to email server thru a firewall or proxy ?

[billydoyle]

Hello,
Might anyone know how to get to POP/SMTP server through a proxy or firwall ?

The various email clients (Eudora, Outlook) do not appear to go through proxies. I've tried one tool called 'proxifier' which is meant to put any application's connections through a given proxy (transparent to the application). But no luck so far !

thanks for any suggestions,
-BD

[oaksoft]

I'm flying a little blind here.

POP and SMTP will use TCP ports.
You need to make sure your firewall has not blocked access to these TCP ports.
Allowing POP but blocking SMTP is a favourite trick of large companies.

As far as the proxy is concerned, I have less of an idea.
Can you access any application services on the proxy at all?
If so it might still be your firewall but the information you have provided is pretty scant.

[billydoyle]

Hello,
Thanks for the response.

Indeed, I should be more clear.
The firewall blocks all diect connections to the outside world, including POP and SMTP connections.
However, web browsers can make httpconnections indirectly, by going through a proxy server. The proxy server is allowed make some connexions to outside world.
So my question is really, do you know any way to tunnel the POP and SMTP traffic through http?

I had hoped to use a SOCKS connection to from email client to proxy, but proxy does not allow that, only http.
Thanks anyway !

[reynolds]

re

Where's your mail server based?

[billydoyle]

Re: re

In Ireland. I think. The company is in ireland, (www.irishdomains.ie) so I'm assuming the servers I too, but who knows these days.
The addresses are pop.strongpoint.ie and smtp.strongpoint.ie

Incidentally, I find 'Irish Domains' service very good.

thanks,
BD

[Vetran]

Re: re

do they have a webmail option?

Do they allow outgoing ssh on the site?

[oaksoft]

POP and SMTP through HTTP

I thikn you are getting a bit confused here.

POP, SMTP and HTTPare all application layer protocols and use different TCP ports.

They also therefore are architecturally at the same level and you can't route one through the other.

HTTPprotocol describes how 2 entities transfer and show web pages and uses TCP port 80.
POP describes the retrieval of email from a web server mailbox and uses TCP ports 109 or 110 depending on the version.
SMTP describes how to send email to a remote web server's mailbox and uses TCP port 25.

It is very common indeed for firewalls to block SMTP ports and POP ports but allow HTTP.This is what you are seeing. The only way to avoid this is to use webmail as suggested by the other poster.

Hope this helps. TCP/IP is a complex beast

[fiddleabout]

Re: POP and SMTP through HTTP

You sound like a bloke who knows what he's on about.

What's all this httpstunnelling stuff. A bloke who I used to work with was able to gain full access to a server he had running on his adsl connection and then out from that to other servers including his mail server on a commercial ISP.

All a bit unclear I'm afraid so you maybe won't know what I'm whittering on about but certainly he could do anything he liked through the company firewall.

Perhaps theres room in the market for a product here for folks to spoof company firewalls

[reynolds]

re

Why don't you get your mail server to run on port 80? And have a redirect on port 25 to 80?

[Vetran]

Re: re

probably using ssh or similar, I use it to access a number of networks, look at openssh & Putty. Basically you just tunnel through from the inside to an outside server or if they allow incoming ssh the other way.