I gets calls all the damn time "my email won't work" from our sales team that travels and stays in random hotels. I think these hotels are blocking the port and our email service requires SMTP authentication to send emails out.

Anyway to get around this without VPN or are they just at the mercy of whatever hotel they are at?

8/18/2010 10:22:10 AM

why aren't you using VPN?

8/18/2010 10:28:23 AM

Quote :

"why aren't you using VPN?"

8/18/2010 10:31:36 AM

The only reason they would need it is email since they are commission only they aren't really "part" of the company but they have a company email. Our email server is leased out to another company so it's not even on site (this is beyond my control of course)

[Edited on August 18, 2010 at 10:38 AM. Reason : s]

8/18/2010 10:37:56 AM

what about OWA?

8/18/2010 10:44:51 AM

^ we've got a OWAish Webmail based email as well but everyone hates it and they have multiple emails all tying into either outlook/iphones/thunderbird

also to note I do have a older XP machine laying around I could turn into a VPN server for our office here and see how it goes. Maybe if they connected to here and try to check email it would work better.


[Edited on August 18, 2010 at 10:46 AM. Reason : s]

8/18/2010 10:45:05 AM

Outlook Anywhere won't solve this? Or is that what is using the port that is being blocked?

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/use-outlook-anywhere-to-connect-to-your-exchange-server-without-vpn-HP010102444.aspx

8/18/2010 10:48:53 AM

^this. I'd be surprised if Hotel firewalls were blocking RPC over HTTP.

That or VPN or tell them to suck it up about webmail.

8/18/2010 10:51:47 AM

^ cool, might try that

8/18/2010 10:53:14 AM

yeah, i'd definitely go VPN for this one, especially considering all those hotel wifi hotspots are unencrypted

granted, the EWS/MAPI traffic is encrypted, but still...

8/18/2010 1:04:50 PM

Business Gmail ftw

8/18/2010 2:35:48 PM

+ to vpn. Hell secure it more if you are worried about them on your network and just have open the mail ports.

8/18/2010 3:47:50 PM

A lot of hotel hotspots block port 25 (smtp) because they dont want people getting spam/virus shit and sending out lots of spam from it.

Recommended workaround is to also run smtp on an alternate port such as 26 or 2525 and configure the clients to use that port for smtp.

Or, webmail/vpn.

8/18/2010 5:01:39 PM