No E-mail Reports/Alerts - Port 25 Blocked By ISP

[Falcon]

Hello,

I have spent a fair amount of time now trying to get the e-mail reports to work, which by the way is a very desirable feature.

Is port 25 required to be open by the ISP for RB 2009 to send e-mail reports and alerts? It certainly appears so.

If so, where are the settings to change to an alternate port. I am in Canada and most major ISP's block this port, one of them being mine.

It would be almost ludicrous to think that there would not be an option available for the e-mail reports and alerts to work on a different mail server port, especially in North America.

I hope someone can provide a solution to this, or there is one forthcoming very shortly.

I am quite annoyed about this as it just seems like a big oversight on someones part to not have an alternate port available given the fact that ISP's close this port on a regular basis to help prevent spam.

Thanks,
Darryl

[AirNav Support]

There isn't a way round it I am afraid. The software needs to connect to our server which has been set as port 25 so even if you could change the port number it would not help. In theory what you would need is another mail server or a mail server built into RB (which again can get blocked).

Most ISPs do not block ports, there is only a few which do.

[Falcon]

There isn't a way round it I am afraid. The software needs to connect to our server which has been set as port 25 so even if you could change the port number it would not help. In theory what you would need is another mail server or a mail server built into RB (which again can get blocked).

Most ISPs do not block ports, there is only a few which do.

I suggest someone sits down and gets busy writing the code to use an alternate mail port. This is completely unacceptable. I am not sure where you are getting your information from, but Port 25 is blocked by a large number of ISP's and if you want your market share to grow I would be changing your mindset very quickly. Set your servers to use another alternate port and get it programmed into RB.

I won't be letting this one go and I hope other North American users will be quick to speak up.

Take a look at Shaw Communications and Telus which are major ISP's in Western Canada. They both block port 25, but hey, what's half of Canada.

Thanks

[AirNav Support]

So far Falcon this issue has been raised by another 2 users out of the 2,000+ we have sold.

Thats not to say it won't be done however our list of priorities has others which affect more users and more important to functionality. Once they are done we hope to get round to this.

[jgrloit]

Why are ISP's blocking the passage of Traffic for Port 25 on IP addresses that are NOT theirs.
This seems to prevent you from using Mail systems of other ISP's while being connected to These Service Providers.
This is Unacceprable to many Big Businesses who have International Travelling employees.
I suggest that you tell your ISP to prevent inbound traffic ti their servers on Port 25 but allow the traffic for other remote IP's to flow.

[Falcon]

So far Falcon this issue has been raised by another 2 users out of the 2,000+ we have sold.

Thats not to say it won't be done however our list of priorities has others which affect more users and more important to functionality. Once they are done we hope to get round to this.

I can understand benefiting the masses, but it is an advertised feature and your ignoring a weakness in the way your e-mail system works as far as even reasonable compatibility goes. Unfortunately for you, with ISP's serving hundreds of thousands of customers vs 2000 (which even with this issue, I hope your sales continue to grow) its going to be up to the developer to take care of this.

What concerns me now is what else am I going to run up against as far as compatibility goes and support for those issues. If being in another country is going to leave me in the minority and not have the benefit of being part of the masses, maybe I need to reconsider my purchase before it's too late to do something about it.

I do appreciate your prompt responses to my post which are much quicker than I expected. Your product has lots of pluses going for it, in fact its just plain cool, but I can't shake the feeling that this issue over the very desirable feature of reports and alerts should have been addressed by now, or at least in the very near future, considering how long ago some others had this issue. The port 25 issue has been a very common and known issue for the past few years, at least in North America.

[AirNav Support]

Falcon,

The adversited feature is there and does work. Obviously there are lots of firewall software out there etc.. which is designed to block ports etc. We can't be blamed for that if they block it. I know your trying your hardest to puch this through (others have tried it with there requests).

However it simply comes down to how many customers are affected, and as mentioned earlier it was only one customer affected untill recentely we had another mention and now you. It is on the books though you need to understand there are other pressing issues.

