testing connection with telnet

[RaeS]

I’m having very complicated problem with Windows Mail running on Vista laptop. This laptop is connected with a workgroup where all other PCs can properly receive and send mails, but it is just my laptop where am neither able to send nor receive. Every time I try doing the same, it gives me the following message:

“The host 'pop.gmail.com' could not be found. Please verify that you have entered the server name correctly. Account: 'pop.gmail.com', Server: 'pop.gmail.com', Protocol: POP3, Port: 995, Secure(SSL): Yes, Socket Error: 11001, Error Number: 0x800CCC0D “

I rechecked my ports and other settings, everything seems to be fine. Later I thought to run telnet command to see if my connection is having any problem. I tested the connection by running “telnet pop.gmail.com 995” and it came up saying “could not open connection to the host on port 995: connection fails”.

So the problem is with this right? If yes, then how other PCs on the same workgroup are able to work with their mails? Also there is a twist, when I connect my laptop with another dial up connection, it works fine.

Any idea what could be the reason for this problem and how can I get rid of this? Thanks in advance.

[Maee]

Lets do a small test. Instead of running this telnet command “telnet pop.gmail.com 995”, simply try running this “tracert pop.gmail.com”. See what you get. If everything is working fine then it should report the following:

Tracing route to gmail-pop.l.google.com [74.125.47.109] over a maximum of 30 hops:

And few lines later it should come up with:

12 79 ms 82 ms 69 ms yw-in-f109.google.com
[74.125.47.109]

If you get the same, than its OK but if the test failed or could not complete in less than 30 hops, then there is a problem with your DNS server. And if so, you will need to ask your ISP for help.

[RaeS]

Thanks a lot for the help Maee, that really seems to be very useful. Here are my test results:

IP address 64.233.183.109
tracert with "pop.gmail.com" is not working
tracert with 74.125.47.109 is completing successfully

So is it DNS problem?

[Patter-Son]

Yes, that is the DNS issue. Now the only way to solve it is to call up your Internet Service Provider and tell them to fix it.

Once they fix it you can run TCP/IP properties to see if the proper DNS servers are being used.