Streamyx SMTP Issues

Recently, TM Net has implemented a series of measures to mitigate the amount of spam on its networks, specifically its ADSL service, Streamyx. One of these measures is stricter filtering, and in some cases blocking of port 25 for all Streamyx accounts with dynamic IP addresses.

What this means is that if you have subscribed to a Personal Streamyx account, or a Business Broadband (SOHO Package), you may experience problems with sending out emails with the default settings of port 25, especially if you are sending out emails using your own domain name. If your customers frequently complain of not receiving your emails, this could be a tell tale sign. Users who are using their Streamyx email accounts may not be affected (example@streamyx.com) by this, since it involves emails on hosted domains (eg info@hosteddomain.com).

Personally, I experienced problems with sending out emails from my locally hosted and foreign hosted domains on port 25 and that is when I discovered this countermeasure by TM Net. In my case, my host Webserver has provided an alternative port, 587 for SMTP and this works much more reliably compared to port 25 (since TM Net is performing heavy filtering on this port). Therefore, it is advisable to contact your web host to find out if they have any alternative ports you can use for SMTP, especially if you experience slowness in sending emails.

If your web host does not have an alternative port, you can try TM Net’s suggested solution, which is to use smtp-proxy.tm.net.my as the SMTP server in place of your hosted domain name (eg mail.hosteddomain.com). For more information on how to set this up for your email clients, refer to this website : http://webmail.tm.net.my/info/proxy.html