Hi,
When the "Connection refused" error occurs again, could you try opening your web browser, and navigating to the following URL:
http://upload.smugmug.com/photos/xmlrawadd.mgIf it succeeds, what you'll see will depend on your web browser.
For example: In Safari, you will probably see a blank page. Internet Explorer 8 will say something like, "The XML page cannot be displayed". FireFox will 3.6.x will say, "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below."
In all cases, if you choose "View Source", you should see the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rsp stat="fail">
<err code="100" msg="wrong host (use upload.smugmug.com)"/>
</rsp>
Again, the above is what you should see if our experiment is successful.
However, if you don't see anything like the above, but instead get an error in the browser like, "Unable to connect", that would be interesting to know.
Thanks,
Bill