[rumcajs_tr]

Hi all,

I have exactly the same issue ('unable to connect. retrying' ) with Exchange 2007 and MfE 2.9.158. My E71 firmware is 200.21.118.

In the web discussions I found, that the 2.5.5 version of MfE is working Ok with the 'always on' setting. But I have no chance to test it since this version is not available anywhere to download. Could any of you with the 2.5.5 version send me the SIS or upload it somewhere (rapidshare, e.g.)?

I have been waiting for a long time to get E71 and MfE was one of the key functions for me, so I'm very dissappointed now.

Any help is welcome! Thank you.

[rumcajs_tr]

In addition to the previous post.... I finally got the 2.5 version and i can confirm, that the "unable to connect. retrying" issue doesn´t exist in the 2.5.

Everything else is the same (phone, firmware, everything...). Just uninstalled the 2.9 version and installed 2.5 version. Always on mode is now OK.

So the "unable to connect. retrying" issue is deffinitely a bug in the 2.9 (and maybee 2.7) version!

Hope that Nokia will fix it soon (2.5 is missing some functionality which 2.9 has and there are other minor bugs in 2.5)

[rumcajs_tr]

Just in case for those, who want to experiment with various versions, here is a link to MfE versions 2.5, 2.7 and 2.9, all for Nokia E71 (it means that this is the version for S60 3rs FP1):

http://rapidshare.com/files/236106573/nokia_mfe_s60_3_1.zip.html

[rumcajs_tr]

Hi all,

in case other people suffer the "unable to connect, retrying" issue, here is some additional information about the symptoms (this is a part of info I sent to nokia M4E team today - i will not be posting complete log here).

Regards, rumcajs_tr

==================================================================================

Phone model: Nokia E71, FW: 200.21.118, Czech language
On the mobile device, there is Mail for Exchange: 2.9.158
On the server side, there is Microsoft Exchange server 2007 with SP1

The factory reset (*#7370#) has been done on the phone before testing to avoid any influence of other software or settings.

Description of symptoms:
Mail for Exchange 2.9.158 was installed and set up (the phone didn´t ask for any certificate. The use of secure connection is set to ON).
After the initial setup, the phone connects to Exchange server and synchronises mail, tasks, calendar and contacts correctly.
The MfE mode in the phone is set to “always on” (push technology).
After approximately 20-40 minutes, the MfE disconnects from the exchange server and displays the status “Unable to connect. Retrying”. After that, the PUSH functionality is lost and the phone doesn´t connect to exchange server anymore.
The moment of the failure in the “admin_log1.txt” (when the device went offline) is here:
22.05.2009 20.33.52 Starting a New Ping
22.05.2009 20.37.59 Heartbeat expired. Re-issuing ping.
22.05.2009 20.37.59 Error occurred during Ping.
22.05.2009 20.37.59 Exception during Ping.
22.05.2009 20.37.59 Mail For Exchange Error -15051
22.05.2009 20.37.59 Set SimulateAlwaysOn mode : 1

One additional information – the MfE 2.7 version is working OK on exactly same config (same device, same server, everything) – of course except there is the calendar issue from time to time (mentioned in the 2.9 changelog)

[paul0000]

This is EXACTLY the same issue I see with my E71 and the exact same setup as you (apart from English Language).

I suspect the problem is caused due to the new "dynamic heartbeat" - the ability to manually change this is now gone in V2.9.  Once the heartbeat number drops to 0 or 1 I think the error occurs, and the device simply disconnects and stays that way.

Have you any feedback from Nokia on this?  A quick search of the web (and nokia forums) shows V2.9 has not been well received at all.

[rumcajs_tr]

Hi Paul!

thank you for your reply. Meanwhile, I had communication with M4E Team through Nokia Care support. They requested logs from Always-on mode with these failures, and today, they requested logs from 15min periodic sync mode (which works fine).

They have now all the info available from me and I hope to get reply soon, as the last response fro m4e team gives me some hope to resolve this issue:

"Can you please request the customer to set the sync interval/schedyle to  every 15 mins. instead of always on and conduct some tests. Then send us fresh set of logs from the E71 device. From the previous set of log (attached in the word document), I have figured out what exactly is happening but will give a more definite answer later. Thank you."

So I hope that they work on the issue hard to resolve it. I think that E series are the flagship in business software and Nokia need to push hard to keep it working with Exchange, otherwise business customers will move to blackberry or windows mobile devices.

Meanwihle, I made tests with RoadSync and use of verbose logging, I found another interesting issue, which might (or might not) be connected to the m4e issue - the connection dies exactly after 5minutes no matter whether you go over gprs, 3g or wifi. This leads me to an idea, that the firewall timeout setting on company servers is too short (set to 5minutes) - we are right now checking our proxys and firewalls settings on Exchnange and other servers as it looks like there is some 5 minutes timeout - as the connection dies exactly after 300-305 secs, which never allows the device to set higher heartbeat than 5minutes. With combination of default Exchange HeartbeatMin registry setting set to 480sec (8minutes) - this could be a dissaster.

