Square Mile - help needed

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rwakeham

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First a rant.....

I am finding myself needing to use the internet on the boat (it is better than going to the office). I am trialing the Square Mile service and currently am finding it really poor.

- I used to get excellent connection quality, but very slow page viewing.
- The boat has moved 30 metres and now I get poor connection quality.

Now the request

- I need to know their outgoing email server, but there is no FAQs on the site to speak of, and refuse to spend £1 per minute for support. Anyone had problems sending emails ?

Fortunately the pub close by has free access.....
 
I use Pipex at home and you can set up your email software to use SMTP outgoing authentication (the same username & password as your incoming email) - this then allows me to connect to any ISP and still send email via my own ISP.

Probably worth pursuing!
 
There is no e-mail server, you will have to set up a Gmail or yahoo type address.

If you have a business site on rented web-space this may come with a pop3 mail server that you can log into remotely. I can for instance send and receive mail from my account held with 34SP, i.e. topcatsail.co.uk.

You have to treat squaremile as though you were using an internet cafe.

Sorry to bear bad news.

You may find your home ISP provides remote mail, some provide read only but a few allow you to write messages online within a web browser environment. Very few provide a true remote smtp (using outlook to send mail).

Hope this helps.

I am pretty certain about squaremile not providing personal email accounts.
 
They probably dont supply a direct SMTP and POP server which is what you need if they are charging high rates, although this is a service you can get elsewhere and possibly for free. I think GMail allow you to connect via SMPT and POP Your IT department at the office may be able to set up a VPN connection so you can use your work email.
 
Don't need a pop server, I am fine with the incoming connection - it is the outgoing mail where there is a problem. There must be some blocking either at Square Mile or within Demon (my ISP) such that my Demon SMTP server is not available.

I spoke to Square Mile at the Southampton Boat show and they confirmed they had an outgoing mail server, now I need it I can not find information on their site. I seem to remember that any SMTP server will do, it then forwards the mail on.

I take it then that other people are finding the quality of service acceptable ?
 
Many ISPs block outbound email being sent via smtp port 25 on thier servers.

This is done to prevent spam originating from outside of their network. In short they will not allow you to send email via a party email carrier (such as Wanadoo, thus bypassing thier own mail server), without it first having gone via thier own mail servers. Essentially you either have to set your smtp server setting in Outlook to send via Square mile, or use web-based mail services (such as gmail) instead.

There are more technical work-a-rounds for this, but how long have you got?
 
Sounds to a network issue.

first of find the access point and put your laptop near it, how does the signal go now? surfing ok?

If yes, then we have a signal issue.
Purchase a booster. Many around for lappys.
do this then let me know.
I believe square mile have a special adaptor for helping you receive a better signal.
 
Square mile have not blocked port 25 on their gateways ... so you can send Email using an external SMTP service. I know this for certain as I already have my Email program setup this way.

Demon are one of the older ISPs and have instructions for SMTP authentication:
http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/technicallibrary/adsl/smtpauth/index.html

As I suggested - you should try this first as it will mean that you can send email from whatever network you connect to, providing port25 is open.
If this works then Gmail, YahooMail or whatever will not be required at all ...
 
Fireball - Iam with you, missed his 2nd post!
wakeham - Doesnt your company have a vpn?
I suspect you can only access your smtp server from a certain ip range, pretty common.
 
If it is works email he's trying to send (doesn't state - just that he's trying to work aboard ... yer right ..! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif) then if the company uses an Exchange server it is possible to allow it to relay email via a variety of methods ... again - authentication is probably the quickest to configure. Alternatively, a VPN could be used for office like access.
 
Could anyone on 'ere who knows their MTU from their MWIN tell me quite what I lose - or gain - by utilising Gmail as sole provider and custodian of my private email?

I've been using this now for over a year, and I've weathered various ISP storms (E7) by being able to 'i-cafe' into my personal comms, so what's the beef?

/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
1) The paranoid would say big brother watching you - but as I say they are paranoid ...

2) The theoretical risk that they could lose it all (but they are probably less likely than you or I).

3) Being stuck with a gmail.com (or whatever) email address which just occasionally may be less likely to get through somewhere - though google seem to be doing a reasonable job so far of not beinga home for spammers that yahoo and hotmail became (not sure if there is a paid option to use your own domain - have a vague feeling I may have seen something ...)

4) No easy way to write emails offline (could probably rig up something - but then you are back in the world of smtp servers so have lost teh advantages of using gmail in teh first place)- this is the big one for me if you are on an expensive conection occasionally.

5) The very small risk that someone may have blocked access to it through a firewall

6) Its fussiness about attachments (docs. images, xls are OK - many other file types are not and somewhat annoyingly they just disappear into the ether with no-one being warned.


For me 4 & 6 (and 3 in a work scenario) are the only real downsides.

Ups ?
1) It almost always works - no messing wth SMTP / POP etc
2) Fantastic searching (I have all incoming email forwarded for this reason alone)
3) Pretty effective and constantly updates spam filtering
4) Reduced risk of virus infections (from emails anyway)

All IMO of course /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif - and off the top of my head - so probably not a complete list ..
 
No the quality of service is not acceptable; to the extent that Yacht Havens Group are dispensing with the services of SquareMile and moving to a new provider (no details yet). I'm In Plymouth and the SM service ends in August. The so-called 1MB service is only 512K at best - middle of the night when other users are asleep! During the day download speeds drop to 2 or 3 KB/S sometimes - worse than an old dial-up modem!

Cheers,

Jerry
 
The main shortcoming with GMail is that it doesn't provide mail folders (it uses 'labels' instead) and it doesn't support IMAP access so you don't have the ability create a complex heirarchical filing structure or to keep a structured offline replica of your mail.

So - fine for day to day use but I probably wouldn't want to use it for the 50,000+ items of mail I have archived in my work e-mail account.

I use GMail for 'secondary' e-mail accounts where I receive mail from forums such as this or mail from distribution lists I'm subscribed to, to protect my 'main' e-mail account from rubbish. It works well.

As with the other offers above, anyone wanting a GMail invite is welcome to PM me or e-mail the address in my profile.

On the upside, it is not traceable, so it's great for sales research on competitors /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Steve
 
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