… seems like it might be easier at times than email. There are all sorts of things that can occur to make email fail. Add to that the fact that there are two directions for email, outgoing and incoming, and there’s a mess of things that can bog down “instant” communication. Let’s start with the basic setup:

There are three things one typically needs for setting up email.

1). The incoming mail server. That’s the server that your email program checks to see if there are any new messages.

2). The outgoing mail server, which is the server that collects your email from the email program to send out to your friend in San Paulo.

3). Your username and password.

In the case of Indra’s email our servers are mail.indra.com for the incoming and smtp.indra.com for the outgoing.

Here’s where the gotchas start to kick in.

Outgoing Problems

Many ISPs will block outgoing mail that is not sent through their own outgoing server. This is done to prevent people from sending out spam from their network. By sending out only from their servers on their network they can track down where spam is coming from. These problems are evidenced by being able to receive, but not send. There are typically two solutions to this. The first is to change the port you use to get around the blocks that that particular ISP has in place. A good example of this is using smtp.indra.com as the outgoing server and changing the security to SSL and using port 465. The other alternative is to use the outgoing server of whatever ISP’s network you are on.

The first solution is usually our choice due to the fact that it works in most situations, especially if the computer is a laptop and will be moving outside of our network and your typical ISP’s network (Assuming they aren’t the same).

Incoming Problems

Incoming problems are more rare and less intentional. They usually amount to loss of network connectivity, even if only briefly. These issues are typically caused by a wireless network connection. Despite Windows saying the wireless connection is “Excellent”, it is often the case that even an extremely temporary drop will occur in the service. This can cause the file that contains the email on the server to be damaged (rarely) or written to a different spot on the server (more often). This results in your email program not being able to get to the email when it tries again immediately.

Here is a rundown of the settings that will typically work anywhere:

Incoming
Mail Server: mail.indra.com
Server Port: 110
SSL: off
Authentication: password

Outgoing
Mail Server: smtp.indra.com
Server Port: 465
SSL: on
Authentication: password

Once you have these configuration settings all you can do is press send and hope that someone gets your message… ♪

If this all fails and you need to speak to one of our helpful staff, please give us a call at 303-546-9151.