However, as we are really big company, there are many firewalls in the way, so the IT will try to check their timeouts one after another and if they don't find anything, they will enable extensive logging to find, where the connection gets dropped.

I will report later, if we made any progress.

[willstay]

I did three things at the same time on my E71 -

1) upgraded MFE to 2.9

2) started syncing Calendar, Contacts and Tasks from otherwise Email only sync

3) moved to new Exchange Server (2003)

Suddenly I was introduced with lost connection problem. I was trying to figure if it is GPRS or Exchange server or new MFE bug until I found this thread.

I am going back to Email only sync and using PCSuite to sycn Calendar, Contacts and Tasks.

Message Edited by willstay on 29-May-2009 06:27 PM

[paul0000]

Unfortunately going back to email only sync will not solve your issues!  MFE has more problems than just that....

[paul0000]

---

rumcajs_tr wrote:

So I hope that they work on the issue hard to resolve it. I think that E series are the flagship in business software and Nokia need to push hard to keep it working with Exchange, otherwise business customers will move to blackberry or windows mobile devices.

Meanwihle, I made tests with RoadSync and use of verbose logging, I found another interesting issue, which might (or might not) be connected to the m4e issue - the connection dies exactly after 5minutes no matter whether you go over gprs, 3g or wifi. This leads me to an idea, that the firewall timeout setting on company servers is too short (set to 5minutes) - we are right now checking our proxys and firewalls settings on Exchnange and other servers as it looks like there is some 5 minutes timeout - as the connection dies exactly after 300-305 secs, which never allows the device to set higher heartbeat than 5minutes. With combination of default Exchange HeartbeatMin registry setting set to 480sec (8minutes) - this could be a dissaster.

However, as we are really big company, there are many firewalls in the way, so the IT will try to check their timeouts one after another and if they don't find anything, they will enable extensive logging to find, where the connection gets dropped.

I will report later, if we made any progress.

---

Good news!  I hope the issue does get resolved.  I too work for a big organization and am considering making a recommendation that we switch from blackberry to the E series - however right now, I'd be a little supid to make this recommendation and have 600+ frustrated users

Nokia really has the ability to take on blackberry with the E series, they just need to resolve this, sub-folders and HTML emails, then there is some serious competition.

[rumcajs_tr]

Hi Willstay, Paul0000 is right!

Currently, you have these three options:

1) Turn off the always-on mode and use MfE 2.9.158 with 15minutes sync interval. This works OK for contacts, callendar, tasks and e-mail

2) Roll back to MfE 2.7.22 (or earlier), which works with always-on, but has some issues when synchronising callendar (thy sync freezes upon certain conditions, which causes also e-mail, contacts and tasks to stop syncing). The only solution is to disable calendar sync, do a full resync and then enable calendar sync and it will work few days more. Better solution is to disable calendar sync.

3) Use some commercial application, like RoadSync for example, but it is only 30day trial and then yyu have to pay $49,90

[rumcajs_tr]

---

paul0000 wrote:

Good news!  I hope the issue does get resolved. 

---

Hi paul0000, I hope so.  I will keep my fingers crossed.

I will inform you in this post, if there will be any progress on the issue.

Message Edited by rumcajs_tr on 29-May-2009 08:29 PM

[rumcajs_tr]

Hi all!

Today, I have great news for everybody.

We finally got the MfE 2.9.158 working without the connection failure issue!

Let me describe, what is the problem. It is a combination of Exchange settings and firewall settings.

For better understanding what is "heartbeat" and how the adaptive heartbeat setting is working, it is necessary to read this article: „How Microsoft Exchange Direct Push technology works“  - (http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/generic/0,,sid43_gci1268252,00.html)

The important parameters are HeartbeatMin and HeartbeatMax - using these, the Exchange admin can set the minimum heartbeat interval and maximum heartbeat interval. By default (after initial install of Exchange server) the HeartbeatMin is set to 480sec (8min) and HeartbeatMax is set to 1680sec (28min). Another setting is the HeartbeatDefault, which is heartbeat initial setting which is also set to 480sec.

So a compatible device can't set the heartbeat lower or higher. And here comes the bug in MfE software - it doesn't respect the Min and Max settings and tries to set even lower heartbeats - 4minutes, or even 1 minute - and then, it reports MailForExchange Error in the log and switches to 15min periodic pooling instead of always-on mode.

As we also tested the RoadSync application - the RoadSync will not lower the Heartbeat belowe the HeartbeatMin setting - it means not below 8 minutes.

The issue in M4E needs to be corrected by Nokia.

However, with our exchange admins, we were looking for the answer, why the connection is dropped after approximatelly 5 minutes (300 seconds)? It was the same on GPRS, 3G or Wifi, so it had nothing to do with wireless carrier operators.

During the weekend, our admin chcecked the firewalls settings and found, that on the Exchnage reverse proxy firewall, there was a 5minutes timeout - so when there was no data transfer on open connection for 5 minutes, the firewall closed the connection.

