Sabresoft.com is hosted by Uniserve Start: 2020/07/09 ,...

[Sabresoft]

Sabresoft.com is hosted by Uniserve

Start: 2020/07/09  , 11:57:16 AM

Find route from: andrewjsonsimac.hitronhub.home

             to: sabresoft.com (216.113.194.96 [AS19662]), Max 30 hops, 40 byte packets

Host Names truncated to 32 bytes

 1            hitronhub.home                   (192.168.0.1    😞   2.572      1.951      1.661   

 2 AS6327     68.149.96.1                      (68.149.96.1    😞  11.843     18.347      9.936   

 3 AS6327     rc2we-be123-1.ed.shawcable.net   (64.59.185.45   😞  23.595     10.196     10.789   

 4 AS6327     rc3no-be6.cg.shawcable.net       (66.163.64.69   😞  12.838     18.294     17.722   

 5 AS6327     rc1st-be11-1.vc.shawcable.net    (66.163.72.70   😞  32.243     29.188     25.445   

 6     *          *          *     

 7     *          *          *     

 8            as19662.vanix.ca                 (206.41.104.8   😞  26.468     27.899     28.249   

 9 AS19662    vl10.core2.vtc.uniserve.ca       (216.113.192.216):  26.425     29.912     27.243   

10     *          *          *     

11     *          *          *     

12     *          *          *     

13     *          *          *     

14     *          *          *     

15     *          *          *     

16     *          *          *     

17     *          *          *     

18     *          *          *     

19     *          *          *     

20     *          *          *     

21     *          *          *     

22     *          *          *     

23     *          *          *     

24     *          *          *     

25     *          *          *     

26     *          *          *     

27     *          *          *     

28     *          *          *     

29     *          *          *     

30     *          *          *     

Maximum Hop Count Exceeded!!

[gazman]

Android user here (Samsung phone and tablet) and have had the same problem with Shaw webmail access when away from home. Works intermittently over the past few months.

Haven't bothered to call Shaw, just resort to gmail if away. I set my home shaw email account to automatically forward all mail to my gmail address.

[gazman]

Follow up.  Just tried again, sending a test email to myself ( from gmail to shaw mail) then opening Shaw Webmail on my phone. Message was there. 

Did this same thing this morning and it did not work. I.e. confirming how intermittent, annoyingly  UNRELIABLE  this program is. 

[dial]

• On August 19, 2020, an intermittent problem started on my MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2020) receiving Apple emails. No problem receiving emails on my iPhone or iPad. The macOS is Catalina v 10.15.4. Today, August 21, received no emails between 8:03 AM and 5:02 PM.

[mdk]

@gazman -- Did this same thing this morning and it did not work. I.e. confirming how intermittent, annoyingly  UNRELIABLE  this program is. 

Think about the Internet "path" between your "outgoing" E-mail and the "incoming" E-mail:

1. Logon to Gmail, and compose a message.
2. Click "send".
3. The message is sent to GMail's mail-server on some network.
4. GMail's mail-server tries to connect to Shaw's mail-server.
5. When it does connect, the message is sent over one network, to an "Packet Interchange" server-room, where the message crosses-over to gateway it into Shaw's network, and is forwarded to Shaw's mail-server, on Shaw's network.
6. Logon to Shaw WebMail, and connect to Shaw's mail-server, to copy the message onto your computer.

So, there is quite a network for your message to traverse, to go out "from" your computer and then "back" to your computer.

Also, Shaw may "rate-limit" the number of messages per day from GMail's mail-server to Shaw's mail-server, in an attempt to avoid a huge "flood" of spam messages being sent from a GMail ID to multiple Shaw E-mail IDs.

When you say "this morning", note that Shaw may have scheduled an outage, from 1 AM (Calgary) to 6 AM (Calgary), which affected all users of Shaw's E-mail systems.

[mdk]

@dial -- since 2 out of 3 computers are working fine on the Shaw network, I would take a closer look at your MacBook as being the cause of the symptoms.

If you power-off the iPhone and the iPad, and use Shaw WebMail on your MacBook to send a message to your Shaw ID, does the MacBook receive the message, within a few seconds?

[gazman]

Thanks mdk for the explanation, however there is more to it than gmail pathways etc.

About 3 months ago I was away from home for 2 days. Home laptop with shaw email app left open. While away I checked Shaw Webmail using my android tablet. Successful log on but no email in the inbox folder. Come home, check laptop and lots of emails in Inbox. I.e nothing involving gmail; all Shaw mail.

Same scenario 10 days ago (away from home)  and it did work! Yesterday, at home, so I just tried it to see. No emails on Webmail on tablet but emails on laptop.  All systems using my home wifi.

[mdk]

@gazman -- Home laptop with shaw email app left open.

What E-mail program are you using on that laptop?

If that program is configured to check for new messages every NN minutes, it could be automatically downloading all new messages to the laptop's disk-drive.

If that program is configured to use "POP" (Post Office Protocol), then the messages are downloaded, and removed from Shaw's mail-server, making them NOT available to be viewed using Shaw WebMail.

POP is like taking all the mail out of the mailbox outside of your home, and moving them onto your kitchen table.

The alternate protocol -- IMAP -- is like "peeking" into the outside mailbox, and taking some of the messages out of the mailbox, e.g., "deleting" them -- into your Recycle Bin -- and leaving the other messages for somebody else in your household to similarly "peek" into that outdoor mailbox. Shaw Webmail will "peek" at the messages remaining on Shaw's mail-server, if any.

[Sabresoft]

The problem as I see it is the connections between Shaw and Uniserve. The problem is intermittent, but when it occurs the email hosted on Uniserve servers (IMAP) is not accessible, and websites also hosted on Uniserve become unavailable. This happens on iMac, iPhone, iPad and PC, with all devices and users experiencing it at the same time. 

 My third attempt at contacting Shaw support was more hopeful. The first two times I got the response, read obviously from a script, that Shaw only supports webmail and does not support any other mail. Funny because I quite successfully get mail from iCloud.com/Mac.com, and Gmail using Apple Mail, and Outlook 365 from work with little or no problem; only my own domain mail hosted on Uniserve has problems. The third tech support guy was intelligent and worked with me for quite awhile, although in the end we weren’t able to pin it down to anything specific. Have also been having problems with streaming services (Apple Plus, Disney Plus) stalling mid movie, and even times when my network speed (300 connection) connected via Ethernet running as slow as 11. Shaw’s days as my Internet provider may well be numbered  

The solution has been to use a VPN, although that creates issues with some websites/apps that refuse to connect via a VPN, but with the  VPN running my mail/website access has been good. 

[mdk]

@Sabresoft -- This happens on iMac, iPhone, iPad and PC, with all devices and users experiencing it at the same time. 

At that time, on the PC, open a command-line prompt, and use the TRACERT command to trace the Internet path to one of the Uniserve servers.  Show us the results.

> Shaw only supports webmail and does not support any other mail.

To me, that means only that Shaw cannot provide any technical support for other mail-clients, other than what is posted on the web-pages -- for example, Shaw has posted how to configure the Microsoft Outlook E-mail client on your computer to connect to the Shaw mail-servers.