Chemistry Department Mail Services
Email services in the Department of chemistry are provided by
two mechanisms
1. Microsoft Exchange Server
If you registered as an undergraduate or postgraduate from the
year 2000 onwards, you will by default be registered for this
service. If you are PG or staff, registration will by default
by on the Exchange server unless you request it be on the
POP/IMAP server indicated below. Since the Exchange/Outlook
combination has been vulnerable to virus attacks recently,
anyone concerned about this aspect may wish to request use of
the POP server noted below.
Some users may also wish to use telnet style mail services
such as Pine. Telnet access is not possible using Exchange, and
if you particularly wish to use email in this manner, you
should request that your email is set to the POP/IMAP server
noted below.
The Exchange server functions by receiving and keeping all
your email on a central server, which you can inspect using an
email client. This requires you to be on-line whilst reading
and sending email. In contrast a POP server (see below)
requires you to be on-line only to deliver to and send from your email client, and you can
then read
and write email off-line. Most ISP providers in fact use POP ,
since this is rather more "modem-friendly" than Exchange (which
tends to be used more in a corporate or LAN environment where
modems are not used).
2. Unix POP and IMAP Server
All registrations prior to 1999 were via this service. You can
still request to be transferred to or from the Exchange
service. The server is known as argon.ch.ic.ac.uk and functions
as both the POP and SMTP service. You can only use the SMTP
service (ie send emails) if you are accessing it via a College
DNS registered computer. If the system refuses to send your
emails, it is because you have no DNS registration. Check you
machine is
registered here.
Access from outside the Department
If you are travelling, you may have to configure an email
program on an external computer. You can set the POP service to
argon.ch.ic.ac.uk and read your email, but to send email you
will have to find a local SMTP server. You cannot use
argon.ch.ic.ac.uk since it only recognises IC computers as
being allowed access.
Software
There is an abundance of software you can use to access email
via POP/IMAP. The one we recommend is Eudora version 5, which
comes in both a free version (with advertisments) and a
commercial (advertisment free) version. Instructions on how to
configure this for Windows and MacOS are given elsewhere.
You can also access your email using the so-called Telnet
protocol. To do so, telnet to iridium2.ch.ic.ac.uk OR
iron2.ch.ic.ac.uk, login using your regular email account and
password, and issue the command line pine (or elm).
Older telnet programs send
your password in an un-encrypted fashion over the network,
which it can be vulnerable to interception by hackers. We now
strongly recommend that you use a telnet program capable of
so-called SSH1 or SSH2 support. Such programs are available on
the chemistry computer room systems. If you intend using telnet
on your own computer, we advise you install such an SSH
compatible telnet program.