. Sometimes when something is half working as things were you are still better off starting again and looking for the simple solution.