Problems accessing email when on Wi-Fi

[Mat62tiger]

I have two btinternet email addresses one for me one for my wife. My wife is having constant problems sending emails from her phone and laptop when on our home (BT) broadband Wi-Fi.  But she can generally receive emails ok when on Wi-Fi.   It sends ok when she turns her Wi-Fi  off and is using data on her phone contract.  I also sometimes have problems accessing my account - I get “mail server is not responding” messages and it keeps asking me to enter my account details correctly. If I change the password on my account this sometimes fixes it but not for long - it can stop working again the next day. This is all very frustrating !  Can anyone advise me how to fix it and get some reliability back?  

[gg30340]

Are you a BT Broadband customer or do you have a BT Premium Email account?

How are you and your wife accessing your emails on each device? Is it with a web browser and if so which one or are using and email client/app and again if so which one.

Have you tried turning your BT Hub off for about 15 mins and then restarting it. This will hopefully give you a new IP address and connect to a different email server.

You should also make sure you turn off "smart setup" on the BT hub. It can cause problems with some devices.

See link how to do that.

https://www.bt.com/help/broadband/what-is-smart-setup-on-the-bt-hub--how-can-i-turn-it-on-and-off-

[Mat62tiger]

Yes I am a BT Broadband customer.

We use email clients.  Apple email app on our phones and Thunderbird on our laptops.

We just turned our BT Hub off for 90 minutes tonight to reset the IP address.  I don’t know how to connect to a different email server.  Does this mean to delete and re-set up our device email clients? 

I am not aware that  "smart setup" on the BT hub is on.

[licquorice]

You can't manually change to a different server per se, it is the change of IP address that leads to a possible change.

Have you actually checked if Smart Setup is on or off?

[gg30340]

You can not select a different email server. When you turn your hub off and back on this would give your hub a new IP address and by doing that it may select a different email server which may accept your details better than the one you were connected to.

Do not delete and set up your email clients/apps at this stage. Try them for a day or so to see if the change of IP address has helped.

If you follow the link that I posted it shows you how to check if "Smart set up" is on or off.

[Mat62tiger]

I checked my hub for smart set up. I think it is a smart hub 2 although it doesn’t say anywhere on it. I url’ed into it but I didn’t find any option box in the admin section for smart set up so I guess it doesn’t support it. We are monitoring our email for the next day or two to see if we get consistency of service back.

[licquorice]

[Mat62tiger · Accepted solution]

Everything seems to be behaving so I think we are all good now. Thank you.