CAn anyone help me with MAIL and my earthlink account?

I've had DSL with Earthlink for several years now and never had connection problems. In the past two weeks, however, MAIL will sometimes fail to send email and sometimes fail to retrieve email from my Earthlink webmail account. The strangest thing is that this happens intermittently, even though no settings have been changed. Most of the time I can retrieve email, but other times I get the error message that "port 110 has timed out". Most of the time, I cannot send email, but other times the email shoots right through when I open mail.
I called Earthlink about this and we set up my MAIL program step by step according to Earthlink guidelines. Unfortunately, this did not help the matter.
My MAIL preference settings are as follows:
My incoming mail server is pop.mindspring.com on port 110.
My outgoing mail server is smtpauth.earthlink.net. The outgoing server port is 587. SSL is not checked. Authentication is by password.
All of these settings are correct according to the Earthlink tech.
If this matters, my G5 is connected wirelessly to an Airport Express base station.
Again, I'm puzzled that I've only just begun to have these issues and they seem to happen randomly.I also see that similar discussions have been had on this forum with Earthlink and MAIL, but I don't see any resolutions. Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks.

Message was edited by: Kevin Robinson

Message was edited by: Kevin Robinson

iMAC G5, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on Sep 5, 2007 7:50 AM

25 replies

noapple

Level 1

14 points

Sep 10, 2007 2:48 PM in response to Kevin Robinson

I am in New Orleans. Any other responders in New Orleans??

Sep 10, 2007 4:21 PM in response to noapple

For what it's worth, I'm in Houston. It seems that all of our problems started about the same time and fit the same profile. I'm fairly sure Earthlink has a communication problem with at least some of it's servers and the way it is repsonding to Mail and/or Safari. One question. I am using an Airport Express base station. Could this be the common thread?

Cathy Z

Level 1

0 points

Sep 10, 2007 4:29 PM in response to Kevin Robinson

Hello Kevin and New Orleans folks -- I'm glad that I found this discussion forum. It let me know that many others have the same problem; I even thought it could be Earthlink's connections to part of New Orleans, since they've been operating in some of the city after Katrina. But no, the Earthlink support person said that wasn't it. After not being able to connect all day yesterday and this morning, the Web Mail page is finally connecting and mail seems to be going through. Perhaps they fixed it?? It is odd that their support people were not talking to one another, since they said to me this past Saturday that I was the first person to tell them of this trouble connecting with an Apple computer.

And, no I don't have an Airport Express base station, just the modem that Earthlink originally sent out, plus a wireless router with a firewall. Thanks for all the ideas, suggestions, and experiences that others have shared.

Sep 10, 2007 4:46 PM in response to Cathy Z

I don't think it's the base station. I've now hooked up via ethernet cable and I'm still having trouble.

Sep 10, 2007 5:14 PM in response to Kevin Robinson

I just spoke again with an Earthlink tech. I showed him this thread and he was surprised at the number of people with the same issue. He requested that anyone having this issue to please CALL the earthlink tech support. The more people that Earthlink knows are having the same issue, the greater the priority it will be given by the Earthlink tech team. When calling, he said to tell the tech you are reporting a "bad pop" and then explain the issue. If enough people actually call this in, Earthlink will get rolling on solving the problem.

WDawson

Level 1

8 points

Sep 11, 2007 7:03 AM in response to Kevin Robinson

I posted a few days ago and haven't revisited the forum till just now. Glad to see we are amassing evidence of a probable problem at Earthlink.

For what it's worth, I'm in Houston and an AT&T DSL customer. I have an older Zyxel DSL box and a pre-Express AirPort (not the first AirPort model).

Besides problems with Mail, I've had intermittent trouble on Safari (and other browsers) getting to my Earthlink webmail. Also, very frequent inability to link to Earthlink support pages (how to set up an email client, how to troubleshoot connection problems, etc.). Plus( and this seems especially odd), inability to link to Google's cached versions of those pages. No trouble at all linking to any websites but Earthlink's during this period.

Sep 11, 2007 10:29 AM in response to Kevin Robinson

Kevin,

It seems to be pretty wide spread, and lots more than Mac users. See:

http://broadbandreports.net/forum/earthlink

Ernie

Sep 12, 2007 4:28 PM in response to Kevin Robinson

It seems that now my Earthlink e-mail is working 100%
for the past 24 hours. I hope others have their e-mail working
again. Thanks to all who called Earthlink. I made 2 calls
during this crisis.

Sep 12, 2007 8:42 PM in response to scotty-47

Yes, my Mail is now receiving and sending email and has been since yesterday. I can now also access webmail directly from the Earthlink website. I hope this maintains and I also wonder what happened and how it was corrected?

Message was edited by: Kevin Robinson

noapple

Level 1

14 points

Sep 13, 2007 1:26 PM in response to scotty-47

All is well now here. Can get network status and webmail from earthlink and seem to be able to send and receive without difficulty.

noapple

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CAn anyone help me with MAIL and my earthlink account?