email questions

[Carsten Haese]

On Thu, 2006-02-09 at 00:50, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Feb 2006 10:49:27 -0800, Scott Frankel <leknarf at pacbell.net>
> declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:
> 
> 
> > 	
> > 	mail.<ispname>.net
> 
> 	Not sure why you feel you need to hide it -- I'm presuming it is the
> same ISP in your email address...
> 
> 	However, I'm currently finding a dead access to it...
> 
> C:\Documents and Settings\Dennis Lee Bieber>tracert smtp.pacbell.net
> Unable to resolve target system name smtp.pacbell.net.
> 
> C:\Documents and Settings\Dennis Lee Bieber>tracert mail.pacbell.net
> 
> Tracing route to mail.pacbell.net [207.115.57.20]
> over a maximum of 30 hops:
> 
>   1     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
>   2    17 ms    13 ms    14 ms  user-11fa401.dsl.mindspring.com
> [66.245.16.1]
>   3    13 ms    13 ms    15 ms cor02-vl-10.ca-sanfranc0.ne.earthlink.net
> [209.165.103.65]
>   4    16 ms    13 ms    16 ms
> bor01-ge-6-1.ca-sanfranc0.ne.earthlink.net [209.165.103.17]
>   5    22 ms    22 ms    22 ms
> bor02-so-3-1.ca-pasadena0.ne.earthlink.net [209.165.109.154]
>   6    23 ms    27 ms    31 ms
> bor01-ge-1-1-0.ca-losangel4.ne.earthlink.net [209.165.107.182]
>   7    28 ms    21 ms    22 ms  ex1-g8-1s1.eqlaca.sbcglobal.net
> [206.223.123.79]
>   8    24 ms    22 ms    23 ms  ex2-p3-0.eqlaca.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.191.226]
>   9    25 ms    24 ms    24 ms  bb1-p6-0.crrvca.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.41.34]
>  10    23 ms    24 ms    27 ms  core2-p4-0.crrvca.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.41.1]
>  11    58 ms    61 ms    59 ms  core2-p3-0.crhstx.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.241.125]
>  12    88 ms    89 ms    81 ms  core1-p9-0.cratga.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.191.192]
>  13    83 ms    82 ms    84 ms  core2-p1-0.cratga.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.241.82]
>  14    82 ms    82 ms    83 ms  core2-p6-0.crhnva.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.41.206]
>  15    88 ms    89 ms    90 ms  core2-p3-0.crnyny.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.188.197]
>  16    91 ms    88 ms    89 ms  bb2-p3-0.nycmny.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.240.221]
>  17    88 ms    90 ms    87 ms  ded2-g8-3-0.nycmny.sbcglobal.net
> [151.164.41.181]
>  18    93 ms    90 ms    98 ms  66.10.112.6
>  19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
>  20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
>  21     *        *        *     Request timed out.
>  22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
>  23     *        *        *     Request timed out.

This does not necessarily mean that the server is down. Routers can
filter traceroute and ping. Telnet to mail.pacbell.net on port 25 works
just fine. If the server had been down, the OP would not have gotten
"connection refused", he would have gotten a connection timeout.

The OP's problem is most likely that he's doing this:

s = smtplib.SMTP("mail.pacbell.net")  # This already connects s
s.connect() # This reconnects s to localhost and is refused

when he should do this:

s = smtplib.SMTP()  # make an unconnected SMTP instance
s.connect("mail.pacbell.net") # and connect it.

or simply this:

s = smtplib.SMTP("mail.pacbell.net")

-Carsten