Hi there, I'm having a problem sending mail between 2 different ISP's, and hopefully someone has had an issue like this before, and resolved it.

The problem is that when I send email from ISP "A" to ISP "B", the recipient gets the message, but cannot open it, and therefore cannot see the body of the email. If they click on the message nothing happens and it doesn't show that it's been viewed (un-bold), and when double clicked, it just shows a blank page. Also, when the email is saved to a file, the file is completely blank.
I have no idea if the problem is on ISP "A", or ISP "B", but here is some interesting information...

-This is only a one way problem! ISP "B" can send fine to ISP "A".
-It has nothing to do with any specific computer, or email account. This has been tested on numerous computers and email accounts, all with the same results.
-This is also only a problem when the recipient of the email (a member of ISP "B") is using an old version of Netscape Mail (I tested 4.7 and 4.8). When the member of ISP "B" is using any other email clients, it works fine for them. The client that the sender is using doesn't seem to make a difference, as the results are the same.
- Both ISP's appear to be able to send/receive email to any other servers (regardless of the clients mail client). ISP "A" can send somewhere else and then the recipient can view it with an old Netscape, but ISP "B" can also receive email from somewhere else and view the message with an old version of Netscape.

I think there is a bug in old versions of Netscape, but I don't know what the bug is, and I also don't know which server (ISP A or B) is triggering the bug.

Please help if you can,
Brad

if both the ISP can send and receive mails fine, the problem should not be resolved from the ISP end...have you try ask the user on ISP "B" to upgrade the Netscape to the newest version and test for that?

Originally posted by andy18
have you try ask the user on ISP "B" to upgrade the Netscape to the newest version and test for that?

Yes, but as I said, these are ISP's. I can ask 1 person to upgrade their email client easily, but what about the thousands of other people having this problem? ISP "B" used to give out Netscape with their internet connection software, therefore thousands of people would need to upgrade.

Both ISP's appear to be able to send/receive email to any other servers (regardless of the clients mail client). ISP "A" can send somewhere else and then the recipient can view it with an old Netscape, but ISP "B" can also receive email from somewhere else and view the message with an old version of Netscape.


as you mentioned, ISP "B" can receive the mail and view it with an old version of Netscape,the problem should not be resolved from them..it might be the client's end...

Thanks andy18, but I personally am not so quick to discount the ISP's. If it were an issue between 2 computers, or 2 email accounts, then I would lean toward the client's end.

Up until a few weeks ago, email between the two ISP's worked fine! Now all of a sudden, "every" member of ISP "B" (thousands) is having problems viewing messages from "every" member of ISP "A" (thousands again). As you said, it ***might*** be the clients end, but I'm definately leaning towards the ISP's.

have you contacted ISP "B" to acknowledge them about this issue?

Yes, but they are probably the biggest ISP and Canada, therefore everyone I talk to is only a Level 1 tech support agent, and has no idea what to do, or how to do it. They will not pass me on to anyone higher in their Support chain, instead they just say email abuse@ispname.com.

BTW ... I'm the mail admin of ISP "A", but I'm not ruling out my email server.

Okay, this is wierd ... maybe someone can suggest how I could take it a step further then I have, since I'm stuck at the moment...

Say I have a bunch of emails in my inbox that I cannot view because of the above reason; I can open the file "Inbox", which resides in the /Netscape/Users/username/Mail folder and see the actual messages that are in the inbox. After opening it (notepad) and saving it, all of the emails that previously didn't work, are now working perfectly.
I think ISP "B" might be changing the email by rewriting or adding headers and something is going wrong with the end of line characters. Does that make sense? How would I find out exactly where the error is in that file that's causing the problem? I can't get in touch with ISP "B", therefore I'm on my own.
What's strange is that if there are problems with the special characters that ISP "B" is creating, then why is it only doing it when coming from ISP "A"?

Please help if you can. :)