title: PHPMailer using SMTP TLS 1.1/1.2 on PHP 5.5.9 (ubuntu 14.04)
body: <p>My SMTP provider recently dropped support for TLS 1.0 and my PHPMailer based email system running on PHP 5.5.9 would no longer connect to the server. </p>
  
  <pre><code>2018-08-14 16:28:19     SERVER -&gt; CLIENT: 220 2.0.0 xxxx.xxxxxxxx.com ESMTP ecelerity 4.2.39.65443 r(Core:4.2.39.51) Tue, 14 Aug 2018 16:28:19 +0000
  2018-08-14 16:28:19     CLIENT -&gt; SERVER: EHLO xxxxx.xxxxxxx.edu
  2018-08-14 16:28:19     SERVER -&gt; CLIENT: 250-xxxxxxx says EHLO to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:49826
                                            250-8BITMIME
                                            250-PIPELINING
                                            250-AUTH=LOGIN PLAIN
                                            250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
                                            250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
                                            250 STARTTLS
  2018-08-14 16:28:19     CLIENT -&gt; SERVER: STARTTLS
  2018-08-14 16:28:19     SERVER -&gt; CLIENT: 220 2.0.0 continue
  2018-08-14 16:28:19     SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.
  2018-08-14 16:28:19     SMTP NOTICE: EOF caught while checking if connected
  2018-08-14 16:28:19     SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I spent quite a lot of time going through the steps at:
  <a href="https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting</a> </p>
  
  <p>I finally gave up and upgraded to PHP 5.6 and the problem was resolved.  Is it possible to make TLS 1.2 work on PHP 5.5.9 or is this just not supported?  </p>
  
  <p>OpenSSL was 1.0.1f</p>