hi, i recently located an old school chum through 'friendsrerunited.co.uk'. we both live in ireland, me on 'ntlworld' and he on 'aol'. problem is that we can only email each other using the 'friends' site and not 'directly'. i use 'outlook'. anybody any idea's why - i heard there is some conflict between pop/smtp and 'aol' mail servers - is that true and if so is there any fix? many thanks, georgio.

wow, i've never had problems sending mail through outlook to aol. How long did you wait for the mail to get there ?

http://www.incredimail.com/english/splash.html You could both try something like incredimail. its free.

thanks for your replies (fjb) in reply to dan, messages never arrived. also it was more the mail-servers rather than 'outlook' i was questioning. thanks for your reply anyway dan, georgio.

Incredimail and Outlook can not be used from the AOL account but you should be able to contact him with either. Yes, AOL has their own Email protocol and does not use POP or SMTP

You might ask your chum to check his tcp/ip settings, as the TCP is responsible for verifying the correct delivery of data from client to server. Data can be lost in the intermediate network. TCP adds support to detect errors or lost data and to trigger retransmission until the data is correctly and completely received. It might also be a good idea to check your tcp/ip settings as well as both your computers needs to speak the same language.