Question

Yahoo! Web Mail problem

Asked by: westone

Hi,
I recently installed a DSL modem and DLink router for a small business. Everything is working fine, and has been for several weeks: Web surfing, email accounts, etc..

One user has a personal Yahoo! web mail account. Since getting the DSL on the network, she has discovered that once she logs into her Yahoo! account she cannot open and view any folders, such as inbox, etc.. The Inbox shows how many unread mails are contained in it, but will not open. When she clicks to open it, it eventually times out.

When she dials in on a phone line attached directly to her PC (as she did prior to the DSL), it works fine.

I have not been able to find any info on this exact problem at Yahoo! Help or EE.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Bill

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Asked On
2003-09-09 at 06:32:29ID20733318
Tags

yahoo

,

router

,

problem

,

mail

Topic

Miscellaneous Networking

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Answers

 

by: davetehPosted on 2003-09-09 at 06:36:45ID: 9320215

Does this timeout problem happens to other web pages also?

 

by: westonePosted on 2003-09-09 at 06:41:49ID: 9320253

No, As mentioned in the original question, evrything else is hunky dory.

 

by: liddlerPosted on 2003-09-09 at 06:46:04ID: 9320293

Does your DSL come with a firewall.  time out problems like this are often due to a firewall or router acl blocking some ports.  If you have a firewall or rourt with acl look in the logs, when she tries to connect and see if anything is being dropped.

 

by: westonePosted on 2003-09-09 at 06:52:47ID: 9320364

That's a good idea. I'll check it.

The Dlink router has a built in firewall. We can open whatever ports we want. The problem is which port to open. We are not going to open them all, and if a specific port needs to be open for Yahoo! web mail, we should be able to find that information at Yahoo!, but we can't.

I'll also try temporarily turning the firewall off to see if that's the problem.

Thanks, Bill

 

by: liddlerPosted on 2003-09-09 at 07:16:21ID: 9320571

Bill,
It may also be a routing issue, if your router is only proxying ports 80 / 443 then your may have to configure extra proxy ports in your router. For general mail this is pop3 (110/tcp inbound) and smtp (25/tcp outbound)

 

by: davetehPosted on 2003-09-09 at 07:19:08ID: 9320594

No need to down your firewall, all you need is port 80 for yahoo! web mail. And port 80 is already opened since you can surf the internet hunky dory.

Check the proxy settings. Should be all untick (not using any proxyie) for DSL connection.

 

by: westonePosted on 2003-09-09 at 07:37:15ID: 9320788

Liddler,
Several email accounts on the businesses domain are already in use using Outlook, so the ports are open.

Daveteh,
Do you mean proxy settings for the browser? They are off, no proxy for the browser. Or did you mean something else?

The router has the standard default ports open: 80, 21, 443, maybe 70 & 1080. I'll double check it.

 

by: davetehPosted on 2003-09-09 at 07:44:09ID: 9320865

Yup, no proxies for DSL connection. Not even "Automatically Detect Settings", untick everything.

 

by: dimantePosted on 2003-09-10 at 18:09:39ID: 9333549

Anyone else there have a yahoo account that they can see if the same problem exists for them??  One thing that can cause bizzarre problems like you are experiencing is MTU mis configuration in a router / firewall config...


D

 

by: westonePosted on 2003-10-02 at 05:30:50ID: 9476240

Today I temporarily set the PC in question as a DMZ on the LAN. Yahoo mail worked fine. So, this tells me that even though port 80 is open for web browsing, some other factor is in play. I created a firewall rule that allows traffic from mail.yahoo.com on all ports. It is working fine. I don't like having all those ports open, even for just the one WAN address, but I am unable to find any info on which port specifically needs to be open.

When I have a few extra minutes, I may by process of elimination try to figure out exactly what port is required.

BTW, This is an XP PC and the XP firewall for the connection is OFF.

