Access to mail servers and some cpanel spaces blocked

[JohnRoss]

I have just had the most unpleasant experience via online chat which simply wasted my time and now i have to wait 24 hours before it is escalated to the tech team !.

Since yesterday i am getting a continuous error when tryng to connct to one set of our mail servers,

> 0x80042108 cannot connect to mail server

I can also go to our hosts login screen, login but cannot lauch cpanel

> page time out

It is ame issues I have on my hosting areas at Bluehost and A2Host. At first I thought it was indeed a host issue with email but it is not. Connecting via my mobile phone (vodafone) and using it as a hotspot proved sucessful. I can still collect email OK on my mobile phone just not via broadband.

If i create a hot spot using my vodafone mobile and connect my tablet, NO PROBLEMS however it defeats the point of having so called superfast broadband if it does not work.

Yesterday I tried using google DNS by setting that manually and even by today it made no difference.

Annoyingly the "support??" person asked me to do the very same thing and set it to 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 which I know wont help.

It does look like Vodafone are actually blocking these places which is nuts.

Are there any known outages or problems as of yesterday ??  has any router updates been done ?

[xdmn_083]

Presumably you are somewhere through some arbitrary checklist? I never have one written down but usually:

DNS resolution.

Filtering settings in account manager (first thing I did once finally connected was remove all filtering) after selecting none on the pseudo-mandatory choice page, and making sure the router itself has nothing set.

If the DNS lookups work *and* look sane, telnet or equivalent to see what the pop3 server says, if anything, or even if ssl pop3 or other port that you get a connect.

Check collection/sending ports, if there's any change to these dependent on which connection you attach to.

Proxy if any.

Antivirus settings.

Weird routing errors where the traffic for one set of addresses goes via a really convoluted route and nobody anywhere along the line - not even the people whose IP addresses have been hijacked - gives a stuff.

Browser scripting/plugin restrictions.

And others depending on a whole stack of specifics! Plus dependency on where on the technical scale someone is...

Some or all of these apply to just one or both problems, and with the caveat of 'all the right notes just not necessarily in the right order'.

After that, there's the trying of random stuff while intermittently swearing.

edit: and obviously turning it off and then on again, possibly more than once.

[JohnRoss]

xdm

yes I have a checklist, not written down as i know it by heart from work 😉

1. Top of the list, what have I changed - nothing under my control.

- HAS workstation had any updates or new software

NO - Exclude own hardware for now however tempting it is to tinker.

YES - Roll back changes and test then go from there 

2. Assuming no changes to workstation which is the case

Elimination

Take workstation and give it different route to internet (via mobile data and mobiole AP), does that work

NO - Regardless of 1 being NO the issues is contained to LAN so go look for hidden updates or local changes  (unlikely outcome)

YES - WAN is at fault

As he outcome from connecting via mobile AP was that I can connect anywhere and collect mail no problem the answer lies with WAN and out of my control.

I checked my IP allocation which was dynamic and found several black list entries. However they should not have caused an issue.

Suspecting DNS as tracert was screwed I changed from Vodafones to Googles reset and tried again.

Same result and as googles DNS service is fine, it had to be the bit in the middle (the router)

So I contacted Vodafone help

Assumption, the "support" person knows more than I do. Bad assumption !

After a lengthy chat, I was asked to manually change DNS to 1.1.1.1 and so on, I was then told that will take 24 hours to take affect, eh ? its not as if I edited a DNS zone changes or A records for a web site. They were in the right area.

So i had a dig at the router which to be fair has been very reliable, noted my custom settings (IP allocations for printer, NAS and so on) and did a factory reset on the router.

Why did I factory reset the router when I had changed nothing

Well like at work we can push firmware updates and go on build numbers, we do not show the dates on updates.

I took a chance on a firmware update not compatible with my LAN settings so reset and applid them again.

Hey presto. Fixed

[xdmn_083]

Glad something positive came out of this, even if it wasn't that far off the off-and-back-on again principle! And I hope I didn't fail too badly at not being patronising, you can never tell what level to pitch advice.

Though if you did a factory firmware reset, won't that mean you will have to do the same again the next time?

I've made a guess that the firmware on mine was update 9-ish days ago as that's what the ppp session uptime shows as.

Lucky for me though, your problem prompted me to check my router just in case even though it's been working fine, to find that there were immediately visible changes from the new firmware e.g. the listing of devices on the network (not a bad thing).

What I had not expected were some extra features to be added *and enabled* without any sort of notification anywhere. Unless there's a router firmware updates mailing list I should be on.

And for extra jollies it seems the event log is filling up with 'client ... connected' and 'client ... disconnected' messages which means there's nothing there more than a couple of hours old. Most annoying as the router isn't even the thing that's handing out IPs.

[JohnRoss]

Well like a bead penny the problem came back.

Tow more calls and two failed call backs.

Eventually got to speak to Victor, very motivated young fella by the sounds of it and he went the extra mile.

We changed DNS (again) and he agreed that it sounded like firewall or DNS and that OCASSIONALY disabling content management in the web portal does NOT always effectively turn it off. One to remember.

So he escalated the case there and then and after by sheer luck speaking to the L2 support person in same office, a L2 previous L3 member mentioned the FIRMWARE UPDATE that was doeployed 3 days ago has caused some problems. No crap chap !

The router kept dropping and reconnecting and regardless of any functionality was erratic, and the self diagnostics always failed on connection regardless of the near 80mbps connection speed. The link speed I have is top notch but the router failed on connection to the network.

Eventually Victor could see it online but he could not send a test signal to it. The beast was caught.

New router delivered today, installed, now running and so far no problems, in fact i am sure it is faster despite my link speed dropping.

Why does the left hand 9L1) not know what the right hand (L3) has done in deploying updates, surely it makes sense so they do not cheese folks off for 3 days.

So far so good anyway, firmware updates, never trust the softies 😉

John