Summary: Spam may be to blame if you can't send email from your hotel room.
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I've run into this as well. It's very strange, but once I understood it, it kinda, sorta, made sense. And understanding it allowed me to work around it.
But it's the kind of thing I wouldn't expect the front desk to be able to help with at all. You're kind of on your own.
And I think you can blame spam.
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You may already know, but when you send email, you're connecting to a remote email server, and communicating on a particular "port". Port 25 happens to be the SMTP mail sending port.
Many hotels, and possibly other facilities, are starting to intercept mail being sent to any mail server on port 25, and redirecting it to flow through their own mail server. So even though your mail program is configured to send your mail through the SMTP server of, say, your isp - the hotel's infrastructure sends it through their email server anyway.
And on top of that, they then impose a cap on the amount of email you can send.
Why do they do that? My theory is spam - they don't want some spammer to sit in their hotel and use their resources to send hundreds or thousands of spam emails. Or similarly, have a legitimate guests machine that's infected with a spam-sending zombie to do the same. Not only would it clog the hotel's network, but it could result in the hotel's IP address being added to spam-blocking blacklists. Not something the hotels want.
So they intercept, and limit what you can do.
Fortunately there are several workarounds. And the good news is that the workarounds are difficult for the spammers to exploit.
Here are several ways to address the issue:
- Use web mail. If your ISP has a web interface, than can be a quick way to be able dash off that important email with no further thought.
- Use a proprietary network. The most common example might be AOL - AOL mail seems unaffected by these SMTP hijacking tricks.
- Use a VPN. Similar to the previous point, if you or your corporation have the ability to connect to a VPN, or Virtual Private Network, that connection bypasses these types of redirections.
- If you have access to your mail server's configuration, or your ISP is willing to do so, have the mail server listen on an additional port. For example in addition to waiting for mail on port 25, have it listen to port 26 also. Then configure your client to send using port 26 instead of port 25, and you've bypassed the hijack.
- Use SSH tunneling. If you can, this is my recommended solution. When you're on a foreign network, like a wifi hotspot or even a hotel's hardwired network, you really don't know who else might be sniffing your internet traffic, and possibly eavesdropping on your mail, or worse, your mail passwords. How can I keep my email safe from sniffing? discusses "SSH Tunneling". The nice side effect of this technique, is that it also completely bypasses the hotel's attempts to get in between you and your mail server.
Like I said, I don't really blame the hotels, they're trying to address a very real and serious problem. I do wish that they had better information available about what they're doing, or at least a warning of some sort. But ultimately I blame the spammers and the purveyors of malware that have forced the hotels and others into the position of having to take these types of actions.
Article C2496 - December 19, 2005
We use alternate port 26 and also select "logon to mail server before sending mail" and it works for one of our email servers but not the other! I think this may depend on the alternate port settings the email server is using. Why is it so hard to find a universal set of email settings that work everywhere? We have to coach our users to change these outlook settings depending on which office or hotel they are in. Some users are OK with it but others find it all too technical. As IT support, I find this issue very frustating. Outlook 2000 setting behave differently than 2007 settings too, just to add some extra challenge to this issue.
Posted by: Bruce Elniski at February 6, 2009 11:14 AMBruce E
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Posted by: Oscar at June 18, 2009 10:23 PMI used to spend many frustrating minutes (adding up to hours) first explaining to hotel staff what an smtp server is, and then persuading them to find the information for me. Some hotels (e.g. Ibis) don't allow any outgoing mail at all.
I work at a hotel property management group and I might be able to provide some info. I think there are a few separate issues listed here.
1) The issue that I am most knowledgeable about is the hotel email server redirect which not every hotel does. In most cases if your business/outlook mail servers will not go through when you try to send you can just use web mail and it will be fine. However, this is not the only issue we encounter and web mail may be a pain because of your contacts/data being in your business email program.
2. Another issue is that the hotel may not have an outgoing email redirect but has an ISP that does not work with your email ISP. This started a few years back and it is linked to spam. The ISP AT&T was one of the first big companies to start doing this. The hotel does not have a lot of control over this if they don't have their own mail server. From what I understand, this is caused by smtp relay no longer performing the ISP's email relay handoff as it once did, and as Leo said this is due to spam (at least I think so). Certain ISPs (such as Comcast) have set-up email authentication to fix this and these users tend to have less email trouble from that point on. Your company or ISP may be able to set this authentication up and solve this issue as well.
3. Whether or not the hotel is redirecting your mail, the hotel’s ISP can blacklist outgoing mail servers for the ISP location due to excessive spam. This problem is more and more common. Unfortunately there has been very little progress made in this area as far as the hotels are concerned because they often cannot afford the expense/time to manage this properly. This is because most often the internet access is free. Or, the hotel staff cannot justify the cost because they do not itemize the mark-up on the rooms for the internet. So, they don't see the profit associated with the internet access. Only at large hotels who charge for access have I ever seen this handled better. Small hotel/motel owners generally do not understand the network set-up any better than you or I and therefore do not see the need unless there network techs tell them. And, even then they do not see this as a necessity. Internet service in general works much better at higher quality hotels as can be expected.
4. The last issue I have seen is with VPN access email not working. This is rarely a hotel or ISP issue but it can be sometimes. I have found that requesting a public static IP address from hotel tech support or getting one automatically at the terms and conditions page will more likely resolve any issues with VPNs at the hotel. However, there is a chance it is the remote VPN server or the company mail server that is the problem.
When in doubt, I would call hotel tech support. Using your web mail, which is on the same port (port 80) as the internet, is almost always the easiest solution if you can tolerate this. This is the information I know from working with the IT company at our hotels for years. I am sorry if this is not completely accurate technically as I am not a tech. I would like to see more posts here to get these issues addressed with our IT people.
Posted by: Dave at June 30, 2009 11:45 PMThanks Matt, worked like a dream!!
Posted by: Terry at February 28, 2010 1:38 PMthanks for that i set up new home wifi with different supplier and my e mails wouldnt work with aol router joined smtp2go worked straight away
Posted by: suzie b at June 30, 2010 12:58 PM