So they changed the timeout to 25minutes - and it started working !!!

The MfE heartbeat (visible in logs) increased automatically to 25minutes and it is  now fluctuating between 23-27 minutes (as there is 25minute timeout on the firewall's proxy).

Suddenly, the Mail for Exchange is not going offline and is working (it is working now for 8 hours...)

So as you can see from what is written here, there is deffinitely a bug in the nokia Mail For Exchange, but the bug appears only when you have not compatible setting of your HeartbeatMin parameter (8minutes by default) and firewall timeout parameter (5minutes in our case). If you set the exchange and/or your network correctly, you will avoid this bug - I suspect that this hasn't been tested by Nokia as they probably didn¨t come across this configuration.

I Hope that this will heal other users and I will deffinitely report this bug via Nokia Care to Mail for Exchange development team. There are also other bugs which should be corrected (see this post about incorrect field mappings  /discussions/board/message?board.id=messaging&thread.id=15598), but the isue with "unable to connect. retrying" is on of the most serious.

Enjoy you MfE working and keep the fingers crossed for Nokia MfE team to submit a new release soon!

Regards, Rumcajs_tr

[willstay]

Kudos to your findings.

I have forwarded this link to my system managers and waiting for them to do something. In the mean time, on demo Exchange 2007 that I am looking after, I did not see Heartbeat interval entries in registry. I have not done much investigation though.

[rumcajs_tr]

Hi willstay, hope it helps.

In the release version of Exchange 2007, these registry settings have been moved to the Sync web.config file.
 

Release version of Exchange 2007

1. In Notepad, open the Sync web.config file on the Client Access Server. By default, that location is under \Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\Sync.
2. Search for and modify the following values as needed:
   <add key="MinHeartbeatInterval" value="60"></add> <add key="MaxHeartbeatInterval" value="3540"></add>

For complete info, please, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905013

However, in my experience, it is not necessary to modify these settings, in our case, the firewall timeout did the job and we left the HeartbeatMin and HeartbeatMax on defaults.

Message Edited by rumcajs_tr on 02-Jun-2009 11:03 AM

[pser]

Hi,

I guess and read that all this is not related all to Exchange 2007. We use the Zimbra solution and everything worked for me prior to the upgrade of the phone. I have not checked if related settings you discuss here exist in Zimbra or if it is just my phone and mfe. 

Paal 

[rumcajs_tr]

Hi all!

Here is an update fro R&D Nokia Team:

"R&D, Development is already aware of this issue and for work around the 15 min interval is to be used. If the heartbeat is set on the exchange server it would be best to change it to something that will work with MfE. The lower the better but also hopefully they (the IT admin) will notice that the PUSH interval also has to be respected by the APN that is currently used. If the APN does not allow any low/high intervals then the PUSH connection is closed and the only way to open it is via a manual connection to re-establish the channel. This is why a Time Sync Interval of 15 min will work because every 15 min the PUSH protocol will make a call out to the server to re-establish connection. Please go ahead and close the case since R&D is aware of this and there is no need for a test account at this time."

Case closed, 9.57 a.m. 03/06/2009.

So I hope that this reply means, that this issue wil be fixed in future version of MfE.

As for me.... the MfE is working now, so .... CASE CLOSED

[paul0000]

rumcajs_jr,

Thanks for the update.  I'm pleased that Nokia has agreed there is an issue and I hope that the next release incorporates a fix and is released soon.

I have dropped back to V2.7 so whilst I lose some funcationality I at least get my mail regulary.

All the best,
Paul

[shuntfield]

This will have to be fixed by Nokia for me, as I rent a Microsoft Exchange 2007 account from www.1and1.co.uk and their admins will not change settings I doubt.

The old version works fine for me at the current time, unless there is a feature that I must have then I will not be upgrading.

Shunts..

[sixth]

I just wanted to post here quick on this issue, as I am also experiecing the same problem. I am the exchange admin at my company, I currently have an E71 running 2.9 MFE. I have experienced the SAME problems with version 2.9 as everyone else here has. I have went through my server logs and firewall logs and everything looks ok, I have a few more places to check. When I install version 2.7 everything is PERFECT. I really hope Nokia fixes this with a new version of MFE, considering it is now early June and there still hasnt been fixed. Not happy at all.

[imarcus]

Hi there!
A quick post from Sweden.
We also encountered this problem. Very irritating, believing that Nokia have abandoned their strategy of releasing unfinished products.
However we have tried more or less everything in this thread. Still not working. We almost got it to work, changing the heartbeat at the phone to 59, instead of default. Up till now we have it running for 48 hours. But its counting down, probably meaning, its making the time gap bigger and bigger and in the end. We are back to zero.
Another solution. Is to put the mail to 15 minutes and that have been working for now, 72 hours. So maybe that is a solution. Or a “walk around” the problem. Not a solution. Nokia, get a grip. Should we change directly or could anyone do something about this? Embarrassing.