Hmmm, well, it seems I need to do some explaining.

First of all, I certainly apologize if you felt I was taking a “potshot” at you. It certainly was not my intent. Not again to be misconstrued, but I don’t take “potshots”.  If or when I feel it is necessary to take any kind of shot, they certainly are not the “potshot” variety. Fortunately, I have the ammunition, both in intellect and education, to afford that ability if or when the need arises.

Secondly, my credentials: I hold 17 different Microsoft Certifications, only 3 of which have fallen off the back (out of support). I’d list them here but I fear that only tends to open the door to distraction off topic and the common accusation; “Well, certifications don’t really mean you know what you’re doing”. While I admittedly have seen some holders of certs be fairly well uneducated, those prople are filtered out in the real world pretty quickly. Also, those people tend to have one or two certs, not 17. My certs run from the old Windows NT to Windows 7, from Exchange 2007 to 2010, from various office applications (MOS) from 2003 through 2010, from various SQL to Developer level.

Thirdly, I fully understand these are in theory “help” forums and it is certainly reasonable to assume a new poster to these forums might actually be seeking help. While I grant that people clearly come here for help, but I personally find the logic which leads one to that point to be fatally flawed and suspect that if or when someone actually gets help, it is probably accidentally or by sheer luck. Again, that is not a pot shot at you, or your skill sets and not to imply that you’ve not helped others, (1910 posts / 21 solutions = 1.09% success rate).  Based on my depth of experience in support, I am certain there are much more expedient and direct avenues of effective support.

Which might lead one to ask, “If I don’t think these forums carry a high degree of likelihood of success, why in the world did I come here for help?”

The short answer is, I didn’t come here seeking help. Although you did make some suggestions, if you peruse my original post, I think you’ll see that nowhere in it did I ever ask for any help or solution.

This is because I am 103% certain of where the problem lies and further that the problem is outside my personal control. I came here to provide my conclusive proof, and to provide other visitors with the knowledge it takes to get their individual conclusive proof, and to call them (however few there may be) to action against the true source of the problem. My hope being that several people might actually take the steps and make the calls. You may or may not know, but the truth is that within most credible support organizations, it takes surprisingly few upset people on a specific problem to raise internal awareness of the problem. Ironically, this is not always because the support organization actually desires to help the customer as much as it is to more effectively manage call times (problem calls take much longer to end and often involve a higher tier and/or a supervisor).

Now, getting to your suggestion,. The page you cite, offers what it calls “server settings”. For some smaller domains that may be an accurate term, however, in this case it is not. In this case, those are actually traffic routers.  For the client, the difference in terms is trivial and the end result is normally the same.

However, in problematic cases such as this, it certainly leads to confusion in that the actual problematic servers are more difficult to identify and requires client logging (unless the administrator is watching the server statistics, cares about delivering a quality product, and is EMPOWERED to take corrective action).

However, sensing that you may actually expect something specific so you’ll let go of your suggestion and perhaps recognize why I received it as folly, here is why my client server (router) settings are configured as they are configured.

My client hits two, and only two, server groups, 2.48.1 and 0.8.0.357900.  I know this from many hours of logging and careful parsing of the log files. Now, according to the page you cited there are “server settings” which are applicable now.

This implies there were OLDER settings.  That further implies the OLDER settings might no longer work. HOWEVER, if you scroll down to below the table you’ll see the following statement:

“AT&T's POP/SMTP settings have changed to inbound.att.net and outbound.att.net, but if you are using the old server settings (pop.att.yahoo.com and smtp.att.yahoo.com), they will continue to work. You do not have to change them at this time.”

A logical examination of this statement confirms that there were indeed some older settings, but also it confirms the older settings should also continue to work.

None the less, when I was first informed of the new “server settings” I dutifully made the requested changes.

Immediately, I started getting intermittent prompts for password from my client. I can understand that with some users, their lack of technical awareness might cause some concern, but logic actually dictates that a CLIENT (not user) supplied password is incorrect one time,

it is incorrect all times.

There should be no such thing as an intermittently incorrect password coming from an email client.

Knowing this, I enabled logging and reviewed them.

What I found at the time was that all of the intermittent password rejections were coming from the 0.8.0.357900 server group and as a reminder, this ONLY started when I changed the so-called server settings.

