POP3 ports and the Westell 2200 DSL modem.

[dsl-jds]

I think this is the right forum for this question.

My church has Verizon business DSL using a Westell 2200 modem.
All is working very well. Our pastor has a notebook which at home was using a dial-up ISP for his email. At the church he decided to continue to use the dial up because of the SMTP server settings needing to change.

Now he has signed up with Verizon residential DSL, modem unknown. His main POP3 server is in the Czech Republic, which he is able to access from home. However, from the Church network he gets the cannot connect to the POP3 server error message when trying the retrieve his email on the Czech server.

He has the POP3 server configured in NS 7 to his Czech email account using port 995. The SMTP server is set to Verizon's. I suspect the POP3 port 995 problem at the church is that the Westell 2200 is blocking that port. Obviously the normal ports (110 and 25) are open, along with port 80. I've looked through the manual on the 2200 and I'm not sure just where I should change the port forwarding. If this is indeed our problem. Any hints or exact directions for this would be appreciated.

[dsl-jds]

Dang, not a lot of action here is there? :sleep:

[YeOldeStonecat]

There is no need to deal with fiddling of any ports on the router. Home grade routers, NAT boxes, will allow all outbound traffic, and the return of such traffic, because it was initiated from a trusted internal source. I've never seen any basic NAT router that blocks any of the outbound 65,000 plus ports. They only block strange "incoming" traffic, that was not originated from inside the trusted zone.

You only need to open/forward ports on your NAT router is you are running some "service" you wish to be made "public"...like a mail server, you'd forward port 25, or a computer running PcAnywhere host mode...you'd forward ports 5341/5342. Or...etc etc.

Chances are, either there is an additional software firewall on this computer which is blocking those ports, or....Verizon blanket blocks that port 995 across their network...because they deem it unsafe. Although I don't know why...it's common for SSL POP3.

[dsl-jds]

Thanks for the reply.

What's weird is that he has no problem with his home Verizon account with the same notebook.

I'll be looking at the network tomorrow. Anything you can think of I should look at?

[YeOldeStonecat]

Well...hmmm...same laptop, working at another location...that certainly throws out the idea of the laptop configuration...such as a software firewall, or something screwy with the mail client.

Unless the laptop logs into different user accounts at each location. Then it still could be a software config issue...

I guess the next thing I'd try, is running a few tests at each location....
1) Ping and Tracert to the mail server name from each location, compare results
2) Run several online port scans at each location, specifying to scan that port, compare results.
3) Call Verizon...ask if any differenes in their business product, versus home product..specifically mentioning this issue with the SSL POP3/port 995. Generally business grade accounts don't do as much port blocking on the ISP end as home accounts. So it's odd.

[dsl-jds]

When I go there tomorrow I'll check out the network for any weird looking things. I probably won't have access to the laptop then, but I'll make up a check list for the pastor to try at home and at the church when he has time.

I'll update this when I have something to report. :2cool:

[YeOldeStonecat]

I'll update this when I have something to report. :2cool:

Yeah please do...this one has my interest.

[dsl-jds]

I just got back from the church. I checked the configuration of the DSL Westell 2200 modem to see what I could do. I noticed that the firewall setting was set to Medium, the default. So I see it to Low to see what would happen. Well, the pastor's notebook can now get email on port 995. Obviously, his home DSL modem has different settings.

All of the computers on the church LAN have software firewalls, so I'm hoping we can live with this hardware firewall setting. I'll be monitoring the computers closely. If funny things start to happen, then I'll put it back to Medium and edit the script for that setting. Once I learn what the script does. :)

[YeOldeStonecat]

I just got back from the church. I checked the configuration of the DSL Westell 2200 modem to see what I could do. I noticed that the firewall setting was set to Medium, the default. So I see it to Low to see what would happen. Well, the pastor's notebook can now get email on port 995. Obviously, his home DSL modem has different settings.

That's a strange one...I'll have to eat my words about a basic router not having to be adjusting for client sided requests. If I ever come across a 2200, I'll have to dig into that. The ISPs in my state don't use those much, however once in a while I'll do some work one state over where those ISPs use them.

Thanks for reporting back your findings.

[dsl-jds]

Each firewall setting had a script that could be changed to allow/deny various ports, etc. I didn't want to fiddle with that since I didn't know what I was doing. So I took the easy way out. I'll try to find out what make/model is being used at his residence.