in message
this is the most common error I receive:
An unknown error has occurred. Account: xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Server:
'SMTP.comcast.net', Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: '421 Cannot
connect to
SMTP server 76.96.30.117 (76.96.30.117:25), connect error 10060',
Port: 25,
Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 421, Error Number: 0x800CCC67
Upon rereading your original post, Outlook is stating that
smtp.comcast.net is the IP name of the mail host to which you are
trying to connect. The IP address is what the error message back from
the server is reporting. So you probably are using smtp.comcast.net
as the mail host's name in the email account defined in Outlook.
The 421 error is a code being reported by the mail host to which you
are connecting. You already have authenticated to their host so you
are actually connecting to it. The 421 status is an error code
returned by the server to report problems with their service or some
need to shutdown the mail session. Mail servers are supposed to be
tolerant of receiving illegal commands and instead should issue back a
500 error status, so it is not because the mail server got a bad
command from your software. It is possible that they first do the
authentication handshaking (to find out which user is attempting to
establish a mail session) and then some external means is forcing a
termination of that mail session (like your account is inactive,
terminated, on hold, blacklisted, or otherwise restricted). Comcast
has rarely terminated or frozen their customers accounts that are
found to spew spam or other large volumes of bulk mail but it does
sometimes happen. Unless specifically asked, the rep that you called
may not specifically check if there is a hold or restriction on your
email privileges.
Since you are using Microsoft's CDO webnews interface to post to
Usenet, and because Microsoft chose not to include a valid
NNTP-Posting-Host header (the one they insert always points back to
one of their internal CDO hosts), I don't know from what IP address
you are posting (and if that is the same problematic host from where
you cannot send out emails). With your IP address, I could do a spam
database lookup to check if you've been blacklisted (and, if so, might
be why your outbound mail privileges have been suspended due to abuse
reports that they have received since Comcast doesn't use blacklists
on outbound emails). You could go to dnsstuff.com to do the spam
database lookup yourself. With your IP address, I (or you) could also
check at senderbase.org what has been noticed for volume of email from
your IP address. A large volume for a personal email account usually
means you are spamming or sending out bulk mails (with or without your
knowledge).
In general, and despite Comcast's alteration of the comment string
returned with the error code, the generic status as noted in RFC 2821
is:
421 <domain> Service not available, closing transmission channel
(This may be a reply to any command if the service knows it must shut
down)
Well, it could be their particular mail host to which you connect
(noted by the IP address they they provided in the comment string) is
not working right now. You could ask them for the IP name or IP
address for a different mail host but it might be that you need to use
that one to get at your mailbox. The reps that you call have no means
of getting at the troubleshooting and maintenance logs or schedule for
the admins of those hosts, so they won't know if there is a problem
with that particular host. You will have to call them back and be
very obstinate in trying to report that THEIR mail server is issuing a
421 error status which means THEIR host is having problems. Rather
than use smtp.comcast.net, ask if another mail host can be used in the
interim until they fix their mail host - and make sure to keep pushing
until they issue a trouble ticket number that they must give to you so
that someone other than that first-level rep actually looks at that
mail host.
You could also try defining another member or associate email account
in Comcast. For each Comcast subscription, you will have 1 owner (or
primary) email account and can define up to 6 others. So go to their
web page to My Account and create a new email account and see if that
works. If it does, the mail host is working but there is a problem
with your normal account that only Comcast can fix. However, before
doing that, use their webmail interface to empty out your mailbox
(Inbox). A corrupted mail item can screw up their mail server so that
you can't use that mailbox until that corrupted item has been deleted
(and not just moved from the Inbox to the Trash folder). Use their
webmail interface, read the emails, delete the ones you don't want to
keep (and then purge them from the Trash folder), move all the rest
into some other folder than the Inbox, logoff their webmail interface,
and then check if your email client can successfully connect and
establish a mail session with that account. If it works, you got rid
of the corrupted mail item that screwed up their mail server (or you
moved it into another folder since POP3 only reads the mailbox which
is the Inbox folder).
