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Curious as to what changed....


amkazen

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Hi, I encountered a strange problem a few months back and about pulled all my hair out because I could not get a clear explanation as to what happened.  I just had a thought that perhaps one of you could shed some light on what I experienced.

I have had a flash.net email account for about 7 years.  In fact, it is the only home email account I have ever had.  I do not like changing things constantly just because of price, etc.  Flash.net email accounts are owned by SBC Yahoo!. I do not want to change my email address from flash.net so I keep paying the money each monthinstead of using the Direcway email address.  I know, stupid, but we all have our quirks!!

At the time of the problem, I had been with Direcway for about 18 months.

Yes, during this entire time I have had Direcway I have had a flash.net email address.

I have always used Outlook for my email, not Outlook Express.  Currently, and at the time of the problem, I use Outlook 2003.

My Incoming POP3 settings during this time period were  pop.flash.yahoo.com and my outgoing SMTP settings were  smtp.flash.yahoo.com.  I never, ever had a problem sending or receiving email with these settings.

All of a sudden, about Feb 10, 2005, I could not send emails.  I could receive them but could not send them.  After 10 days or so of dealing with both flash.net and Direcway technical support, I finally found an answer as to how I could once again receive AND send email.  However, during this 10 days, there was a tremendous amount of fingerpointing from flash.net (SBC Yahoo!) to Direcway.  In fact, I was told by both flash.net I could not have ever sent email with the above POP3 and SMTP settings because I was on Direcway.    Flash.net also told me Direcway was my ISP and up till then, I had always believed flash.net/SBC Yahoo! was my ISP.  I distinctly remember reading someplace a few years ago that Direcway was just a gateway and that any Direcway subscriber could use any ISP they wanted to.  The flash.net representative pretty much told me I was wrong about that.

The solution to the problem of not being able to send email was to leave my POP3 setting unchanged at  pop.flash.yahoo.com and to change my SMTP setting to  smtp.direcway.com.

The questions I have are:

1)  What could have changed about February 10, 2005 to require me to change the SMTP setting that had worked for so long with problem?  I did find out either flash.net (or was it Direcway) made some changes to their email servers/accounts about Feb 10 but I was told it would not affect me and I could opt of being included in that change.  I did opt out but doing so did not help: I still could not send emails. Ok, here is what the change was:  opt out for port 25 filter. By opting out, I could send email using a third-party smtp server. What I do not understand is why would this change affect me?  I had the flash.net smtp setting and was using Direcway the entire time without a problem.  All of a sudden, it changed!

2)  Why could I send and receive emails before without a problem, even though flash.net told me it was impossible with my POP3 and SMTP settings?

3)  Am I incorrect in my belief that Direcway can just be used as a gateway to the Internet and I can use whatever ISP I want to?  Wasn't this something they used to tell potential customers?   

4) I know it is wishful thinking but is there anything in the works that would allow us to keep our emailaddresses when switching ISPs, just like you can now keep your cell phone # when switching cell phone companies?  :):)

Thanks for thinking about this problem.

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Guest wmmc

Off hand its DirecWay's end.

Which does has it quirks, but doesn't anything in one way or other, I've been a satellite user since 1999, right now I'm dialup, soon to have satellite again after 5 months on dialup.

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The problem seems like it was on flash.net's end. They changed something in their servers and the data you had in outlook was just outdated and needed to be updated to fit the new changes. POP3 and SMTP work fine with direcway. You can use many different ISPs with direcway such as Earthlink and AOL. The only way to keep your email address when switching ISPs is to get your email from some place that isn't connected to any other ISP. One example would be gmail from google.com.

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Sounds like flash.net has done some upgrading. The way the SMTP works is that it's setup on a range of IPs which would be their ISP addresses. If it doesn't not recognize the IP it will reject the info. In your case you're trying to send mail through flash.net with a Direcway IP address. Flash.net doesn't recognize the address thinking it might be a spammer or something and rejects the request.

I had the same problem when I was with Direcway and trying to use another providers e-mail. Sounds like you got it figured out  :D

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