Cannot send emails in Thunderbird unless VPN turned on

Since October 21/25 I have been unable to send emails through Thunderbird. I get the message:

This is not my ip address. Mine is 192.168.18.9. I thought that perhaps VPN was on and somehow it’s address was causing a problem. However when I opened VPN, it was off. However the ip address it would use, if on, was 173.244.87.23, the same one I could not send as. If I turn VPN on I can send emails without a problem. Although I could turn on VPN to send emails, I would like to know why the problem suddenly appeared.