Help needed with relay.plus.net

[#1]

I have a problem sending emails through the relay.plus.ner server and it is a bit long-winded to explain but, please, bear with me!

It is for my local bridge club who have broadband provided at their premises by Plusnet. 

We use a scoring program that emails results to members, via an in-built interface, and has been working fine for quite a while. However, it is now throwing up an error (see attached file).

I am trying to run this at home to see if I can work out what is going wrong. So, I am not at premises where we have the Plusnet broadband, but, I also use Plusnet here for FTTP broadband. Not sure if that is introducing other problems.

The things that I can set in the scoring program are:

• Remote SMTP Server: relay.plus.net
• Server Port: 587
• Authorisation against remote server: No

Can anyone point me at what the error message is telling me and where I need to look for a fix?

[#2]

Bit of extra (and confusing!) information.....

Just tried to ping (from Command Prompt box)  relay.plus.net and got 4 "Request Timed Out" messages!

Also tried smtp.plus.net and got same response.

Just as a matter of interest, I tried pinging a few sites that I know I can access (smtp.gmail.com, www.google.co.uk, etc.) and these were getting replies, but also reporting 1 or 2 "Request Timed Out" too, which I wasn't expecting.

Question 1) Does this indicate a problem accessing relay.plus.net

Question 2) Does this indicate a wider problem with my PC/internet connection? 

[#3]

Hi @MysteryMan1,

I'm sorry to see that you're experiencing problems with sending emails from your bridge club's email address. Thank you for confirming that this occurs both on the bridge club's Plusnet broadband and your own Plusnet broadband.

Just to confirm, are the emails being sent to some email addresses and not others or is it failing to send emails to any address? Are you still able to receive emails on this address? Also, are you able to send emails via the webmail platform here?

[#4]

The core servers are configured to not respond to pings, so a time out report is not indicative of a failure.

Exactly what error messages do you see?

When did this stop working?

The smtp server is relay.plus.net and the correct port is 587.

You should use account authentication - use the account details for the mail address you are sending from.

What settings have you got for encryption?

The physical connection has no bearing here.

[#5]

OK, thanks for replies and I have a bit more information. I think it implies some sort of capacity issue!

I started with original set up, which is....

• relay.plus.net
• 587
• No authorisation

First test was an email, with 55kb attachment, to 1 recipient. This worked

Second test was an email, with 55kb attachment, to 28 different recipients. This worked.

Third test was an email, with 55kb attachment, to 76 different recipients. This failed with following message.....

"Error-2147220977.  The server rejected one or more recipient addresses. The server response was: 450 too long without DATA command (closing session)"

Fourth test was an email, with 55kb attachment, to 1 recipient. This worked.

I then set Authorisation to on, entered email as bramhallvillagebridge@gmail.com (which was the "From" address), the correct password and set "Use SSL" as Y

Fifth test was an email, with 55kb attachment, to 1 recipient. This failed with following message.....

"Error-2147220973.  The transport failed to connect to the server"

I then set "Use SSL" to N

Sixth test was an email, with 55kb attachment, to 1 recipient. This failed with following message.....

"Error-214722095.  The message could not be sent to the SMTP server. The transport error code was 0x80040217. The server response was not available.

I then set Authorisation back to off

Final test was an email, with 55kb attachment, to 1 recipient. This worked

So, it seems to me that the only option that works is with Authorisation off (or I am maybe using wrong username/password!)

Also, sending 1 or 28 emails works, but, 76 fails and looks like it is hitting some sort of limit.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

[#6]

Hi @MysteryMan1,

If you wish to use SSL when sending emails, you will need to select the SSL option within the email client and change the port to 465. Can you please try this and tell us if it makes a difference?

[#7]

Thanks for reply. I have set SSL to ON and used 465.....get the attached error.....

[#8]

Is there a limit to the number of recipients in a single message?

[#9]

Hi there, yes we have a limit of 25 recipients, any above this are subject to "tar-pitting" i.e the more recipients there are the greater the delay in sending. If you can drop your emails to below the 25 threshold they should get through fine but do let us know if there's still an issue beyond that. 

[#10]

Oh dear, that is a real problem! 

The emails are generated within an application that we have no control over and no way to limit number of recipients!

This means I will need to find an email/SMTP service that can cater for more recipients - any suggestions?

[#11]

Hi @MysteryMan1

We can't make any recommendations, but I'm sure there are many members of the community who will be able to assist.

Best wishes

Dave

[#12]

@MysteryMan1  from yourvposts above it would appear that you are sending email from a gmail.com address , is that correct ?

In which case , why aren't you sending via gmails smtp server.?

According to this https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22839?hl=en gmails limits should be ok for you

[#13]

Yes, the "From" email address is a Gmail one.

I will change to use smtp.gmail.com and see if that works for us - it sounds promising!

Thanks