Protect yourself online
PeteWashington's profile

Tutor

 • 

6 Messages

Friday, January 19th, 2018 3:38 AM

inbound.att.net is not responding

I have a ATT/Yahoo email address. The inbound.att.net server is not responding. I have tried pinging it with 3rd party connection sites (is it down and web site down) neither can connect to it. Is it down says that it may be down for a week. Any one know what the problem might be.

 

Thanks

Pete 

Expert

 • 

15K Messages

6 years ago

Done.

 

Look, I don't know  what wrong with you guys thinking the servers don't work because they do - for me - but then I don't have a legacy account.  However if all of you do have legacy email accounts (sbcglobal.net, etc.) then what I do think is that att and yahoo have never fuully straightened out the "great unmerge".  I base that on the number of threads in these forums about server and password related problems with all of them having legacy accounts in common.  I no longer try to diagnose these problems after the requite suggestions about doing all you possibly can to troubleshoot the problem at your end (e.g., check server settings, secure mail key, etc.).  I think there is some kind of (account?) data base problem which is over and above anything to do with email settings and passwords, i.e., stuff is not being handled properly when verifying these legacy accounts.  No amount of troubleshooting at the user end is going to determine this or get it fixed.   So I just end up repeatedly saying call the Digital Assistance Center (877-267-2988).  I keep hoping if enough of these legacy account holders do that they might get it through their thick skulls there's a common problem with those legacy accounts.  

Tutor

 • 

3 Messages

6 years ago

@_xyzzy_

Thanks for pulling the "Solution" designation.  Thanks also for the time and effort you've put in looking into this problem.  I think the thread now has enough advice and DIY suggestions so that any one who reads all of it should be able to locate the source of a connection problem and to determine what can be done, if anything, to mitigate it.

 

I'll add calling the Digital Assistance Center (877-267-2988) to my To Do list.

 

Cheers!

 

Teacher

 • 

27 Messages

6 years ago

I have had the same problem for months. I thought it was a problem with Windows Live Mail, so I switched to Thunderbird in November 2017 (also because MS appeared to be dropping any support for WLM) and Tbird seemed to be better, but then it started having the same problem.

Oddly, I was using my regular old email password and it still worked since April. I obtained a secure code today after many attempts to connect to inbound.att.net failed, and it worked...for a while, anyway, and then I had the same problem.

 

I read through this thread and decided I would try pinging inbound.att.net and found that the DNS server apparently returned three different IP addresses, 74.6.137.75, 74.6.106.29, or 216.155.194.54, for the inbound.att.net server. However, the first line of the response after I hit the return after entering "ping inbound.att.net" in a cmd window always read:

Pinging fo-jpop-mail.att.gm0.yahoodns.net [one of the three IPs I noted above] with 32 bytes of data:

So I decided to change the POP server name in Tbird to what I highlighted in the above line...and so far, it seems to work every time click "get messages".

Could this be why some users have found that setting the server to 74.6.137.75 works sometimes, but not at other times?

Why would the IP address for inbound.att.net change back and forth so quickly? Could it be the ATT mail system monitors demand and via constantly updating the DNS info, routes requests to the whichever server IP that has the least load?


Teacher

 • 

27 Messages

6 years ago

I'm now finding that pinging inbound.att.net is returning even more different IP addresses than just a while ago, including 74.6.106.14 and 98.137.157.46.


Scholar

 • 

235 Messages

6 years ago

We apparently just have to live with AT&T having the server(s) that
intermittently fail.

Teacher

 • 

27 Messages

6 years ago

I just opened two cmd windows, side by side. In one I typed in, but didn't hit the enter key:

ping inbound.att.net

and in the other I likewise typed in, but didn't hit the enter key:

ping fo-jpop.mail.att.gm0.yahoodns.net

I then clicked on the first cmd window, hit enter, then immediately clicked the other cmd window, and hit enter....then repeated that process 10 times over about 5 minutes, using F3 to repeat my entry on each command line, so the ping requests were sent within a second or so of each other.

DNS never resolved the same IP address at the same time for inbound.att.net and fo-jpop.mail.att.gm0.yahoodns.net by doing that. The IP addresses shown varied within each window, but never matched up. My connection properties show that my primary DNS server is the ATT server at 12.127.16.67.

Weird.


Scholar

 • 

235 Messages

6 years ago

Very clever; however, I can't figure out what can be concluded from you
exercise.

. . . . Pete

Teacher

 • 

27 Messages

6 years ago

@petercreasey

I was hoping someone with in-depth knowledge of DNS and IP issues might see something revealing in that behavior. I know there are things like CNAME and ALIAS that redirect from one name to another, but that's about it. It just seems odd that pinging inbound.att.net always shows that it first points to the fo-jpop... name before it resolves an IP address, but that IP is never the same as the DNS simultaneously provides directly for the fo-jpop... name.


ACE - Expert

 • 

34.7K Messages

6 years ago

There are probably quite a few servers serving collectively as the servers for the different mail protocols for the millions of AT&T Internet customers.  DNS names can be set up for round robin resolution, or use other ways to dynamically use an IP address for any given name.  Even given a single IP address, there may be multiple servers serving that address.   So, I'm not sure what your test was intended to demonstrate.

 

Trying to keep hundreds (if not thousands) of servers up and running and behaving exactly the same can be a maddening task, so I'm not surprised that sometimes a connection works, and sometimes if fails.

 

Teacher

 • 

27 Messages

6 years ago

Sometimes!! how about not connecting for days.
Not finding what you're looking for?
New to AT&T Community?
New to the AT&T Community? Start by visiting the Community How-To.
New to the AT&T Community?
Visit the Community How-To.