antgaucho's profile

Contributor

 • 

16 Messages

Thursday, May 14th, 2020 1:00 PM

Closed

slow authentication challenge from [pop|imap].ge.xfinity.com

I've had pop.ge.xfinity.com and imap.ge.xfinity.com configured as incoming mail servers on local mail clients for years, and use them to check mail several times nearly every day.  About a week ago it took over half an hour for each server to respond to initial authentication request.  Once authenticated, headers, bodies, attachments as appropriate were transferred at a respectalbe speed.  This happened a couple of times in the same day, then not again until today.  A little earlier today I had to wait >3 minutes for the authentication response.  So I decided to time my next login.  While typing this post, the server finally responded to an authentication request I sent 19m53.906s earlier.  I think my internet connection is stable and fast.  Good luck.

 

This conversation is no longer open for comments or replies and is no longer visible to community members.

Accepted Solution

Contributor

 • 

16 Messages

5 years ago

[my own workaround, posted in case it applies to someone whose search led here.]
No, thanks for the idea but the "recommended settings" did not make a difference.  BTW they specify "pop3.comcast.net" as pop server but "imap.ge.xfinity.com" is still the canonical name (CNAME) returned for pop3.comcast.net by DNS (domain name service) tools such as dig, host, or nslookup .  That's not a typo, "imap" is actually a substring of the canonical pop server name.  There was a fun period around the time of the great port change foulup of 2018 when imap.ge.xfinity.com worked and the recommended servername did not--that is why my settings were pointed to the former.  This new problem I posted is apparently related to the configuration of Comcast's certificates.  My best guess so far is that a certificate failure appeared on a comcast server recently, and that my email client is fussy about that, but only fussy enough to go through some lengthy renegotiation--every time--eventually allowing the authentication step to proceed.  I finally allowed a certificate exception and the behavior is back to normal, so I'm going to leave it to someone getting paid (by us), to figure out the rest.
'hope this helps

Official Employee

 • 

1K Messages

5 years ago

here are the guidelines for the server settings,
IMAP: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/update-your-xfinity-email-settings
POP: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/update-pop3-110-995

 

see if using the recommended settings improves your experience.

 

forum icon

New to the Community?

Start Here