"Robert Aldwinckle" wrote in message
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wrote in message
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wrote in message
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"Robert Aldwinckle" wrote in message
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with a telnet session to simulate that logon. E.g. in a cmd window
enter:

It could not connect with telnet either.



Be more specific. You couldn't log on or you couldn't get the prompt?
E.g. do you get this far:

telnet subcommand="Microsoft Telnet o news.east.cox.net 119"
200 (newsfe15.iad) -- Welcome (newsfe15.iad) (Tornado v1.2.6.556-2)
HELP
480 Authentication Required
QUIT
205 GoodBye
/telnet


It would not even let me logon.


sigh/ Again, you aren't being very precise.
E.g. one interpretation of that statement would be that you made
a syntax error, so that had you got the syntax correct you could
have reproduced the error message that OE is getting.
Alternatively, it could also imply that you did get the syntax
correct and did reproduce the error message that we were
expecting to see.

I will assume that this at least partially answers my question
by implying that you do see the prompt when you open a
connection with your server via telnet.

So, are you waiting before reattempting this?
If you are simulating the OE symptom as intended,
e.g. entering the logon correctly and then getting the
error message about your account, then, remember,
eventually I would expect you would be able to get
logged on again normally.


Cox's news servers just stopped working for me since Monday.

Ok. That sounds like something you could ask your ISP about for sure.
It could also be a symptom of a misconfigured firewall but they may be
able to help you diagnose that case too.


I spent a long time with them on the phone to no avail. Email works fine,
just the news server will not let me on.

Even with my firewall off I could not connect to them with OE. I get:

502 Maximum number of connections reached. (newsfe15.iad) (Tornado
v1.2.6.556-2)
Configuration:
Account: news.east.cox.net


The problem with that diagnostic is that it may depend on OE's behaviour
which as I explained might be problematic, depending on the server.

BTW do you have OE checking for new newsgroups automatically?
As long as we are uncertain about how many connections the server
allows it would probably be a good idea to avoid doing that.

OTOH if the account has been changed to disallow news at all,
e.g. by setting the Maximum number of connections to zero,
then anything OE or any other news reader does, would be
disallowed and show the same symptom. ; )



This has apparently happened in the past and it took them forever to fix.


Sounds like you should escalate your incident. E.g. it may require
operator
intervention to terminate a hung task on the server or reconfigure your
account.
Before doing that though it would be best if you had your simulation
perfected and had a clear idea of how long it took for old connections
with the account to time out, assuming they do eventually time out.

For what it is worth, the newsgroups on news.east.cox.net have suddenly
started working again. I guess enough people complained and they finally
fixed the problem.

Jeff