Overview of On-line Access for Chemistry Students
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/email/
Multiple eMail Personalities
Most people nowadays have two or more email "personalities", such as
domestic, academic, etc. Modern email programs can be set to read in one go
all your various email accounts (and indeed to automatically forward mail
from one account to another). Thus you can continue to use any email
account you may have set up before you joined Imperial College. Please note
however that all messages originating from your academic studies will be
sent only to your Imperial College "personality", which you are expected to
read regularly (at least once a week, if not daily).
Each email client sets up your multiple personality settings
differently, and you should consult the specific instructions for each.
Email Signatures and Email etiquette
All email programs allow you to set a "signature" that will be appended to
the end of all messages you send. This is by convention a 2-4 line text
message, which contains important information about you; your physical
mailing address, internal/mobile telephone numbers where you can be
reached, Web home page etc. Do not make this entry too long.
On-line Access
Your modem or direct connection supports many other services. Programs such
as Netscape or Internet Explorer should function automatically. Other
programs that require on-line facilities include Beilstein, Telnet,
X-Window servers, Secure Telnet, FTP, and many others others. Updates to
software are also frequently implemented on-line. The most important of
these is the Norton anti-virus utility, which has a component known as
LiveUpdate, using which you can acquire the latest anti-virus settings.
Speed of Connection
A modem normally operates at around 30 kbps (kilo bits per second, or
around 4 kilo bytes per second). This is adequate for email, and most Web
browsing, but you would not want to download files much greater than about
3 Mbytes using a modem. Cable modems and ADSL connections can be perhaps
10-20 times faster, but it can also depend on how many other users there
are. Direct connections (so-called category-5 type LAN) start at 10 Mbps
(Mega bits per second) although there may be much slower bottlenecks
elsewhere in the system. For example, although the IC4data connection is
nominally 10 Mbps, the requirement to use an Ericson cache at 2 Mbps means
the connection is actually slower for some applications. Many computers in
the chemistry department operate at 100 Mbps, and some have started
operating at 1 Gbps (Giga bit per second).
Wireless Connections
The chemistry library operates a so-called Wireless network. If you are
within range of the base station (about 30m, although it can be directional
and can depend on whether there is much metal between you and the base
station) and you have a wireless card fitted to your computer, you will
automatically go on-line. You need to ensure that you have set the IP
address of your computer to a value called DHCP (this means the base
station will set everything up for you).
Wireless cards for Windows laptops can be purchased for about
£100, those for MacOS systems for about £60.