Mercury 4g Wireless Network Blocking Outgoing Mail Ports

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#3166728 1-Dec-2023 09:33

@Aaron2222 good spotting. More info here https://www.mercury.co.nz/broadband/wireless-broadband

In that case, the OP has been told info that contradicts their help pages. They clearly say you can send mail from a Mercury connection, and it's a connection they sell, so they should have sorted it to work. Nothing obvious from the sales page that says this important (email) service won't actually work, so it's reasonable to expect that it will work OK.

FineWine

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#3166753 1-Dec-2023 11:31

Just to be clear. This is through Mercury/Kinect NOT Spark. And on checking it is a Spark 4G WireLess Smart Modem 2 and I am presuming it has a Spark SIM card. You will note that in the above links from Mercury website, all of the images and most of the set up links all lead back to a Spark information page.

I have a feeling I am going to have to put my foot down and inform them they are contradicting their own website info/advertising in that they ARE NOT providing the full WireLess broadband service including email service they advertise and that their website pages are very contradicting.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

freitasm

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#3166754 1-Dec-2023 11:37

Ok, so just to make it clear:

Using a Mercury-provided wireless broadband service
The user connects to SMTP server but relay is disabled

This seems to indicate that Mercury has a misconfigured SMTP server that doesn't recognise the assigned IP address as part of their service.

This is something Mercury support has to correctly identify and fix.

This is not a Spark problem.

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#3166757 1-Dec-2023 11:45

freitasm:

Ok, so just to make it clear:

Using a Mercury-provided wireless broadband service
The user connects to SMTP server but relay is disabled

This seems to indicate that Mercury has a misconfigured SMTP server that doesn't recognise the assigned IP address as part of their service.

This is something Mercury support has to correctly identify and fix.

This is not a Spark problem.

Thanks freitasm. You have hit the nail squarely on the head and as stated I will shortly this afternoon go back to Mercury Help Desk to sort this problem out. (I hope)

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

FineWine

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#3166771 1-Dec-2023 12:57

OK Update

Just spent a lengthy phone call with a Mercury supervisor.

1 - 4G Wireless SMTP ports are blocked and it is a "limitation" of the Kinect.co.nz 4G Wireless email broadband service.
2 - Clients are advised to use the Mercury webmail server if they have a Kinect.co.nz email address which Mercury inherited from TrustPower.

3 - They are slowly "deprecating" this Kinect service and in the future will no longer offer email services on their broadband network - fibre or wireless.

4 - Fibre Optic is scheduled to be installed in the remaining portion of the street (all 200 meters) starting the 6th December 2023. 🤞
5 - Individual village Mercury customers (including village manager) should have started to be notified of this so that the individual ONT's can be installed as and when required.
6 - When the Fibre Optic broadband service is up and running I will connect them back up to their previous old Fibre Optic router/modem and they will then have SMTP service. 🤞🤞
7 - When the Fibre Optic broadband service is up and running Mercury will send out a return postal bag for the return of the 4G LTE Smart Modem 2.

6 - The supervisor acknowledged that their website was contradictory and would pass on all my feedback concerning this.

Lets hope this all becomes a good Christmas present for my oldies - sister in-law and husband. 🤞🎅 🍷

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

huckster

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#3166774 1-Dec-2023 13:05

FineWine:

3 - They are slowly "deprecating" this Kinect service and in the future will no longer offer email services on their broadband network - fibre or wireless.

Time to migrate to something else e.g. gmail or such like....

Quic Broadband

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#3166777 1-Dec-2023 13:20

Also if you are on Spark Wireless Broadband, you can request a Static IP (I think $10 per month more) and then you can unblock Port 25 if you have a Static IP on Spark Wireless Broadband.

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#3166778 1-Dec-2023 13:21

I suspect it is not the case for paying. The message in the OP shows the server responding to the request with a no relay error.

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RunningMan

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#3166793 1-Dec-2023 13:53

BarTender:

Also if you are on Spark Wireless Broadband, you can request a Static IP (I think $10 per month more) and then you can unblock Port 25 if you have a Static IP on Spark Wireless Broadband.

The blocked port 25 is a red herring created by the support call at the beginning. This is an outgoing connection to the mail server being blocked because the user is not within Mercury address space - the no relay message is the Kinect SMTP server denying the connection.

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#3166797 1-Dec-2023 14:03

freitasm: I suspect it is not the case for paying. The message in the OP shows the server responding to the request with a no relay error.

