As you can see, because 1AND1 rely on auth to prove who you are you should be able to conenct to the internet by any means (VODA/BE) and get it to work. If voda is set up to allow only users who are dialled up to vodafone, you have to switch to vodafone internet to send mail through their server..

Allow me to explain briefly how email works.

SMTP is simple mail transport protocol. It accepts a mail for delivery, and if the user is not local, the SMTP server connects to another SMTP server and passes your mail to that server. That server might not be the destination server either, so it will in turn, connect to its upstream server and pass the mail on..
Eventually it will find its way to the destination.

We thus run into a problem of security and identity. Suppose you are on a LAN at work, with its own SMTP. It is chained that all traffic not for one of your colleagues must be sent to the ISP's SMTP. In turn, that SMTP will connect to the destination. You want to write to a hotmail buddy; you connect to your work's SMTP, send the mail, disconnect, the work's SMTP connects to the ISP SMTP, sends and disconnects, the ISP SMTP connects to hotmail, sends and disconnects. The hotmail SMTP delivers to the local user

Why didnt you just connect straight to hotmail's SMTP, claim you were from work, and cut out all the middlemen? Because the hotmail SMTP cannot be sure who you are, because you arent registered as a mail exchanging authority in global DNS (the whitepages whos-who phone book of the internet). It will think youre a spammer and reject you.

So, when youre on wifi, youre on Be broadband, youre conceptually part of Be's LAN and they put your traffic out on the internet. If they route your connection attempt out to vodafone's SMTP it might just reject you immediately because youre not a registered mail exchanger, or it might let you get as far as "send the following mail to mymate@hotmail.com" at which point it will say "hang on, youre coming in from a foreign (Be) network I know nothing about, youre not one of MY users, and you want me to relay mail to someone else? Go away, spammer"

Ergo, you have to prove who you are..
You either do this by authenticating.. I.e. you connect in from Be, but before you make the mailer send mail you say "hi, i'm actually cortina@vodafone.net and I can prove it because here's the username and password for the account"
OR
You connect to the internet via VODAFONE, and then become part of VODAFONE's LAN, i.e. youre inside the "walled garden" so youre trusted automatically


In summary:
Either, you have to use the mail server relevant to the comapny providing you with internet service,
or you have to authenticate
or you have to do both

And mail servers can be configured to require one or the other or both.. So maybe if you connect into vodafone smtp from BE, you will NEVER be allowed to send mail even if you auth because thats how the server has been set up. Or you might have to auth even if you connect using vodafone..

Ideally the administrator of the mail server can tell you this, but the "connection specific smtp servers" options relates to this notion of being inside the walled garden and using the relevant smtp for that garden. Some companies like 1AND1 dont provide internet access, so you cannot become part of their walled garden (you cannot dial up to 1AND1 and get internet through them) so you'll have to authenticate with their servers

A server may be set to require auth so it knows for sure who you are, instead of relying on the trust that you claimed to be cortina@vodafone.net (you could be someone else, deliberately signing cortina up to spam viagra lists)

See http://www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html for more info on what your access point settings should be, and what the mail server settings are for vodafone


IMAP and POP3 are mail collection protocols and are nothing to do with sending mail. Sending mail is always handled by SMTP. IMAP and POP3 typically require authentication regardless of whether youre in the garden or not, for security and identity reasons