POP3 access to email

[RebBreinholt]

It all started when one of my users bought a Palm Treo700 and wanted to have it download his e-mail. I have tried setting him up, but it has come down to the fact that I cannot seem to connect to the server to download e-mails from the Public side of the network. It seems to be the same problem whether I use POP3 or MAPI or Activesynch/exchange.

I have set a laptop up with a simple Outlook Express profile using POP3. It works on the private side of the network, but not on the outside.

Is there something I need to do to allow offsite access via POP/MAPI/.. to the e-mail?

 

[ShackDaddy]

What sorts of changes have you made to your firewall rules? Did you open port 110? What sort of firewall is it? What sort of errors do you get when you try to connect to POP3 from the outside? When you set up the Treo, did you use the server name that the public uses, or is it still set to use the internal name? It needs to use the public name.

We'll get you going.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[RebBreinholt]

The firewall is the SBS ISA - we don't have an external firewall.

Port 110 is open, I used a scanner to verify.

The error messages from the outside indicate that the server is not available.

When I set up the Treo, I tried the Public IP address, and the FQDN (mail.companyname.com) but neither seem to make a difference.

 

[ShackDaddy]

You ran the scan from the outside, right? Have you tried connecting with a non-PDA mail client to see if it's general POP3 that's broken, or if it's an issue with the phone config?

One other option: Go into the settings for the POP3 protocol virtual server and make sure that it doesn't have a restrictive "allow list" for the IPs that are allowed to connect to it. The behavior you describe is what would happen if you were connecting from a host IP that wasn't on the "allow connections from" list.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[RebBreinholt]

It is now working.

Everything pointed to a problem with the excange server. I checked the "allow list" and other properties of the exchange server. I noticed that after running the wizard to check the settings, that POP3 and IMAP were not running. When using the wizard for e-mail and internet setup, I had used the option to 'leave the current settings' for some of the answers. I decided that I would go through and check all options as if I were setting e-mail up for the first time. When the wizard finished, I was able to download e-mail to the laptop on the outside using POP3! I don't believe I changed any answers from the way they were before, but the wizard changed something.

Thanks for the troubleshooting suggestions, they all help to focus on the source of the problem.

 

[58sniper]

You'd be better off setting up RPC over HTTP than using POP3. Much more secure, and all the features in Outlook work.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[RebBreinholt]

I agree that we will be better off with the Outlook suite, but this first one was a proof of concept and they are mainly interested in mail. I figured we could change the mail interface once we got things working.

 

[58sniper]

POP3 isn't secure. For either end. You have to have those services running on the server, the ports open in the firwall, and the clients configured for it.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt