MetaChat - AskMecha: One hour with tech support

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23 October 2005

AskMecha: One hour with tech support produced nada. For some ungodly reason, I can no longer upload files or send attachments through email... that would be POP or web based.→[More:] Acting on a hunch, I did a port scan and port 113 is blocked. But who the hell knows whether that has anything to do with it? It seems to have to do with uploading any attachment of any kind, to Flickr, Gmail, your mom or whereever. Might my wifi router have something to do with this? Or devil bunnies? Admin, hope me baby and I'll love you long time!

post by: moonbird at: 22:59 | 16 comments

does your isp have a monthly limit? have you exceeded it?

can you still receive?

posted by amberglow 23 October | 23:04

Oh, and being able to do this is vital part of work/school, so I'm serious... any ideas and I'll make you deviled eggs for life. I guess I'm learning about Non-Attchment the hard way.

oh, and being back in school at 32 and in for at least another four yeears has seemed to really suck so far.

posted by moonbird 23 October | 23:05

amberglow: no limits, I had them stumped with this one. Receiving is fine, though I did have some DNS hiccups this weekend.

posted by moonbird 23 October | 23:07

can you reset your wifi thing? maybe you're on someone's else network by mistake?

posted by amberglow 23 October | 23:17

A few quick questions that may help those who want to help you:

- what sort of failure is it? i.e., does it give you an explicit message like "connection to server refused", or does it just time out?
- what sort of wifi router is it?
- have you changed any settings recently or installed any new software?
- assuming you have a separate DSL/cable modem, try connecting it directly to your 'puter to take the wifi router out of the picture... does it work now?
- have you tried sending small (1-2kb) attachments? If those work but larger ones don't, you may have an issue with your MTU size.

posted by Rembrandt Q. Einstein 23 October | 23:25

It'd help to know which service you using (Gmail?)

It may also be an idea to setup a temporary Hotmail or Yahoo account to exclude the e-mail service provider from the problem.

Try sending a plain text file (that is a file name *.txt) - this could help to eliminate any virus scanning issues.

posted by dodgygeezer 24 October | 03:46

'k, here's everything I've done:

*reset and disabled my D-Link wifi router (no other network nearby)
*confirmed all of my email server settings
*tried to upload a variety of files through things like Movable Type, Flickr, Gmail, Yousendit. No dice. Tried sending attachments through all of my email accounts, from txt to gifs of David Hasselhoff. These will all either time out or hourglass ad infinitum.
*no recent software changes

Since I work in human services, I'm find it darkly funny that I'm having attachment issues.

posted by moonbird 24 October | 06:55

oh, and reset MTU size, no dice.

posted by moonbird 24 October | 06:57

Just for diagnostic purposes could you try disabling your virus scanner and uploading again - then let us know what happens.

posted by dodgygeezer 24 October | 07:02

Hi dodgy- did that, and it only prolonged the inevitable. The send stalls at 90% and hangs forever. I put it back on and in a stroke of luck I was able to upload a 133k pic via a web form after about 15 minutes of loading. While ghastly, that's the first time I was able to upload anything at all since this first started.

posted by moonbird 24 October | 08:21

And my download speeds are great, btw.

posted by moonbird 24 October | 08:52

Run a spyware scan lately? Spyware could be hogging your connection which would be more noticeable on upload than download on ADSL.

posted by dodgygeezer 24 October | 09:15

port 113 is for the ident service (for irc, mainly)

the blind leading the blind, perhaps, but you might install ethereal (www.ethereal.com). log what happens when you're uploading. post it here, maybe.

posted by flopsy 24 October | 09:58

Yeah, dodgy, tried that too. It always singles out my P2P prgrams, but they're not running at all. Nothing in background, no memory hogs on my processes list. Flopsy, I'll definitely try that and post later. Thanks for everyone's help on this!

posted by moonbird 24 October | 11:06

synchronicity!

posted by flopsy 24 October | 13:49

And the winner is...

Rembrant Q. Einstein! I downloaded Dr. TCP and set my MTU size to 1452. At first, it didn't seem to work. After coming home from work and doing a cold start, this connection is purring and everything is working. Thanks again gang... round of scotch or Shirley Temples on me!

posted by moonbird 24 October | 22:12

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