Comcast Scan to Email Problem

[unisys12]

We had a flood of calls come in today that related to scan to e-mail not working varied of machines. After a few minutes of my manager and I looking over this, we noticed that the only thing these accounts had in common was that they all used Comcast as their ISP. After troubleshooting two different machines, to no avail, my manager called comcast and ask about the problem. When he mentioned that the problem was related to an MFP, the support person said that the problem would only be resolved by purchasing a static IP for $4.99 a month!

After some wrangling, my manager was able to get the guy to say that this was related to a nationwide update that Comcast was performing. He stated that Comcast.net was to be used for residential use only and Comcast.com was to be used for business use only. Since this customer was assigned a ".net" title, they would have to pay for the use of a static IP for the MFP to scan to e-mail properly. If they were designated a ".com" title, then it would be no problem.

Before I get on my soap box about this (I really haven't had a chance to research this enough), I wanted to hear from others and see what sort of problems you might be seeing... relating to this anyway. I am well aware of the lawsuit brought against Comcast over P2P network monitoring and personally feel these actions are a direction reaction to the ruling of that lawsuit.

Your feelings and problems on this issue?

[unisys12]

PC World - EFF: Comcast Continues to Block P-to-P

Just did some searching and found the article above. If you look in paragraph 5, I think it is, you will see a reference to "reset packets"...

"Comcast appears to be injecting RST, or reset, packets into customers' connections, causing connections to close, the EFF said."

I performed a packet capture on one of our MFP's that called in today and found this very thing. I mentioned it to my manager with the explaination of, "I have no freaking clue what this is, but whatever it is, it's killing the connection with the mail server."

I do not have my laptop with me tonight, but I will post the capture file tomorrow for anyone that would like to take a look at it. I can also post a screen capture of the packet info in question. Funny how this is affecting MFPs though.

[Copier_Guy]

That is a very foul move on Comcast's part. There should be another provider to step in and take all the business they're disrupting and make them pay where it hurts. Their bottom line.

[unisys12]

Dad-gum-it!!! I forgot to save the capture file with the packet reset in it!

[unisys12]

Comcast Scan to Email Issue Update - Resolved

Alright, I had a customer get through to someone at Comcast that actually was very helpful with her account. She asked him if it would be ok for me to contact him directly and he said it was fine, so she gave me his info.

After talking with him, he said that the issue was related with a AT&T mail server that Comcast was sharing with a few other local ISP's. After reassigning the MFP with a dedicated Comcast mail server, the issue was resolved. I asked if the same IP's could be used in the other locations that was having the same problems and he said it was fine.

My manager was able to confirm this by walking one of our other customers through changing their SMTP server IP to the one suggested by the Comcast rep and it to resolved their issue.

Now... as for the need for the customers to obtaind a static IP for other devices on their private network. The rep said that this has always been their policy, as well as every other ISP in the market today. But it was nearly impossible to police, so they just let it slid until they see an issue. He said that, as far as he knew, there were no widespread changes in place to solve this issue nor was there a "new program" in place force customers to a business account if they did not want. This made me feel 10 times better about the whole situation.

Also, about the "packet reset" issue I saw. He basically restated what was posted on the Comcast site about monitoring their network concerning P2P network applications. He did say, and I was able to find this in a few articles, that at one time they would use "packet resets" to slow traffic (kill it) when a particular section of their network would became congested with Bittornet type traffic, but this was only after all other measures failed to control the activity. I do agree with him on this, in that it was nothing different than any other network admin staff does on any other large network (WAN). As for why I might have seen this... he was a little stumped, but said that without seeing the capture himself, he guessed that it probably had more to do with the session ending from not being able to log into the server. This bothers me a little, since there were no errors returned in the capture. I guess this will just have to be one that I will tackle if it comes up again.

All in all though, it was a great conversation that was very informative. Just glad to be able to get to the bottom of the issue and we are going to be able to resolve the issue for all the machines involved.

[Copier_Guy]

It sounds like they're still doing something funky, but got caught and are now in damage control mode. Glad you were able to, Very Smartly I might add, resolve your issues for your clients.

Good work.

[fausto1981]

Yeah good work man,

I was getting worried about all the ISPs following Comcast steps

[diogenisS8]

I think gmail can do the job

[fausto1981]

Gmail can do it but just make sure to change the Port from 25 to 465

[fausto1981]

I tried using GMAIL on a ricoh and I couldn't get it to work even with port 465.

GMAIL works but you need SSL enabled and i couldn't find that on the Ricoh machine. I never had problem with the Panasonics.

Now here is a new question that should be a new thred but anyways
do you guys know any SMTPs that are free and don't require authentication.

I am in desperate need. I have a customer that has a Ricoh and the main function of the machine besides copying is the fax forwarding to e-mail feature.
His ISP is Verizon and they don't take e-mails from "Digital Senders" they created an account with GMAIL but it doesn't work with the Ricoh with authentication and port 465.

please help

[Scott_Lewis]

What Ricoh model copier are you talking about? Most if not all of the models in the 3xxx series and newer can handle authentication.

[fausto1981]

I know that they have authentication but with Verizons SMTP it doesn't work.

I also tried GMAIL but they require SSL authentication.

The machine has SSL but not for e-mail

Any Ricoh Machine gives me the same problem. The weird thing is that i an able to test the connection with the SMTP server but when sending the e-mail it just either sits there saying "Sending" or comes back with an failed to connect.

I would like to know if you guys now of a good open relay server that is not blacklisted by any ISP.

Thanks

[diogenisS8]

May be you can sell them their own email server? Does your client have his own domain name on the internet? If he does may be you could use that mail server if verizon does not block that as well. One thing I did not understand is how does verizon know that the sender is a "digital sender"? may be you can change a few things there to fool verizon's detection system?

[xeroid]

ISPs more and more seem to like to play games with scan to email apps by writing their own RFCs. Devices that can quickly and easily create large PDF files that their resources are responsible for distributing are becoming more and more annoying to them I think. Used to be that the DSL ISPs were the problematic ones while the cable guys were MS Exchange mail services and easy to work with. The workaround is to scan to PC Windows Explorer, right click the file and send to email recipient where it pops up attached to a blank message where it can be sent, monitored, and managed from a users PC email acct. Many users actually prefer this after they get going with it.

[copyman20]

Have you tried just using something like Post Caster? As long as they have a PC that can get to the internet, Postcast can send email from there. This is a Marketing (spamming) type of software that you can send from. It also has security to only end from specific IP.

I have used this on accounts that have old MFPs that can't authenticate.