Webmail firewalls and ports

[ianharvey]

Are there any plans to support/provide a solution that will allow access through standard ports, as for example mail2web.com does?

Accessing port 2095 is a non-starter in many if not most corporate environments and the current solution is pretty useless for anyone in that situation.

Ian

[dcain]

I have to agree completely - the only thing I've found to recommend against Page-Zone (and I am asked by many folks who to use for hosting) is this trouble with ports and firewalls. I have to tell people that I work with that there is effectively NO webmail. This is a constant, grating aggravation to me.

Example? This afternoon I needed to register for this forum to post a reply to this message. How do I get registered? I have to respond to an email. How do I pick up the damn email from work? I guess it'll have to wait 'till I get home...

This wacky port setup for webmail is no good to me at all. Would like to hear about any Page-zone offered alternatives. (Yes I realize there are other POP3-to-webmail clients out there, but I'm not sanguine about my none-too-secure-as-it-is email being handed around to an unknown third party).

Probably worth saying as well that if your office is clamping down on you with a filtering proxy and firewall, they're probably able to cache and read your webmail. Would sure like a SSL solution to this as well...

DC

Originally posted by ianharvey
Are there any plans to support/provide a solution that will allow access through standard ports, as for example mail2web.com does?

Accessing port 2095 is a non-starter in many if not most corporate environments and the current solution is pretty useless for anyone in that situation.

Ian

Originally posted by ianharvey
Are there any plans to support/provide a solution that will allow access through standard ports, as for example mail2web.com does?

Accessing port 2095 is a non-starter in many if not most corporate environments and the current solution is pretty useless for anyone in that situation.

Ian

I have to stand up for Jim and page-zone on this one. How can your corporate policies become Page Zone's problem? The problem is that your corporation has decided to control what goes over THEIR network.

You might be able to give page zone more money to allow you to setup an ssh tunnel.
But I wonder if your corporation will allow that to go over their network.

What ports do they allow you to connect to?

Of course you may want to check your corporations policies as you may be violating them by reading your personal email over their network. Some corporations allow other traffic with a clause that states that if you do that you must provide them with any and all logins,passwords and account numbers.

[dcain]

_xemacs, the issue isn't our corporation's IT policies being Page-Zone's problem - it's Page-Zone providing a solution that is generally useful for webmail. Horde works - it's just set up to use nonstandard ports for web access in such a way as to be inaccessible by anyone behind a typical corporate firewall.

I'm not at all certain what is wrong with doing webmail over port 80 like the vast majority of web applications in the world. It'd work everywhere (provided that the webmail host isn't explicitly blocked). I've used this setup with Horde over SSL on another web host, and it worked pretty well.

I'm not asking for a different software solution - just for a configuration of the existing software that actually is useable in the real world. And if a reconfig is in the offing, please let's do it over SSL.

YES I'd pay a little more if webmail worked!

DC

Originally posted by _xemacs



I have to stand up for Jim and page-zone on this one. How can your corporate policies become Page Zone's problem? The problem is that your corporation has decided to control what goes over THEIR network.

You might be able to give page zone more money to allow you to setup an ssh tunnel.
But I wonder if your corporation will allow that to go over their network.

What ports do they allow you to connect to?

Of course you may want to check your corporations policies as you may be violating them by reading your personal email over their network. Some corporations allow other traffic with a clause that states that if you do that you must provide them with any and all logins,passwords and account numbers.

Originally posted by dcain
_xemacs, the issue isn't our corporation's IT policies being Page-Zone's problem - it's Page-Zone providing a solution that is generally useful for webmail. Horde works - it's just set up to use nonstandard ports for web access in such a way as to be inaccessible by anyone behind a typical corporate firewall.

I'm not at all certain what is wrong with doing webmail over port 80 like the vast majority of web applications in the world. It'd work everywhere (provided that the webmail host isn't explicitly blocked). I've used this setup with Horde over SSL on another web host, and it worked pretty well.

I'm not asking for a different software solution - just for a configuration of the existing software that actually is useable in the real world. And if a reconfig is in the offing, please let's do it over SSL.

YES I'd pay a little more if webmail worked!

DC

The issue is without doubt that you want page-zone to twist and turn because your corporate firewall is twisted and turned.


Webmail works fine for me and without having to pay any more. What you really mean is that you'd pay more for page-zone to be compatible with your corporate firewall.

[infosender]

YES I'd pay a little more if webmail worked!

All ! WHM/Cpanel host use 2095,2096 for Webmail.

Ask Plesk,Ensim,H-Sphere based host what port(s) being used for webmail.

IMHO WHM/Cpanel is the best,rest of them so so....

[dcain]

_xemacs,

All I want is something I can use. I suspect that other consumers want the same.

There's enough of a glut of server space out there right now that people can afford to be a little choosy.

I think Page-Zone works great and is a great value, except for this one headache.

How long will I stay without access to my email via a web page?

DC

Originally posted by _xemacs


The issue is without doubt that you want page-zone to twist and turn because your corporate firewall is twisted and turned.


Webmail works fine for me and without having to pay any more. What you really mean is that you'd pay more for page-zone to be compatible with your corporate firewall.

[TechWeasel]

Cpanel has hard-coded webmail to 2095 so changing it is not an option for PZ.