 

by: qwaleteePosted on 2003-10-02 at 06:19:28ID: 9476627

I've sed Yahoo mail, and I know of no port settings you would have to change to get it to work.  It is all just regular HTTP transactions.  All SOHO routers by default will allow outbound HTTP equests and responses over the same TCP connection.

In fact, the only ways I know of to "cause blocking" in this type of set up are:

1) some of the routers allow you to block certain web sites (by host name or IP address), which would normally apply to all users, though dsome of the routers allow you to designate which IP addresses to apply it to

2) designated IP addresses or MAC addresses can be totally blocked, while leaving other IPs/MACs open

3) or, a designated IP/MAC can beblocked on certain ports only


None of the above seem to be your case, because the user can see folders, just not open them.  Unless Yahoo switches hosts between the folder list and the actual folder?  Unless that is true, we know the user can get to some resources on that Yahoo mail host, but not others.  That is fairly baffling.

Still, it might be worth trying to swap IPs between the problem PC and some other PC, see what happens

When you put the user "in the DMZ," did you just desinate its IP address on the router as the DMZ IP?  Or did you actually move its Ethernet connection from the D-Link to a hub/switch that has direct access to the DSL line (which would have required an IP address chaneg on that PC)?  If you chanegd IP addresses, I wonder if there is some software firewall on the PC that was sensitive to that.  Vague speculation, I know.  You said you turned off XP's firewall, but please also check if you have ZoneAlarm, Norton, BlackIce, etc.

 

by: westonePosted on 2003-10-02 at 07:36:44ID: 9477362

The LAN is nothing but the router and the ADSL modem. The router was at all default settings until I set the PC address as DMZ in the router interface.

I know how this is supposed to work, with web mail and HTTP on port 80. Clearly something else is a t work here.

If a software firewall were in effect on the PC, opening up the firewall on the router would not have any affect on it.

 

by: qwaleteePosted on 2003-10-02 at 07:41:25ID: 9477406

COrrect.  Very odd.  Don't think I can help.  Sounds like it might be an all-around timing issue, but no rea; way to diagnose.

Have you tried running a sniffer and comparing what the traffic looks like from the XP machine accessing Yahoo compared to another machine accessing the same Yahoo account?

 

by: mudharanPosted on 2004-05-08 at 07:29:50ID: 11021928

Even I had the same Problem.
This problem was because I had all default setting.
Solution is very simple.

1. Goto Router homepage
2. Select Wan (Home ->Wan)
3. If you are you are using DSL select PPPoE, Type in your user id and password.
4. Click apply.
It will restart your router.
You are all set....!!!

Happy Net Surfing.
Murali

 

by: westonePosted on 2004-05-08 at 08:39:59ID: 11022135

Dude, If that hadn't already been done, we wouldn't be able to surf at all.

 

by: mudharanPosted on 2004-05-09 at 18:58:08ID: 11027897

This can even be done with out selecting PPPoE.

I was using Dynamic IP. I was able to surf other sites except webmail of aol, yahoo mail and few other sites. Then I changed WAN setting now its working fine.
I tried resetting to Dynamic IP instead of PPPoE, i got the same problem.

I Guessed this was the solution to this.
Now im able to surf yahoo.

Do you still have that problem??

 

by: westonePosted on 2004-05-10 at 06:01:18ID: 11030676

In our area, using BellSouth ADSL, it is not possible to surf the internet until authenticated using PPPoE.
Dynamic IP is used for the TW cable service around here, which does not require authentication.

 

by: mudharanPosted on 2004-05-11 at 18:22:47ID: 11046056

Okay !!!

I got your problem
Try changing your MTU 1452.
This will allow you to access all sites.

Hope this solves your problem
Murali

 

by: mudharanPosted on 2004-05-11 at 18:24:20ID: 11046064

To change MTU goto Home->WAN
Select Dynamic IP
Click Clone MAC Address
Change MTU
and click apply.

Murali

 

by: mudharanPosted on 2004-05-23 at 09:32:29ID: 11138210

Ooops I forgot to tell the MTU number...
you got to update MTU with 1452

Sorry forgot to give this number in above reply.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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