I just noticed yesterday that connections to private SMTP servers appear to be blocked on my SmartBro connection. It was very irritating because I was testing out a new SMTP server I set up for one of my clients. I kept tweaking the configuration of the new SMTP server as well as my router settings thinking I did something wrong on my end.

I tried telneting to the server, then I tried it on another SMTP server I set up a few months ago. It appears that packets sent to port 25 are being blackholed and I get no response from the SMTP server. I began digging into the cause of this because I am quite sure that just a few months ago, I had set up Berger’s Mail.app to use the SMTP server at PhilWeavers.net and he was behind a SmartBro connection. A few minutes of searching and I found the answer.

It looks like SmartBro has indeed blocked SMTP connections to private SMTP servers. I don’t know when it started but apparently it started around April 2007 because a majority of the write-ups I have found are for that same month. Around last week of March 2007 I was still able to setup Berger’s Mail.app email client to use PhilWeavers’ SMTP server. It worked back then but he noticed a few days later he was no longer able to send email.

This is not the first time that SmartBro folks have messed around with their setup. A few months back, Azureus stopped working. At the time, I thought it was because of the new router I bought. I fiddled with the settings and eventually gave up trying to get it to work. A few days later Azureus was working again.

Now we have this. I don’t know what Smart’s motivations are (spammers?) in having this new setup. But they should have at least alerted their subscribers to the change. I also bring into question the wisdom behind this move. SmartBro’s network setup is notoriously flaky in many areas. In my area, I rarely experience network outages but there was an outage two weeks ago. I tried sending email last night using smtp.smartbro.net as my outgoing SMTP server. It took about two minutes for the email to arrive in my GMail inbox. Whereas, using the Philweavers SMTP server it was almost instantaneous.

No matter. As long as Bittorrent still works and I get decent speeds, I’m still happy. So if you are a SmartBro subscriber and you want to use Outlook, Mail.app, or Thunderbird you must now use smtp.smartbro.net as your outgoing SMTP server. Otherwise you will not be able to send emails using a standalone email client.

Quick note: I have not tried it yet but I think a private SMTP server using SMTPS would probably work.

Update (6 May 2007): I am able to send email via private SMTP servers using SMTPS. A decent email client should allow you to specify that you want to connect to an SMTP server and use SSL. SMTPS uses port 465 instead of port 25 and SmartBro only blocks the standard SMTP port.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 3:52 pm and is filed under System Administration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.