email timeouts on free-online have returned

[#1]

Hi,

For a week now I've been getting intermittent timeouts collecting email again:

* Account 'XXXXXXXXXXXX': Connecting to POP3 server: mail.free-online.net:110...
[2025-03-24 11:30:56] POP< +OK POP3 perditon ready on mail.free-online.net 00029e1e
[2025-03-24 11:30:56] POP> USER XXXXXXXXXXXX
[2025-03-24 11:30:56] POP< +OK USER XXXXXXXXXXXX set, mate
[2025-03-24 11:30:56] POP> PASS ********
** Session timed out. You may be able to recover by increasing the timeout value in Preferences/Other/Miscellaneous.
* Account 'XXXXXXXXX@mail.free-online.net': Connecting to POP3 server: mail.free-online.net:110...
[2025-03-24 11:31:26] POP< +OK POP3 perditon ready on mail.free-online.net 00029e1e
[2025-03-24 11:31:26] POP> USER XXXXXXXXX
[2025-03-24 11:31:26] POP< +OK USER XXXXXXXXX set, mate
[2025-03-24 11:31:26] POP> PASS ********
** Session timed out. You may be able to recover by increasing the timeout value in Preferences/Other/Miscellaneous.

Not as bad as the last time (2023?) but still annoying. Previously it was apparently a configuration issue specific to free-online.

Down/Up speed OK: 70.1/17.8

This is occurring on three different free-online accounts (two addresses and an alias) on two PCs. Nothing has been changed at this end.

Other email (gmx) collected OK on both PCs and webmail for all of the free-online accounts is OK.

[#2]

“ Session timed out. You may be able to recover by increasing the timeout value in Preferences/Other/Miscellaneous.”

Have you acted on that advice? What is your current server time out? From personal experience 1 minute appears to help.

[#3]

Timeout was 30s, increased to 60s , still getting intermittent timeouts.

[#4]

Now increased to 90s, still getting intermittent timeouts.

[#5]

Timeout value increased to 120s and still getting intermittent timeouts retrieving email.

As I said, when this happened before it turned out to be a Plusnet configuration issue affecting only free-online emails.

Anybody ...?

[#6]

I’ve not noticed anything with Free-Online emails but I only check maybe two or three times a day on my iPhone.

Just how intermittent are these slow/timeouts?

[#7]

My mail client checks every 5 minutes. GMX mail is always OK; free-online mail times out randomly, sometimes every other attempt, sometimes not for 45+ minutes. There is no pattern to it, but as I said, it is happening on two different PCs on two different accounts and one alias.

[#8]

Email retrieval seems patchy across many brands. Both on and off the Plusnet network I see intermittent issues retrieving outlook.com emails.

[#9]

TBH I'm not that fussed about it any more. The only issue was that the error message caused my mail client to block until it was acknowledged -- I've now stopped error messages being displayed, and I can check for any oddities in the logs.

Last time I had big problems with free-online emails I migrated the majority of my registrations/newsletters/contacts etc to GMX so there's nothing important I might miss.