You won't have any other issues being another country, infact this issue can occur anywhere across the word, it just depends on how strict your ISP is.

[Falcon]

It is on the books though you need to understand there are other pressing issues.

I can only imagine the amount of work you are doing on this unique (and cool) product, and you also know where I stand on this issue.

You won't have any other issues being another country, in fact this issue can occur anywhere across the word, it just depends on how strict your ISP is.

True it can happen anywhere, but you would have had a great deal more complaints over this if you had more customers in my part of the world so there is a difference as to what ISP's in different parts of the world are implementing the port 25 blocking and there are some big ones.

[Geot]

I am in Eastern Canada using Rogers Communications, a major comms company across Canada. I dont know if this Port 25 thing is the same reason,  but trying to send Reports has never worked for me either. When clicking on the Button, nothing happens - no error message returned, nada. To send a Report I go to the Desktop, find the C Files, select LOG file, right click on the saved report and use the Send To option which does work.

GeoT

[prbflight]

I'm in Ontario, Canada on the Vianet/Efni network.  I've been a RadarBox owner since July 2007 and I have never, ever been able to use the e-mail function.  I've tried everything and nothing works.  I've worked with my internet provider and Airnav Support and nothing has ever worked.  I've asked Airnav Development Team to put a config box in their next version release hoping that will help.  Maybe after 2 years with no e-mail function it might happen.  Can the Airnav Dev Team write a small script for us Canadians that can't connect to server?  Something?  Anything?  It amazes me that my Acarsd connects and e-mails with no problems and RadarBox does not.  For that matter I have never had a problem with any other e-mail function or program whatsoever.  I use Outlook.  I've tried others including web based such as gmail and yahoo and nothing works with RadarBox.

Paul@cyyb

Can other Canadian users please check the e-mail function and post their results here.  I'm glad I'm no longer that 'lone voice in the wind."

[Keith L]

Hi people

In my opinion there is no one ISP in the world bloking port 25.

Actually blocking port 25 is a recognised anti-spam technique and used extensively in North America and is recommended to ISPs by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.  I think Earthlink were among the first in 2000 and it became increasingly common after myDoom in 2004

[Keith L]

Hi Juan,  I'm not very technical but telneting mail.frontiernet.net 25 gives a 220 response and their website states

Due to an increase of complaints about spam (Internet junk mail) and computer viruses sent via outgoing e-mail messages, as of December 3, 2003, Frontier has blocked all port 25 traffic over our network from Frontier High Speed Internet customers (with dynamic IPs) that is not sent through Frontier outgoing mail servers (smtp.frontiernet.net)

[Falcon]

Hi Keit L

What I can see in my case is what I wrote and did prove it
Can You prove that telnetting port 25 of an SMTP server from sone ISP the connection is rejected ?
I think that this will only happen if ISP put a specific rule of rejecting connections from one IP or one network, and this indeed can happen, but never rejecting all the connections.


Cheers

Hello,

While I appreciate your comments, the information you are providing on this particular issue is not correct, and you are diverting this thread from the acknowledged issue. If port 25 is blocked by your ISP, RB2009 will not send messages and yes I can prove it by trying to Telnet which is what I did before I even made my first post about this issue. Once again thanks for the input but the fact is port 25 is blocked and RB2009 will not send e-mails from mine and most likely others computers because of it.

[DaveReid]

There isn't a way round it I am afraid. The software needs to connect to our server which has been set as port 25 so even if you could change the port number it would not help.

That needn't be the case.

All RB installations can successfully connect to the RB server to upload and download network traffic, so there is absolutely no reason why you can't incorporate another protocol into RB which will pass the alert data to a process on your network server which will then generate an email.

There is no reason why RB itself needs to be configured as an SMTP client, and clearly this doesn't work for at least some users, due to circumstances beyond their control.

They are entitled to a more helpful response than simply "tough luck".

[AirNav Support]

We haven't said "tough luck". We said it will be looked at, however more pressing issues ahead.

We are being honest so that in the next update if its not included we don't get emails saying you promised us etc..