Pinging Mail Servers

[BobH]

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to ping mail servers by name and port number?

I'm having trouble using the mail servers hosted by my web host (who shall remain anonymous for the moment) who is NOT my ISP (who shall also remain nameless for now).

I have successfully set up all the addressing and option settings in Thunderbird (also in Outlook and OE) and proved that they were correct by sending and receiving email both to the originating addy (which is set up at the web host) and to other addys (set up at my ISP). I sent a message with cc at 2 mail inboxes and it completed and I received the messages at all points. I sent a second one with identical addressing and origination and got the panel saying that I was connected to the web host smtp server but the send eventually timed out with the message that connectivity to the host server (by name) was lost during transmission.

Neither the web host help desk nor my ISP help desk can tell me anything. It is fairly obvious that they are working from a script and when the question doesn't fit the script they bail.

I googled for "Ping" and "how to Ping a mail server" and tried their suggestions to no avail.

The instructions on the site I found were to use the command line interface and type "smtp_server_name port ##".

When I did so, the command line panel flashed and disappeared.

I also tried entering the domain name of the server and all pings timed out. I then tried the domain name followed by a space followed by the server name followed by "port" followed by the port number and the command line panel flashed away.

Perhaps I'm asking the wrong question and don't really need to know about pinging because I'm really just trying to gather enough information to make either my ISP or my web host take responsibility for the problem and fix it or tell me what to do.

[StuartR]

ping is not a good tool for testing the connection to an SMTP server, because the server is probably configured to ignore ping requests.

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 323350 shows some commands you can type at a command prompt to test SMTP connectivity.

[BobH]

Thanks Stuart!

That KB article gives commands that can be used from a Windows Server platform. I don't run Windows Server having XP Pro instead. Do you know if it is possible to obtain diagnostic information on a server from the XP os?

[StuartR]

I have tested this from a PC running Windows XP Professional SP2

[BobH]

Thanks, again, Stuart!

I tried it but must have phat phingered something. I kept getting the message that it could not open.

[StuartR]

You need to be very careful to type the commands EXACTLY.

• If you use the delete key to change something then it will send an invalid string
• Make sure you use the correct server name and email addresses
• Double check the server name and port number and make sure you get both correct
• Everything is case sensitive.

If it still doesn't work then note which line fails and what error message you get.

[BobH]

At the telnet prompt, type set LocalEcho, press ENTER, and then type open <machinename> 25, and then press ENTER.

I am guessing that <machinename> should be the name of the SMTP server and that 25 should be the port number of the SMTP server that I want to test. No?

[BobH]

OK! It must have been phat phingering.

I got to the step of entering the rcpt to:. . . before running into problems. At this step the response to my entry was
"553 Sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts."

Subsequent steps returned the error "500 Not implemented."

Does this mean that the smtp server that I sent the telnet command to doesn't have that domain name in a list called "rcpthosts"? There is a great deal that I don't know about TCP/IP and mail servers.

[StuartR]

... "553 Sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts."...

This is very helpful. the line starting rcpt to: is the email address you are sending the email to.

We now know that you can successfully communicate with the SMTP server, and that this server is rejecting your emails. The problem is definitely not with your ISP.

Error 553 covers a range of possibilities. It basically means that the email address you are trying to send to is not allowed. Some possible reasons include it being on a blacklist maintained by the SMTP server, or it not being a valid DNS name. This could even be because you typed the address wrong!

Can you try again, making sure that you type a valid email address.

If we can get a sequence of commands that works then we can try it again next time you get a failure, and note the exact error message.

[BobH]

Thank you, again, Stuart!

I'm getting the same result using the same email address with my domain name suffix to the rcpt command.

I might be entering the information wrong, but I don't think so.

[StuartR]

I think there is something wrong with your mail from: line. You should only have ONE of these, you can't have an email message that is from three different email addresses.

You could try setting the rcpt to: to a different email address, just to see what happens. If you can't find any other valid email address then try sending it to loungeadmin@wopr.com

[BobH]

Thank you, Stuart.

What you see in the screen shot is the result of my fat fingering the entry and retrying until I entered it correctly. In the first instance I had backspaced. Remembering your cautionary information, I tried again and got the penultimate character (digit) of the domain before extension wrong. I got it right finally. Each time I had to press Enter to get a new line to type into. I don't understand why I got the "250 Sender accepted" response each time when there were obvious errors in the entered data.

I shall try this again using a different email address with a domain name hosted elsewhere and report back with results.

Thank you for taking the time to help me.