OT: Piggin E mail...

[The Medway Handyman]

Every time I try to send an E mail I get an error message;

"An error occurred sending mail: The mail server sent an incorrect greeting: know-smtpout-4.server.virginmedia.net: Too many concurrent SMTP connections; please try again later".

I click OK and get another error message;

"Sending of message failed. The message could not be sent because the connection to SMTP server smtp.blueyonder.co.uk was lost in the middle of the transaction. Try again or contact your network administrator".

If I keep clicking OK & trying again it will send the E Mail, but it's driving me mad!!!

I haven't changed any settings honest :-(

Any ideas chaps?

[ARWadsworth]

Virgin Media playing up. I get the same thing.

[chris French]

In message , The Medway Handyman writes

Sounds like the server is overloaded, or otherwise playing silly buggers

[Brian Gaff]

Yes, the smtps at virgin are a mess at the moment. I particularly like the one .. an unknown error has occurred please retry later. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

One way to fix it albeit at the expense of getting every email back you send as well, is use smtp.virginmedia.com This is a direct connect to the Google server behind the blue yonder one. As i say it has the google syndrome of sending every email back though. Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

change ISP.

[The Natural Philosopher]

you CAN use other SMTP relays IF you have a password for them.

[dennis]

I use google's SMTP server when I am not using my own, it never sends mails back.

[ARWadsworth]

I do. A favourite pastime of mine is to guess the password.

You would NOT be surprised how many people use their kids (in particular their daughters) name as the password.

Stick a 1 at the end of the name and usually are halfway there.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Of course not dennis. SMTP relays usually reject you upfront before your drivel even gets to them.

And google probably silently discards the rest.

Which is something to be thankful for.

[John Rumm]

Yup its not a problem with your setup, the answer is in the first error message - Virgin's server "know-smtpout-4.server.virginmedia.net" can't handle any more snouts in the trough right now, so wait until someone leaves and makes space!

That server will probably be one of a cluster of machines that sit behind the address of the server your software is configured to send mail to. Usually the ISP will arrange for a bunch of machines to share the load between them, so that any one machine does not end up getting so many incoming connection that it can't cope. Looks like that is not working out as well as they might have hoped!

If you want a work around, then use another SMTP server. One option would be to create a gmail account, and then associate your blueyonder address with that as well. You[1] will then be able to configure your software to send via google's SMTP server, but still identifying the email as coming from your blueyonder address...

(in fact since you have your own domain, there is no reason you need use your ISPs email servers for send or receive)

[1] or someone you know ;-)