I've been on almost every side of the firewall issue and I've got to side with _xemacs on this one - there's only so many hoops you can jump (as a server administer, or a software coder for that matter) when firewall administrators are trying just as hard to block access to non HTTP(S) services.

Why not try one of the many "proxy" solutions popping up to address such matters? I've never used any, but a banking friend of mine was fond of AntiFirewall http://www.antifirewall.com so he could ICQ from work (as well as FTP) and I believe it supports non-standard ports.

There's also lots of freeware solutions for the more tech-savy (set your home computer up as a proxy server, use a tunneling program...)

Of course actively trying to circumvent your corporate firewall is probably frowned upon, (as, I'm assuming, is even simpler options like having a forwarder copy your personal e-mail to your work e-mail as well).

Yeah it sucks if you have a company with a strict internet policy, but as long as ports are still part of the TCP/IP protocol - it's kind of tough to deride programmers from using them just because some network administrators have chosen to close their networks off, which is absolutely their right.

[dcain]

My thing is this: it's called WEBmail. Note the WEB part of the name. It runs in a web page. it's not a non-HTTP service. The party twisting the rules is (apparently) the owners of CPanel who are having Horde/IMP run http on a nonstandard port. Yes I know you can run http on any port you'd like, but the world runs on 80.

If the offending nonstandard port is actually hard-coded in CPanel, this should redound to the developers eternal shame. That's really lame coding. I have run Horde over 80 before at another ISP and it just plain worked.

The "antifirewall" link could prove useful indeed. Thanks for forwarding.

DC

Originally posted by TechWeasel
I've been on almost every side of the firewall issue and I've got to side with _xemacs on this one - there's only so many hoops you can jump (as a server administer, or a software coder for that matter) when firewall administrators are trying just as hard to block access to non HTTP(S) services.

Why not try one of the many "proxy" solutions popping up to address such matters? I've never used any, but a banking friend of mine was fond of AntiFirewall http://www.antifirewall.com so he could ICQ from work (as well as FTP) and I believe it supports non-standard ports.

Originally posted by dcain
My thing is this: it's called WEBmail. Note the WEB part of the name. It runs in a web page. it's not a non-HTTP service. The party twisting the rules is (apparently) the owners of CPanel who are having Horde/IMP run http on a nonstandard port. Yes I know you can run http on any port you'd like, but the world runs on 80.

If the offending nonstandard port is actually hard-coded in CPanel, this should redound to the developers eternal shame. That's really lame coding. I have run Horde over 80 before at another ISP and it just plain worked.

The "antifirewall" link could prove useful indeed. Thanks for forwarding.

DC

It's still your corporate firewall policy that's the problem. No matter which way you try to spin it. They've limited your access to the web. There are plenty of solutions out there to work around it. It's not Cpanel's fault or page-zone's fault, it's your corporate firewall policy that's at fault.

[Billy Bandit]

It's still your corporate firewall policy that's the problem. No matter which way you try to spin it. They've limited your access to the web. There are plenty of solutions out there to work around it. It's not Cpanel's fault or page-zone's fault, it's your corporate firewall policy that's at fault.

What an absurd way to look at the situation.

Let's see what we have here...
------------------------------------------
- MANY corporate firewalls limit the activity on custom ports. We aren't talked about 20 or 200 users at a small business. We are talking about many Fortune 500 companies that do not allow access to port 2095.
- Webmail is hard coded to port 2095,2096 by CPanel,WHM so PageZone can't change that even if they wanted to.
- Many products including Microsoft Exchange offer webmail type services that ARE accessible over standard ports like 80 or 8080.

To me it seems like CPanel limiting webmail to 2095 and 2096 is the problem. Maybe there was a reason for doing so.. who knows.. the point is that it doesn't work for a lot of us..

Here's a thread at another hosting service that solved the problem.
http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/fo...showtopic=2481

It would be great if PageZone was able to do something similar.

Regards

[TechWeasel]

Originally posted by Billy Bandit


What an absurd way to look at the situation.

Why? Regardless of the numbers of users behind corporate firewalls, the http:// protocol allows for the use of non-standard ports. The webmail service works fine, following that protocol.

A corporate firewall intentionally "cripples" an internal network to limit access. Without that firewall the service would work fine.


Given those two points there's nothing at all absurd in _xemacs post. It has nothing to do with how many people are inconvenienced.

Ditto, while it would be nice to have the port configurable in cPanel, I can understand why (given the centrally controlled installation and upgrade mandate) of cPanel - why the developers may not be able to offer this option.

While I applaud those who can find and implement work-arounds (install your own webmail client, set up a proxy or tunneling solutions), the fact still remains that the issue *causing* the problem is the corporate firewall.

[Jim]

It might be possible to change to another port, but it will still be a non standard port and would most likely also be blocked at your corporate firewall. It would also probably involve 5 unforseen problems which would cause major problems trying to do it on a production server. CPanel.net has used those ports since the first CPanel code was compiled and until they decide to support it being changed, I'd rather not try it.

Also I have seen in my travels a php script which will render CPanel through a proxy type php script and show it on a web page over port 80. The latter sounds great but pretty insecure because it involves hard coding the CPanel username/password into the php script. I also have no idea where that script is at anymore. It was posted to mchosts (a web host) forum about two years ago. I have since lost the right to browse their forum, but I think it was deleted long ago.