We use pop accounts as a backup when our server or internet connection is down. We've recently upgraded to sbs 2008. 

I've added our backup pop accounts via the SBS console pop conenctor. When i hit retreive now it give me an error. 

in the event log the error is described as:

```
The TCP/IP connection with the '[pop sever]' server was terminated while 
trying to   access the '[email@email.com]' mailbox. The cause may be 
server problems, network problems, a long period of inactivity, a
connection time limit, or incorrect connection settings.

```

This only happens if there is a message in the account. if the account is empty it gives no error and says completed successfully. 
The message can be any size and it still throws this error. It times out in under a minute.

Looking at the pop verbose logs it gets as far as the downloading message stage before it times out. ie it authenticates, checks how many messages there are and begins the download. 

I know it's not a firewall issue because i the relevant ports are open on the hardware filewall and the server. 

I can download the mail from these pop accounts when i set one up in outlook directly. 

I also don't think it's a virus scanning problem as I have this problem even if i disable Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 on the server- which is what we use.

any ideas anyone?
['https://serverfault.com/questions/12739', 'https://serverfault.com', 'https://serverfault.com/users/3955/']
You need to do this in the exchange console:

set-connector "pop3 connector name" -ConnectionTimeout hours:minutes:seconds
set-connector "pop3 connector name" -ConnectionIdleTimeout hours:minutes:seconds

This will increase the amount of time it will take before exchange assumes that the connector has become idle - even if the connector is still busy downloading mails. This is especially necessary if the server has a slow connection to the internet and/or they regularly receive large mails which might cause the connector to timeout.

This fixed my problem. I hope it fixes yours!

Regards,

Andrew
I would recommend (if you havent already) trying a differnt pop3 account on seperate host if possible to rule out any problems either with the host or some kind of incompatibility between the two.