Troubles emailing to a group

[John Dykema]

Alright, we finally got Comcast fast internet a month ago, yeah!
I'm now trying to email our daily Prayerline out to 136 members via the Activities module. In the email setup I have our outgoing mail server set to mail.triton.net (our old dialup server) and authentication is set on. I get about 37% sent out and then I get "An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host" OR Connection to the server failed etc.
Triton's help desk is asking if these emails are batched up into many recepients (in the To: field), or are they being sent out one at a time. Triton has a 50 limit on recepients each time. Comcast says they have a 100 recepient limit each time.
Also I'm not sure if my Outgoing mail server should be Comcast or mail.Triton.net
I'd sure like to get these emails working and also I've been trying to email contribution statements for years now with only 2 or 3 successful runs.

Having said all that....I just called Comcast and they said I should be using them for our outgoing mail server (smtp.comcast.net) and authentication is NOT needed. I'll test them out but then should I use the advanced option of say 50 emails every 5 minutes in any case? I thought one time I read in your forum that v10 handles this better than before.
Hope I haven't been too wordy.
Please advise.

[Zorak]

Each e-mail is sent individually in PowerChurch Plus.

The e-mail server that you use depends on which e-mail address you are sending from. If sending from the Comcast address, I would use the Comcast mail server. Triton might not care one way or the other, but I think that is the safest bet, especially if you are having problems.

[NeilZ]

John,

I'd also limit the outgoing email to 50 at a time, again, to be on the safe side.

Neil

[John Dykema]

Thanks guys. I ran a test using smtp.comcast.net for outgoing server, first without a 50 limit, and it took maybe 4 minutes to mail 136 out. I did get 2 address errors: "OMTA01(and 23).EMERYVILLE.CA.MAIL.COMCAST.NET too many sessions".
So I thought I'd try it using limiting of 50 every 3 minutes. Well now I'm getting 3 of these same errors but for different people addresses. BTW the mailing got done in the same amount of time.
Maybe I don't understand the mailing system but I want to.
Please advise again.

[NeilZ]

Thanks guys. I ran a test using smtp.comcast.net for outgoing server, first without a 50 limit, and it took maybe 4 minutes to mail 136 out. I did get 2 address errors: "OMTA01(and 23).EMERYVILLE.CA.MAIL.COMCAST.NET too many sessions".
So I thought I'd try it using limiting of 50 every 3 minutes. Well now I'm getting 3 of these same errors but for different people addresses. BTW the mailing got done in the same amount of time.
Maybe I don't understand the mailing system but I want to.
Please advise again.

John,

I'm a Comcast subscriber, and went to check to see what I could find. On their site: postmaster.comcast.net, they list items you need to know to avoid blocks. One of the items is this:

# Watch the sending limits

Comcast allows 2 simultaneous connections per sending IP address.
Comcast allows 1000 recipients per message.
Comcast allows a throttle rate based on your sender reputation and authentication.

I don't think we have to worry about item 2 in the list, as each message is sent out individually by PC+, however, item 1 may be the issue. I'm not sure how many connections PC+ opens at any one time, but if one of the techs could comment on this it would give some insight.

[Tracy]

John,

Currently PowerChurch sends 5 unique emails per connection to the SMTP server, disconnects pauses for 2/3rds of a second before reconnecting to the SMTP server. Most servers deal with this scenario. There are several servers which will lock the mailbox and IP out from sending emails if an arbitrary number (set by the server administrator) of similar emails are sent in a single connection. The speed of what is going on now is beginning to have problems with busy SMTP servers.

One way to verify the troubles are related to the server is to set Outlook (or other email software) to not send emails when you click send. Prepare 50 emails and send them out all at once. Many times same behavior will be seen. Outlook will hold the failed emails and try again later.

In Version 11 there are tweaks, which the technicians can assist with, which can 1) increase the pause between connections, 2) change the number of emails sent during a connection, 3) add a pause between sending emails during the connection

The current Maintenance release of 10 has number one and two above, the other is planned.

So, some things that will help the technicians know which settings are needed.
Does the SMTP server require authentication?
Is SSL or TLS used?
How does it fail: PowerChurch hang, all send but report shows failures, what are the failures?
What bulk emailing process are you using (i.e. membership, contributions, contribution statements, and etc…)?
Do you have the “Send no more than # messages every # minutes.” set?
Are you on the latest Maintenance Release?
Does the SMTP server require a specific port?

You’re particular symptom “too many sessions” suggest the disconnections from the SMTP server are not registering in the 2/3rds of a second pause, or others at that IP were also sending emails and it was a timing issue with them. Are there other failure reasons?

Each case is unique; each problem will need a different tweak. The more information you have before contacting support the better. Keeping the Email reports as PDF’s for each run can be very beneficial to tracking down a pattern and appropriate tweaks to use.