Yesterday morning around 10 or so eastern us time my mail client (thunderbird 2.0.0.6) started timing out on when connecting to pop.spamcop.net. It had been working fine all morning and hasnt been able to connect since. I am running osx 10.4.10

I am connecting on port 110 and have tried to connect from 3 different access points around town and at a friends house so i doubt it is related to my isp or connection issues.

any ideas? is there an alternate port i could try? i have no problems getting in via the webmail interface so i dont think its an account issue.

thanks in advance....

Well, I had not used POP since Friday night. I just tried it and it worked. Also, nobody else has complained about it here.

Do you save your password in the application? Perhaps resetting it will work.

What does your machine resolve pop.spamcop.net to?

C:\Users\sunderwood>nslookup pop.spamcop.net
Server: resolver2.opendns.com
Address: 208.67.220.220:53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: pop.spamcop.net.carroll-ent.com
Address: 208.69.32.137

C:\Users\sunderwood>

If neither of these things shed any light on the issue, an email to support[at]spamcop.net is in order using an alternate email address. If that is an issue, reply here and I will send an email pointing them (JT or now Trevor) to this thread.

Heres what i get:

Helmut:~ scott$ nslookup pop.spamcop.net
Server: 10.0.1.1
Address: 10.0.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: pop.spamcop.net
Address: 216.154.195.50

I use a laptop and i have tried it from 3 different isp's/connections so i dont think its a resolution issue.

I sent an email using the form on webmail and got no reply, if you could have someone check on this thread i wouold appreciate it. this sucks

Just now I'm having the same problem, from my home with iMAC running OS 10.4.10 & Firefox 2.0.0.1.


And now all of a sudden (after an hour or so) I can access SpamCop email - do you know what happened?
Thanks, I appreciate your time & effort.

I am really struggling with that result .... the domain 'resolved' is not connected to spamcop.net .... the IP Address isn't within a block known to be used by any of JT's stuff .....

This would be correct ... pop.spamcop.net, mail.spamcop.net, and imap.spamcop.net all resolve to this IP Address. That server is up and running, evidenced both by my tests and the lack of a ton-load of complaints both here and over in the newsgroups.

However, this does tend to point to the laptop as being the common item ...????

Something like an anti-virus scanner involved that has decided to get lost? Some of these tend to set up their own little proxy, handle the e-mail themselves, placing the files into a temporary place until they are scanned, then moved to the actual e-mail client for its handling. Some folks only discovered this after a failed attempt at an uninstall (OK, sometimes successful) of one of these tools, but the 'proxy link' wasn't removed, leaving the e-mail client actually looking at 127.0.0.1 for the 'new' e-mail ....

"form on webmail" left me a bit confised .. perhaps the "problems" link is what you're talking about? If so, that was intended for issues with the Beta software install .. I believe that the 'Beta' is now the 'current' install .... It is also a week-end in the U.S. ....

For something you can quickly check, can you fire up (Apple) Mail and see if that connects? (remeber to set the "leave on server" flag)

Again, based on the lack of complaints, the server has to be assumed as running just fine .... so it's looking like your connection, be it at the laptop, the account credentials being used, or something in the path ... have you also tried a traceroute yet?

yup, youre right. the laptop is a quite possibly the problem. i seem to be getting to the spamcop server though. i think the ip i'm resolving to is actually a spamcop ip, heres the traceroute:

Helmut:~ scott$ traceroute pop.spamcop.net
traceroute to pop.spamcop.net (216.154.195.50), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 mail.spamcop.net (216.154.195.50) 3.816 ms 6.885 ms 12.592 ms
2 c-3-0-ubr03.lynn.ma.boston.comcast.net (73.169.196.1) 11.708 ms 19.806 ms 13.104 ms
3 ge-1-39-ur01.lynn.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.153.81) 9.910 ms 11.091 ms 9.955 ms
4 68.87.147.90 (68.87.147.90) 10.174 ms 11.741 ms 9.269 ms
5 te-9-4-ar01.woburn.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.144.165) 11.753 ms 14.430 ms 20.291 ms
6 68.86.85.18 (68.86.85.18) 21.530 ms 10.894 ms 13.269 ms
7 comcast-ip-services-llc.tengigabitethernet1-4.ar5.nyc1.gblx.net (64.208.222.58) 17.412 ms 19.576 ms 17.237 ms
8 tengigabitethernet1-4.ar5.nyc1.gblx.net (64.208.222.57) 15.714 ms 16.781 ms 15.189 ms
9 itc-deltacom.so-0-0-0.ar3.dal1.gblx.net (64.208.169.142) 36.711 ms 40.034 ms 40.080 ms
10 pos3-0.suwangaeq00w.cr.deltacom.net (66.35.174.102) 48.888 ms 48.301 ms 39.399 ms
11 suw02.gig3-0.edeltacom.com (66.35.174.130) 140.067 ms 198.254 ms 216.639 ms
12 suwc1-gig3-5.qualitytech.com (216.154.207.13) 60.613 ms 270.702 ms 50.978 ms
13 suwe1n-gig1-1-4.qualitytech.com (216.154.207.22) 56.060 ms 70.638 ms 61.633 ms
14 mail.spamcop.net (216.154.195.50) 55.597 ms 49.640 ms 46.916 ms

Yes, you're getting there, so there's no apparent blockage in the path. bcstone's post adds some confusion to the mix, same OS, same 'problem', yet .. much shorter term and 'working' now ... also from yet another part of the world .. so hard to see a connection between the two ....

A Moderator checked POP with no issues, my IMAP connection is working, and the server talks to me ...

Have you doe the typical Windows troubleshooting step of sthutting down and re-booting yet? (yes, I know, OS-X involved, but .... have to start ruling things out) I have no idea how close my experience with 10.2.x would relate to youe 10.4.x version ... all I can say is that Mail works from that old G3 iBook ....

yup, did the reboot thing just in case but it didnt change anything. i'm not very savvy but isnt there a way to telnet to port 110 to see what message i get from the server?

ediTed:
ok, this seems to be a thunderbird issue, the apple mail app can get in fine. i'll let you know what i find

ok, so i found a setting in the thunderbird preferences for the timeout limits and it was set to 0. i changed it to 90 and its all working fine now. really odd. i'm not sure how that would have gotten changed.

Yes, I just realized the nslookup was wrong. Has to do with my config and my VPN configuration on this laptop. I pinged the correct address, then did a nslookup for the posting and did not read it close enough.

Sorry for any confusion. The IP address the OP showed (216.154.195.50) is the correct address.

When connected to my VPN, I need to add a . at the end of the address (pop.spamcop.net.) to get the correct address from nslookup.

With all the feedback offered, will tag this one as Resolved. Thanks for the work involved in researching and finding the bit of magic involved <g>

Ah, so that's what the ending "." is for. I couldn't understand the documentation on that point (as it were), helps when someone says it in English. Thanks Steven, sorry sl. O/T.