Problems with email/Port 993 Timeout error

Tech, TV, Mobile, Internet and Geek Corner
1
Had a look through EF and general internet, and thought I would pose a question to the IT gurus of the forum.

We haven't made any changes to our home/business internet service (Vodafone is provider), but lately we are getting a lot of "Port 993 has timed out" errors. Often, sending out mail also seems to take a while. We are using the OSX Mac mail client (version 5.3 on my MBP) with gmail.

Any ideas about this? Not life threatening, but pretty inconvenient.

fduvall

2

Assuming it doesnt time out all the time, and works some of the time, your configuration must be correct.

Given the recent NSA revelations, it would not surprise me if everyone is switching to port 993 to use SSL. and the end servers are being hit hard.

Increase your server timeouts (I cant help you with a MAC client) , also ensure your PC time is sync'ed with an Internet time server.

3
Another interesting thing (which is still happening) is our VOIP services are not working well; Skype and Vonage. However, the phone line provided by Vodafone works perfectly (and is also connected to the ADSL router), as does the IPTV.

Vodafone came out and checked everything, and swapped out the router for a new one. They insist that all is ok. In fact, our speed is up a bit. But VOIP and email are barely useable. Email connects eventually, but the dreaded Port 993 error or just a generic connection fail keeps appearing. With Vonage, we get a dial tone sometimes and can call sometimes... but not ALL of the time, as before. And skype seems to work about half the time, though there might be echo issues or one side hears well and the other hears almost nothing.

Not sure what to try next.

4
you'll find the provider is performing QoS on your phone and TV.

how is everything if you use a wired connection? What does the line test out to with speedtest.net?

also are you port forwarding to your Vonage device? 5060, 5061, using a STUN server?

And have you tried dialling even when a tone is not present?

5
Yes, understand about QoS accountability. They insist that even though their service worked flawlessly for 8 months, that suddenly Vonage/Skype/Google all changed at the exact same moment.

Vonage has always been a wired connection and still does not work. Everything works fine when I take my laptop/iPad/iPhone to another network. Will test skype from a wired connection. Speedtest.net gives me a ping between 46-180ms, download between 2-5Mbps and up is a scorching <1mbps. Did I say I live in Spain? I might as well use soupcans and some string! But we live about 3km from the switch, so are told it is at max speed.

Regarding port forwarding and STUN server, not sure. Vonage box is plugged directly into Vodafone ADSL router (Huawei HG556a) and has always been set up this way.

Generally get a dial tone when I try to use phone, but when I dial it often goes to a fast busy signal (failed connection) whether I have a dial tone or not. Occasionally, the call goes through (<25% of time).

Cheers,

fduvall

6
Can you get cable internet?

can you get good 3g or even 4g where you live?

7
Not sure about cable internet. I believe that all of our providers (Movistar/Telefonica, Orange, Vodafone use ADSL routers. We had satellite when we lived up in the hills, but it was unstable and had data caps. We also had wimax for a while, but it was slow and expensive.

Now that we live in a normal town, we can get 3g service, but it is also capped and we do a lot of TV/movie streaming.

Really, we just want it to work again, as it did for the last 8 months. So any additional suggestions are welcome.

8
is your movie streaming service reliable?

I was thinking that they may be traffic shaping. A VPN might help but getting a VPN router to test if this is the case is hard....

If you download ProXPN or a similar VPN-type product, does Skype work more reliably? This might help track down the root cause of your issue.

9
Using XBMC on a jailbroken ATV2 to stream movies from 1Channel, ProjectFreeTV and IceFilms. Not very reliable, as it seems many of the streams do not work. And it often needs to buffer for a while.

Just installed Hola VPN to try it, but have not really played with it yet. The version I have is browser based, so won't change how I use skype.

I don't think Vodafone is traffic shaping, as our problems started in early January and are constant. If we are gone for a few days, everything does NOT work when we return and then tail off. And Vodafone should have been able to tell us if our consumption levels were triggering something. After 10+ calls and a home visit, I think they would be motivated to fix the problem or tell me that they are throttling us.