Interestingly, I also discovered that with the ORIGINAL so-called server settings, I hit the same two server groups, AND the same exact ACTUAL servers, however, I was not prompted for any any incorrect passwords.

I called to complain, and hit the same brick wall then as I am hitting now, insufficient engineer education and lack of proper procedure to handle or communicate a true server side problem.

Naturally, the solution for me was SIMPLE and obvious, go back to the original “server settings” and press on with my busy life.

However, being aware of the new router configuration, and knowing that change is inevitable, I kept in mind that I may at somepoint in the future have to again address this problem if or when the older server settings fall out of the back side of support.

That was about a year and a half ago so fast forward to about four months ago. I started again getting intermittent prompts from Outlook for credentials. Hoping the solution was simple, I naturally changed the settings back to the newer settings, and the problem actually got worse.

Enabling and examining the log files, I found something more disturbing this time. The error from the “new” settings was ALWAYS “POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.” And it always came from a server in the 0.8.0.357900 group. Now, using the older settings, the prompt from my Client was the same, but the ACTUAL ERROR was different, “POP3 (pop.att.yahoo.com): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime”.

Additionally, after a lot of parsing and some custom code, I discovered this error was coming EXCLUSIVELY from servers in the 2.48.1 group.

So, knowing those original erros were (at that time) over a year earlier, I did revert back to the so-called “new” settings. Interestingly, that was again even worse!! With the “newer” settings in place,

I not only still get intermittent (but frequent) “POP3 (pop.att.yahoo.com): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime”, but I still will get these errors from the 2.48.1 group, but I also go back to getting the same old “POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.” From the 0.8.0.357900 group.

So, even though it was very irritating, to satisfy your concerns, are several errors logged:

2012.09.29 00:00:07

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate 2.48.1 on pop123.sbc.mail.sp2.yahoo.com

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime 

2012.09.29 12:52:19

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate 2.48.1 on pop130.sbc.mail.sp2.yahoo.com

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime

2012.09.30 00:14:22

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate 2.48.1 on pop129.sbc.mail.sp2.yahoo.com

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime

2012.09.30 01:29:31

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate 2.48.1 on pop127.sbc.mail.sp2.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime

2012.09.30 08:03:30

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop123.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:04:43

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop122.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:06:57

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop126.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:09:03

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop116.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:42:00

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop113.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:44:08

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop126.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:45:19

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate 2.48.1 on pop124.sbc.mail.sp2.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime

2012.09.30 08:48:21

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop101.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:49:34

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop117.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:50:44

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop102.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:51:58

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop108.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:53:11

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop114.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 08:54:17

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate 2.48.1 on pop121.sbc.mail.sp2.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime

2012.09.30 08:59:22

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate 2.48.1 on pop124.sbc.mail.sp2.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime

2012.09.30 09:05:52

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop114.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 09:07:08

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop128.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 09:09:10

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop119.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.09.30 09:28:1

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate-0.8.0.357900 pop130.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com
POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [AUTH] Incorrect username or password.

2012.10.01 10:39:40

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> +OK hello from popgate 2.48.1 on pop117.sbc.mail.sp2.yahoo.com

POP3 (inbound.att.net): <rx> -ERR [SYS/TEMP] Server not ready. Please try again after sometime

So, I’m going to revert to the older settings and that way at least I can avoid the incorrect user name errors.
I’d also ask, with the greatest respect, not to derail this thread beyond the comprehension of the average users ability to discern a hopeful solution.

I’d ask you to remember that some (most) people do come here for solutions, but the truth clearly is, this is a server side issue, not a client issue and there is nothing they can do on the client side to fix it.

At best, the most they could possibly do is to mitigate the problem somewhat by reverting to the older server settings.
Remember, for most people, coming to forums is often a last resort. By the time many hove taken this step, they have likely been through the ringer with AT&T support (at which they may have even paid to fix and unfixable problem) as well as perhaps even their client support.

It could be just me, but I’m thinking the last thing they need is to take more time chasing well intended but non-successful solutions.
Again, I know you really do mean well and please do not confuse my sarcasm for “pot-shots”.
I am by now, also extremely frustrated by this problem and have a great deal of experience in other forums.

I am certain, for some, perhaps many problems, you can be of assistance and people really do appreciate finally getting help from somebody.
However, the truth is, there are no client side settings which can generate these errors coming from the server intermittently.