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Russell Duffy wrote:
The path of least resistance might be to try the gmail account for the flyrotary list, which is the ONLY thing I have a problem with. Otherwise, Bellsouth has been just outstanding. Fast, reliable, etc, except when dealing with the lancaironline server. I just wish I knew enough about how this all worked to figure out where the problem really is.
Rusty, I guarantee that even if you knew what you were doing there'd be no way you could resolve this problem yourself, unless the problem is on your PC. SMTP is a very simple and very old protocol that contains no delivery guarantees, security mechanisms, or other features we expect from software today. All it does is send a message from one server to another. The message may go directly to the recipient's (or mailing list's) e-mail server, or it may bounce through six servers on its way there. Either way, the sender and recipient are not part of the actual transaction, so you aren't provided with the debugging information you'd need to analyze the problem.
The only people that can investigate this issue are the individuals with administrator-level access to the sending and receiving systems - they can look at the log files when a test message is sent, and see where the holdup is. SOMETIMES you can get away with just one administrator on the phone, although you usually need the sender side. More commonly you need both of them to talk to each other. A standard BellSouth techie isn't even an administrator - aside from the occasional password reset, they have NO access to these systems at all. They're just call center workers answering questions based on a database of past questions and answers.
It IS actually possible to get a BellSouth SMTP admin on the phone. I know this because I've done it. However, it takes a lot of time and you probably won't get this unless you're a corporate client, or you're sending to a corporate client of BellSouth's. They have separate contacts they can call, and if you know what to ask for ("I really need to talk to an SMTP administrator who can look at your logs when I send a test message and watch the message delivery cycle.") you can get this done. You might try asking for "escalation", which is a buzzword in the industry that means you want to go from the support worker to a low-level engineer (who can't solve your problem either but can talk to a high-level engineer who might).
Otherwise, Gmail is probably your best bet. Sorry.
Regards,
Chad
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