Microsoft Mail, telnet, Wireshark, WHS, crummy cable internet

I got a call that a person could not send email using Microsoft Mail in Vista. Charter Cable said just use our web interface. Not so easy for my customer. I used Log Me In free edition so I could see what they were doing. Yes indeed it was failing with useless messages. I tried turning off their Circuit City supplied Webroot firewall. No difference. I started a download of Wireshark. The download is taking forever. I tried to download on my workstation and the download was done in less than a minute. I fuss about my slow download speed being so far from my DSLAM. They were downloading at less than 40k. That is pretty slow as they supposedly have Charter Cable high speed internet. Dialup modems are that fast.

While I am waiting for the download I try to use Telnet. Telnet is not installed in Vista Home. I have it on My Vista Ultimate. Wah. I kill the download and try to do some Flash speed testing at DSLreports.com. Speed was less than 1,000. Some tests at 700-800 actually. I restarted the Wireshark download.

Wireshark is one of my favorite tools. I don’t know how to really use it but I can sometimes get clues. I mean I am not so good with filters. Anyhow I see the LogMeIn UDP traffic taking up most of the Wireshark capture. I sifted through all of that and saw some problems with the smtp conversation. I tried to do copy and paste but the LogMeIN Free does not allow that. So from their workstation I logged in to my Windows Home server and placed that file for later look see. So with the failure I deleted the two emails from their Outbox. I sent myself a simple email which made it. I replied. I then replied back attaching the 800k Wireshark capture. It bombed. So that crummy internet speed is biting us. Hopefully the cable company will send out a tech to test the modem and premise wiring.

I logged in to my Windows Home Server to look at that capture. I click on Analyze and Display Filters choosing to show only tcp. Thousands of lines of UDP gone from view.  I use a Microsoft article to do telnet tests often enough. That little bit of telnet experience at least let me know what I was looking at. When you see TCP Previous segment lost in red you know something is not so happy. No quit either in the conversation. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/153119 Telnet can be your friend as can Wireshark