I can download email on 3g but not on wi-fi...please help!

[Milhus]

I just set up with a new droid razr and I love it, but I'm having issues with outlook active sync email. I tried everything and it would not connect to my companies email server...I was about to throw it out the window...but then decided to move on to other things and soon after leaving my house I received a notification and looked at my phone and was stunned that my email had synced. It worked all night, until I got back home...as soon as the wi-fi took over it would not connect. If I turn off wi-fi it will sync via the 3g network and the native email client works just great, but when I turn wi-fi on the phone just spins its wheels and eventually says "connection error". All the while my gmail.com personal account and the web browser works on both 3g and wi-fi...so I know the phone is connecting to the www, but it will only connect to my work email address while on 3g. I've tried 3 different wi-fi's and none of them work. I guess I can get by using 3g, but I'd rather save my data for when I need it and use the wi-fi when it's available. Also, I should point out that I used to have a HTC hero (sprint) and it worked just fine with that phone...and actually as I've been transferring data from that phone to my new phone I noticed that even though it's been disconnected, it still gets my work email via wi-fi. Anyone have any similar issues?
I've spoken with Verizon customer care and they walked me through all of the phones settings and they say it should work...I've also been in touch with my IT guy at work and he says that verizon don't know what they're talking about....basically they've both told me it's the other guys problem. Please help!

 

[FoxKat]

Just going to throw this out there, but could it be that the port(s) your company's email server(s) use to send/receive email is/are not the standard port(s), and that you have to open those ports on the home Router? Check the server settings for your work email and see what the port numbers are for incoming and outgoing. If they are, your home ISP technicians should be able to walk you through opening those ports.

From two sources, Email Ports and Mail Servers & POP before SMTP - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


For networks, a port means an endpoint to a logical connection. The port number identifies what type of port it is. Here are the default email ports for:

• POP3 - port 110 (incoming mail)

• IMAP - port 143 (also incoming and outgoing)

• SMTP - port 25 (outgoing)

• HTTP - port 80

• Secure SMTP (SSMTP) - port 465

• Secure IMAP (IMAP4-SSL) - port 585

• IMAP4 over SSL (IMAPS) - port 993

• Secure POP3 (SSL-POP) - port 995

Server administrators choose whether clients use TCP port 25 (SMTP) or port 587 (Submission), as formalized in RFC 6409, for relaying outbound mail to a mail server. The specifications and many servers support both. Although some servers support port 465 for legacy secure SMTP in violation of the specifications, it is preferable to use standard ports and standard ESMTP commands[SUP][14][/SUP] according to RFC 3207 if a secure session needs to be used between the client and the server.
Some servers are set up to reject all relaying on port 25, but valid users authenticating on port 587 are allowed to relay mail to any valid address.

Some Internet service providers intercept port 25, redirecting traffic to their own SMTP server regardless of the destination address. This means that it is not possible for their users to access an SMTP server outside the ISP's network using port 25.
Some SMTP servers support authenticated access on an additional port other than 25 to allow users to connect to them even if port 25 is blocked.

 

[Milhus]

Thanks for the reply Foxkat. I forwarded your response to my IT guy and he shot it down. He said since my old phone (disconnected from sprint) still gets my work email over my home wi-fi network, it can't be the ports on my router and it has to be a setting on my phone. Any other ideas?
Thanks again!

 

[FoxKat]

Thanks for the reply Foxkat. I forwarded your response to my IT guy and he shot it down. He said since my old phone (disconnected from sprint) still gets my work email over my home wi-fi network, it can't be the ports on my router and it has to be a setting on my phone. Any other ideas?
Thanks again!

OK, so if the old phone gets it, the new phone should as well. Just because the old phone does and the new doesn't, doesn't mean they couldn't be configured differently.

Not to discredit or disagree with your company IT tech, but standards change, defaults are selected by the Developers depending on what is generally accepted as proper at the time. When your old HTC hero was made, things were less aggressively locked down in the email world, but as more and more attacks began coming through the standard email ports (25 & 110), ISPs began locking down those common ports. It may very well be that the default port numbers on the Droid RAZR for your type of email are set to the "new standard" (587, for instance) whereas the port settings on the HTC Hero are still the old standards.

If your ISP hasn't adopted the new port standards, and yet the email client you are using on the phone and your company now has, then the problem could be the ISP or the port settings on the router. If adopted, the old standards may allow access via both port standards on your corporate servers, that would explain why your new old phone works with both WIFI and (previously) with 3G, and why your new phone will only access the corporate email via 3G and not WIFI.

Also, since ISPs are getting more sensitive to their service being used to host email spam, they have changed their policies to prevent access to external POP and SMTP servers directly and instead require that all external POP and SMTP access be routed through their own POP and SMTP servers.

I have this exact problem with my ISP on my Droid where I can no longer access my office and company email servers directly through the home WIFI unless I had first set up POP and SMTP to run through my ISP's servers rather than via the email servers I use at work. So I had to set up separate accounts on the home ISP that would redirect the POP and SMTP to travel through Verizon's servers and then Verizon's servers "spoof" my email responding address to be the one on my office email servers, so when I reply to an email at home on my phone, it goes out through outgoing.yahoo.verizon.net, and yet the email address my recipients see on emails I write is [email protected]. Likewise incoming email from myofficedomain.com comes into my phone from incoming.yahoo.verizon.net, yet shows the address received to as [email protected]. Verizon explained it this way, they said with the email going through their POP and SMTP servers they could more easily detect spamming emails that I or others like me might be using their ISP servers to send and prevent such activity.

Check with your ISP to see if they've stopped external POP and SMTP access on their servers. This doesn't explain why your old Hero still works on WIFI except that maybe you already have that feature enabled on your ISP from before and are just not aware it's there. Unless you add the new phone and configure both the phone and your ISP account to authenticate and forward through the ISP servers in the same fashion, it will not work.

These possible solutions are simply suggestions and unless you eliminate them as possibilities you can't be sure they aren't the problem.

 

[Milhus]

Foxkat, You are the man! It was a conflict with my home wi-fi. I got everything up and running by opening up the proper ports on my home router and it now works like a charm.
Thank you for your help!

 

[FoxKat]

Foxkat, You are the man! It was a conflict with my home wi-fi. I got everything up and running by opening up the proper ports on my home router and it now works like a charm.
Thank you for your help!

:thumbup:

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