I want to switch from using my own local mail server to an external one so voicemail to email is not reliant on my local server actually running. But, needless to say, it doesn't work.

In LAN/General setup I have specified my own DNS server and 'Force ..' is checked. So in theory, it is using my DNS server. This is important if it has to resolve any local addresses since they will be unknown outside my lan. But what local addresses does it need to resolve?

The reason I ask is that having now set up the SMTP server for voicemail etc, it doesn't work. No matter what I try, I am unable to successfully send a test email. Even if it is set to using my local DNS, it should still be able to resolve the SMTP server's address. I've tried to set it to use WAN2 for the email delivery (as that is the actual path to the Internet), but it still doesn't work.

There seems to be a fundamental lack of information about what DNS services the Vigor requires and precisely where it looks for those services and how it applies to the various configuration options.

So if I specify voicemail to email should be sent via WAN2, how does it try to resolve the SMTP server's address?

Any suggestions about getting voicemail to email working?

I tried setting up mail alerts in System Maintenance >> SysLog / Mail Alert Setup. I used the exact same settings as for voicemail and the test email works perfectly. Within a few seconds it is delivered. 2 oddities about this:-

1. 'Prefer WAN interface' setting is irrelevant. That can be checked or not, and if so, either WAN1 or WAN1 can be set and it still works which is bizarre as WAN1 is disabled and not even connected. So it works even when it shouldn't.

2. Whatever the above, the same settings do not work for the voicemail test. So it doesn't work even when it should.

As far as I can tell, the voicemail test is simply not getting to the configured SMTP server. Yet if I configure it for my own local server, it works. So when it works for Mail Alert, why does voicemail -> email test not work with the same setup, but does for my local SMTP server?

The Vigor makes it hard to impossible to troubleshoot this as there's no log to view, explaining what it's doing and providing a clue as to why it's failing and the user manual is essentially useless as it doesn't explain the reason for the settings or how it is using them. Instead it just provides a trivial explanation of what the words mean which is no help whatsoever. I know what DNS means. I need to know how it is using the config. settings.

Anyone got their voicemail -> email working to an external SMTP server? Right now, I'm stumped.