We're having a weird problem at work and I can't figure out what is going on:

* We can't send outgoing email via Gmail smtp (time outs, but receiving is ok)

* We can't open Gmail web interface or Adsense pages (time outs)

* Outgoing FTP transfers (to our completely separate US-based website) stick halfway through or fail.

The thing that has me stumped is that our outgoing bandwidth is really good - running at around 1mbps. We have no problems downloading anything from anywhere (apart from Adsense). It's *sending* that seems to be the main problem.

Anyone got any ideas on what the problem could be, or how I can investigate it further? Needless to say my colleagues get pretty twitchy when deprived of their email.

I had problems with Gmail SMTP as well! For outgoing mail, instead of Gmail, I use: mail.trueinternet.co.th and that works very well but I've TRUE as ISP also!

For all of my mail's, I've 14 accounts, I use TheBat as client because of it's features, multiple accounts with direct seperation and so on. The mail from Gmail is downloaded via TheBat and answered via the TRUE SMTP. That's the way which works for me without any problems.

Not really problems with outgoing email, but FTP connects very slow and times out several times.

I am TOT Cybergold.

Make sure your FTP client is using PASV transfer mode - this helps with firewalls and NAT.

Update your router to latest firmware.

I had a bunch of problems with our work router with FTP & dropping connections - turned out a firmware update of the router fixed most of them.