Odd BT/TSOHost conflict? Help, please!!

Happy New Year to all!

Wonder if anyone can help with a conflict I'm getting between my BT Broadband account and my mail server @ TSOHost? I thought of referring this to BT support but from previous experience I thought I'd try here first.....

In terms of setup, I'm running 64-bit Vista and Thunderbird as default mail client with with Avast anti-virus, Spybot and Ad-Aware running. Connectivity is through a HomeHub 2 on firmware 8.1.H.J (Type A), last updated 11/12/09.


Some of the time, everything works fine but increasingly over the past few months, I'm getting "Connection to the mail server timed out" errors. The mail client works fine with my other POP/SMTP accounts but has a specific account issue with the TSOHost connection. A similar issue occurs with my wife's TSOHost account, but not her other mail account. We moved to a new address on a different exchange a couple of months before these issues began to crop up, where we were running an older HomeHub ver 1, so it's difficult to pin down whether or not the issue is Hub or move related, or entirely unconnected to either.

TSOHost have run a series of diagnostics for me and cannot see an issue at their side. I don't think the issue is client related (it occurs with Thunderbird, Windows Mail and Outlook Express) or machine related (it happens on both my desktop and laptop, both connected wirelessly). I also do not have an issue connecting to this account via Webmail or when at work, leading me to think it's a peculiar BT exchange-side issue? I wondered if it might be DNS-related, but the client finds the server, connects and tells me how many messages are to be downloaded, but then waits a while and finally times out without downloading any new mail. All other internet connectivity is fine and dandy and connecting to the mail server for outbound mail has never caused me an issue so far.

The issue remains with AV, firewall, Spybot and Ad-Aware disabled. Re-booting the HomeHub occasionally clears it (about 50/50) but it soon re-occurs.

Interestingly, if I plug my BT mobile dongle into the laptop and connect via 3G or GPRS (i.e not via my BT landline), I can get my mail messages no problems. Remove the dongle and the issue returns. I also get mail no issues when out and about using BT Openzone.

Am I missing something really obvious here?? Any thoughts on resolution of this issue would be appreciated as it's getting increasingly frustrating trying to pin down what's going on!

How are you connecting to TSOHost? IMAP or POP3? I also see they offer Exchange hosting, at least it's in their knowledge base.

It seems a strange issue. The easiest test would be to ping/traceroute the server you're connecting to in order to see whether it's up. You could also DIG if you're on OS X/Linux to get the IP address and do it that way if you prefer.

Seems like a routing issue with it working some of the time and not others, then again it seems like it could be host related. Next time the issue happens you could try putting your laptop onto the BT 3G dongle and your wifes laptop via the HH and see which works. By doing this you'll test the routes and see where the problem may be, the BT 3G dongle won't use BT's network as it is run by Vodafone.