Responding on but relay denied = source IIP not allowed to relay or relay requires authentication

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

freitasm

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#3166803 1-Dec-2023 14:12

Correct. There's nothing to do with Spark blocking anything. No need to pay for a static IP because that's not the problem.

It's Mercury's server configuration.

But seeing they plan on deploying fibre, and moving away from hosting email, I don't think there will be much interest to pursue that.

OP, best to move to Gmail, Outlook or something else.

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#3166823 1-Dec-2023 15:45

Thanks everyone for all your help and info with this.

Small update. Spoke to the Bupa village manager and was informed that Bupa NZ has a nation wide contract with Chorus to wire up all their villages etc including ensuring that there is Fibre in the streets and ONT's in the respective internal village locations.

Fibre in Edgecumbe road Tauranga (for those that know Tauranga) stops at 12th avenue coming from 13th avenue and not including 12th avenue. The village is 200m further on past 12th avenue and butts up against 11th avenue on the highway side. So Chorus is installing that last 200m for the village and not for the 10 other addresses per se in the street. So it is going to be interesting to see what they do and how. The rest of the entire street is pole to pole with FAT's or will they thrush under 12th then pavement or berm just straight to the village or will they also make it available to the other 10 addresses.

Thanks again all.

Merry Christmas 🎅

PS: I have updated the Topic title to better reflect the companies involved.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

nztim

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#3166835 1-Dec-2023 16:37

TFF operate the fiber in Tauranga not Chorus

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CcMaN

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#3168203 5-Dec-2023 00:49

nztim: TFF operate the fiber in Tauranga not Chorus

New developments/subdivisions can get a connection from other LFCs, it's up to the developer to contract them. Chorus have won contracts to supply UFB in TFF, Enable and Northpowers patch. What is problematic is not all ISPs are equipped to service customers in these new developments, e.g. if you were on the Chorus UFB network in Tauranga there used to be a smaller selection of ISPs that would provide a service. I think that situation has got slightly better.

taneb1

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#3171704 14-Dec-2023 13:47

FineWine:

OK Update

Just spent a lengthy phone call with a Mercury supervisor.

1 - 4G Wireless SMTP ports are blocked and it is a "limitation" of the Kinect.co.nz 4G Wireless email broadband service.
2 - Clients are advised to use the Mercury webmail server if they have a Kinect.co.nz email address which Mercury inherited from TrustPower.
3 - They are slowly "deprecating" this Kinect service and in the future will no longer offer email services on their broadband network - fibre or wireless.
4 - Fibre Optic is scheduled to be installed in the remaining portion of the street (all 200 meters) starting the 6th December 2023. 🤞
5 - Individual village Mercury customers (including village manager) should have started to be notified of this so that the individual ONT's can be installed as and when required.
6 - When the Fibre Optic broadband service is up and running I will connect them back up to their previous old Fibre Optic router/modem and they will then have SMTP service. 🤞🤞
7 - When the Fibre Optic broadband service is up and running Mercury will send out a return postal bag for the return of the 4G LTE Smart Modem 2.

6 - The supervisor acknowledged that their website was contradictory and would pass on all my feedback concerning this.

Lets hope this all becomes a good Christmas present for my oldies - sister in-law and husband. 🤞🎅 🍷

Afternoon all,

Apologies for the delay in responding this, have been travelling on and off the past few weeks so just catching up on Geekzone messages.

As confirmed by the OP - Access to the Kinect SMTP server is currently limited to Mercury IP addresses only.

Our wireless broadband services currently use the Spark 4G network, and therefore use Spark's IP ranges. Because of this, while using a 4G Wireless Broadband the SMTP server will not be able to be accessed due to existing security restrictions.

Our current recommendation is to utilize the Webmail platform (as others have mentioned) which can be accessed from anywhere and has recently been updated to a much nicer interface when accessing from different devices (Especially those using tablets or mobile).

I did just want to clarify regarding the depreciation of this service. While we are no longer offering new customers to take up an email service, existing customers will continue to be able to access their email services and there is no plans to retire this anytime soon.

I have raised a ticket internally to ask for any pages that reference our email settings to make this clearer to customers that while using another network (Including our 4G Broadband services) and apologise this wasn't communicated clearly during your initial conversations with our team.

Please feel to reach out to me via PM if you have any issues in the future.

Thanks

Any comments made are my personal views and does not represent those of my employer

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