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PeteWashington's profile

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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 

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

Expert

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15K Messages

6 years ago

I can suggest a long, long, very long shot trying something in your email client I only learned about yesterday.  If you haven't done so already create a secure mail key (profile->sign-in info->secure mail key) and use it in place of your POP/IMAP and smtp server password.  I tried this in my Thunderbird in anticipation of the upcoming changes which are supposed to take effect around April 1st.  The secure mail key indeed does work in place of the account password.   As I said it's a very long shot so be prepared to restore your account password in your client.

(edited)

Official Solution

Expert

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15K Messages

6 years ago

Expert

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15K Messages

6 years ago

At the time I am posting this neither the POP server (inbound.att.net) nor the webmail are down.  Is your problem recent?  Do you have a legacy account (sbcglobal.net, pacbell.net, etc.) that was recently unmerged from yahoo?  Which email client are you using?

 

If you used a site like isitdown, what url's did you supply for testing?

Tutor

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6 Messages

6 years ago

The inbound.att.net server goes down quite frequently. Has been happening for years.
the URL that I gave isitdown is inbound.att.net. I have also used isitdown and other sites to check inbound.att.net when my
email is working and the results from all them confirm that the server is up. I did that so I could have confidence that the
results from isitdown were correct.
My email address is an old ATT address that I got years ago when I had ATT DSL service. ATT stopped selling DSL a few years
back. The legacy email addresses were picked up by Yahoo. While the address says att.net, it is not technically an ATT address
nor is a true Yahoo address.
The problem is there is no help number or site that can trouble shoot problems. What I would really like is a phone number to
call and talk to someone that can give me a repair time estimate on the server.
THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE EMAIL CLIENT THAT I AM USING.
Sorry for using caps, but I got a little frustrated talking to people on ATT’s help desks. I just wanted to know
when the server would be up. All they wanted to do was go over the settings for the email client. When I
asked to speak to a supervisor they basically refused.

New Member

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6 Messages

You are correct. I have had this problem since AT&T got in bed with Yahoo. It's probably conincedence, but it seems to happen reguarly this time of year - spring. This leads me to believe there is something seriously wrong at AT&T. If you have the time (te hee) call them at 800-288-2020. Keep saying "representitive." Enjoy the (Edited per community guidelines)!

(edited)

Expert

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15K Messages

6 years ago

The inbound.att.net server goes down quite frequently. Has been happening for years.

You are incorrect.  I've been using the att servers for 9 years and I don't even recall an outage.

 

the URL that I gave isitdown is inbound.att.net.

I'm sorry but I don't believe use something like isitdown on a mail server is a valid way to test.   Issitedown and similar sites are for web sites.  A mail server is not a web site and won't respond the same way to the commands isitdown is passing to it.  A preferred way to check is to use ping (or telnet - google on how to do check a POP3 server to see if it is up for you particular system).

Tutor

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6 Messages

6 years ago

Sorry, you are wrong on both counts. The ATT server inbound.att.net goes down several times a year.
The site isitdownrightnow.com has been showing the server up each time I checked it today. Yesterday
was a different story. Every time I checked from about noon PST until 11pm PST isitdownrightnow said
the server is unreachable. My email has been working since I checked it a 8am PST today (1/19). When
I posted my problem on the ATT Community site, inbound.att.net had been down for several hours.
Late last year when my email app could not connect to inbound.att.net I was able to eventually reach
someone at ATT who told me that in fact inbound.att.net was down and that they were working on the
problem. The number I used is 877-285-0113. When I tried that number yesterday, the level 1 help
desk tech could not help me and would not connect me to next level support or a supervisor.
I think the problem is that inbound.att.net supports legacy email address that were used when ATT supplied
DSL service. I know that ATT DSL service in no longer available in my area. When ATT dropped DSL in my area, Yahoo
setup a server that supported my email address.A couple of years ago, I got a message from ATT that said they were going
to move the email server from Yahoo to ATT. The message included the address for the new inbound and out
bound servers. While Yahoo had maybe one problem a year with their server, when ATT took over the outages
escalated.
What I would like to have is a reliable phone number that will connect me with someone at ATT that knows
what the inbound.att.net server is and can tell me if it is up or down.
I have gone through my email settings so many times I have almost worn the characters off of the keys.

Expert

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15K Messages

6 years ago

The inbound.att.net server goes down quite frequently. Has been happening for years.

I stand by what I say.

 

The site isitdownrightnow.com has been showing the server up each time I checked it today.

There there's something inconsistent in your system or more likely the servers (see below).  Why because inbound,att.net is not a url.    That isitdownrightnow site behaves as I expect it to, i.e., report inbound.att.net is down because it cannot access it as it would a web page.  At the same time however the mail server is up because (a) my mail client has no problem accessing it and (b) I can successfully ping it (9:30PM PST).

 

 

About the legacy accounts.  Yes, att and yahoo took it upon themselves to no longer support merged accounts which apparently a lot of the legacy accounts have.  In the process they screwed up a lot of those users.  Indeed many are having login problems with the servers.  The servers are up.  It's just that they appear to be having problems dealing with legacy accounts since this unmerging started.  IMO att/yahoo botched this whole process and really should not have put the burden of fixing all this on their users.

 

Full disclosure, I never had a legacy account, only att.net, so maybe that's why I never have seen any problems -- knock on wood.

Teacher

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27 Messages

6 years ago

I can't connect to the inbound.att.net at least 30% of the time. When I call support they tell me my thunderbird client is configured wrong and that the server is up. AT least that is what I think they said - the language barrier is awful. I had to wait about 30 minutes to get this gem of knowledge. Its set for port 995.

 

If it is configured wrong how does it work 70+% of the time. I have same problem with win 7 & 10 so I can't believe its the OS as I once was told.

 

How do I know if someone responds to this?

 

Expert

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15K Messages

6 years ago

I can't explain why it would fail only 30% of the time.  Maybe a timing problem or a failing POP/IMAP server?  I know that once upon a time I was getting random (didn't try to figure out a percentage) smtp server failures and it would take sometime 10 tries before the message sent.  I think that was a server problem and I haven't seen that happen for a long time now.

 

So when this problem happens what would happen if you repeatedly try to get the mail to repeatedly access the POP/IMAP servers?  Say 10 to 20 times?

Tutor

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6 Messages

6 years ago

Hello,

02/12/2018 the inbound.att.net server was been down all day.

What I would really like is a phone number, not the normal help numbers, that I can call
to find out when the server will be back up. The normal help numbers are no good because
my email account, while it is an att.net address, it is not in any of the records that the
help desks have.

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