Unable to telnet out on port 25 on windows server 2008

telnetwindows-server-2008-r2

I just setup a Windows 2008 R2 server and am trying to get a basic mail server up and running so that I can send emails from my applications.

I setup a virtual SMTP server in IIS6 and tried doing a local telnet to port 25, which seemed to work fine. There were no errors during this stage and I can see the mail message appear in the Queue folder.

The problem is that mail never leaves the Queue folder. I then tried to telnet to a remote mail server on port 25 but couldn't connect:-

telnet 209.85.227.27 25

Could not open connection to the host, on port 25: Connection failed)

I checked my firewall and there is a default setting to allow all outgoing TCP traffic with no restriction. I even setup a specific rule for outgoing port 25 traffic but to no avail.

I then ran a SmtpDiag.exe command

 .\SmtpDiag.exe myemailaddress@serverdomain.com myemailaddress@gmail.com

and received the following output

Searching for Exchange external DNS settings.
Computer name is WIN-SERVERNAME.
Failed to connect to the domain controller. Error: 8007054b

Checking SOA for gmail.com.
Checking external DNS servers.
Checking internal DNS servers.
SOA serial number match: Passed.

Checking local domain records.
Checking MX records using TCP: gmail.com.
Checking MX records using UDP: gmail.com.
Both TCP and UDP queries succeeded. Local DNS test passed.

Checking remote domain records.
Checking MX records using TCP: gmail.com.
Checking MX records using UDP: gmail.com.
Both TCP and UDP queries succeeded. Remote DNS test passed.

Checking MX servers listed for myemailaddress@gmail.com.
Connecting to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.227.27] on port 25.
Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060
Failed to submit mail to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

Is there any other diagnostics I can do to figure out if it's my firewall or something else? I have removed antivirus to make sure that it wasn't causing the problem. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Best Answer

It's most likly the firewall of the ISP. As a final check of your own firewall settings you could set it to disabled but if you've already opened it up and set an exception as well, there is no other "windows" reason that you can not telnet to port 25