Someone about 20 pages back reported a problem talking to an exchange server over 3G versus wifi. It was still under the sales release, however I am experiencing the same problem now on PR 1.1 talking to an exchange 2003 server.

I set up MfE to talk to my company's Exchange 2003 server, and initial and subsequent syncs work fine as long as my N900 is on wifi. However, as soon as I turn off wifi and let MfE try to sync over US t-mobile 3G (shows as either 3.5, 3G or 2.5 on status bar depending on signal, tower busy-ness, whatever), then MfE fails to sync saying it is unable to connect to the Exchange Server.

I turned on syslog and grepped out the lines with activesync in them, and looked through it. When I am only connecting using the 2.5/3/3.5G, I have entries in syslog that you see in the attachment gprs_fail.txt. Some intermediate rows that appear unrelated were deleted, and I changed my company's mail server hostname in the URL to protect the innocent).

So it appears the HTTP OPTIONS call is timing out after 30 seconds over 2.5/3/3.5G having received no data. When I change network carrier to wifi (WLAN_INFRA), the request appears to start working. The relevant part of the logs (again with stuff that appears unrelated removed, and my company's host name removed from the URL) is in the file wifi_works.txt.

Anyone, especially Vitaly ;-), have any idea what might be going on here? If someone in a position to help feels they need the full detailed syslog, I can send it privately with everything intact, or if you need me to search for particular things I can.

Some things I do know: I can get to the OWA web interface on the same exchange server host using the stock browser over https just fine over 2.5/3/3.5G, and MfE works over wifi, so the problem is not reaching the exchange server itself. The only thing I can think of is if somehow t-mo USA is blocking or mangling the HTTP OPTION request, except that I've been using MfE and Roadsync for years over GPRS happily with an n95 and then an e71.

Any other input I can provide or tests I can try and report on I will be happy to do. I prefer not to use wifi on a permanent basis to do exchange sync, and in fact testing this was the first time I've ever even connected my N900 to wifi.

Thanks,

Jonathan