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**Guest.Visitor** · 10-02-2000, 12:25 PM

Accessing mail via browser

Easy solution? switch provider. Use something like hotmail.

**J.Pluta** · 10-02-2000, 08:11 PM

Accessing mail via browser

That would be okay, Denis, except that I want to keep my domain. All my mail goes to plutabrothers.com, and I want to keep it that way. I don't want to have "joepluta@hotmail.com" as my corporate presence. Joe

**Guest.Visitor** · 10-02-2000, 09:48 PM

Accessing mail via browser

Joe I'm not clear on the problem you have. If you use Outlook just change the account setting to not keep a copy on the server. Then each time you connect you will download the mail to your PC. Is the problem you are travelling a lot and need to get a globla connection ? If so then does your ISP support IPass or something similar ? Using IPass I am able to dial a local number and connect to my home ISP for mail. The charges are higher than normal, but their better than International Call Rates. Hotmail does support the ability to go to an POP3 Server. So you can access your corporate email address using MSN Hotmail. Again the Hotmail client to your POP3 server can be configured to leave or remove the messages. Replying may be a bit tricky since your replies would be from hotmail. I know of one java applet called mochamail lite which has a free trial download and provides an email client inside the browser. Ive never used it so I have no idea on the quality and the function. David

**Guest.Visitor** · 10-03-2000, 05:01 AM

Accessing mail via browser

Joe, Maybe I am missing the boat, but wouldnt the pop server on your personal as/400 work and have your ISP add an MX record to route plutabrothers.com to your as/400. If you have a firewall, you can have the MX record point to your firewall and the firewall point to your as/400. Alex Garrison

**J.Pluta** · 10-03-2000, 05:23 AM

Accessing mail via browser

Whoa! No doubt that WOULD work, Alex. I'd have to configure the darned thing, but that's something doable, and I'd have to pass through mail requests on my router. Okay, so I configure the AS/400 to accept mail; that gets it into one place. Now the trick is, how do I get at it through the web? I suppose any POP3 client can access the AS/400... so know I just have to know which ports to enable. See, I don't like to give my AS/400 a realworld IP, so it's on a 10. network. I have a router which does the translation for me. I already have one realworld IP being passed through (to my NT server). Next, I need to figure out how to get the mail traffic through to the AS/400. Can I use the same IP address, just a different port? That is, if SMTP packets go through a different port, I can route packets for that port to my AS/400's address (10.1.1.aaa) and route any other packets to my server (10.1.1.bbb) - although I'm not sure my router can handle that. If not, I guess I just get a second IP and pass it through. Next, which ports do I have to enable (I try to keep things as locked down as possible, and I don't want to, for instance, let FTP requests through). Damn, I just don't know enough about this stuff, and I never have the time to learn it all. Anybody know of a good book for beginning network management, that deals with things like this (firewalls, proxies, mail, webserving, etc.) Joe

**J.Pluta** · 10-03-2000, 05:29 AM

Accessing mail via browser

If you use Outlook just change the account setting to not keep a copy on the server. Then each time you connect you will download the mail to your PC. I looked into this approach, David, but there's a problem. The "not keep a copy" switch means your messages are now on whatever machine is running outlook. Outlook is running on one of my main workstations on my home network, not on a laptop. The problem with this approach is that once the mail is moved to my system, how can I access it remotely? I could switch everything over to a laptop, but that would mean always having to have the laptop connected if I want to access mail. What I want is a way, once the mail is moved to Outlook on my home network, to access that mail from a browser. I find it difficult to believe that there's no browser front end for Outlook. Is the problem you are travelling a lot and need to get a globla connection ? If so then does your ISP support IPass or something similar ? Using IPass I am able to dial a local number and connect to my home ISP for mail. The charges are higher than normal, but their better than International Call Rates. Thank goodness I haven't run into that problem yet. So far, any offsite engagements have had internet access, which means I can connect to my ISP. Joe

**Guest.Visitor** · 10-03-2000, 05:44 AM

Accessing mail via browser

Joe, For the AS/400 configuration you should find everything you need in the Information center and the TCP/IP configuration manual. Your POP3 client should be able to find your AS/400 without specifying a port although it should be 110. Your SMPT port should be 25. The client connects to something like as400name.domain.com. You can test all of this using a telnet client to just connect to the POP3 and SMTP server. You also need to make sure that the world can't bounce mail off of your SMTP server. David Morris

**J.Pluta** · 10-03-2000, 06:24 AM

Accessing mail via browser

You also need to make sure that the world can't bounce mail off of your SMTP server. Yes, I can see why that would be a bad thing. In fact, a friend had that happen once and only found out when the FBI contacted him - he had unknowingly become one of the area's leading sources of some highly objectionable spam (somebody used his mailer to spam the world). How does one prevent this? Joe

**Guest.Visitor** · 10-03-2000, 06:52 AM

Accessing mail via browser

Joe, Setting up the pop3 server on the as/400 is easy - you just start it up with the 'strtcpsvr *pop' command. The IBM tcp/ip config manual has a good chapter on this. On to the harder question: You should put a firewall between your as/400 and your ISP. One place I worked used a cheap nt server with Raptor (although I'm sure there are other cheap options out there). A cheap config would be: 1. get a cheap nt server box with two ethernet cards. Setup the ip addresses so one card has your external ip address, the other has your internal address. 2. buy raptor or some other cheap firewall. 3. The line in from your ISP probably goes through some kind of csu/dsu and comes out as an ethernet cable which you have connected to an ethernet hub. Buy a cheap 5 port hub. Put your ethernet cable from the ISP on that hub. 4. Connect your nt server nic card with the external ip address to the hub. Connect your other nt server nic card to your lan. Now the ISP can only talk to your nt server. Raptor will control what makes it through to your internal lan. 5. Your ISP will tell you how they have your MX record set up (which port number on your external ip address they will talk to). Set up the firewall to route that to your as/400. 6. setup your firewall to also allow outbound smtp. 7. All done. (I'm doing this from memory, so there may be a few details missing, but these are the main steps.) As you can see, the as/400 part is really the easiest. If you use raptor as your firewall, the manuals are good. It took about 1 day for us to set it up start to finish on nt. Alex Garrison

**J.Pluta** · 10-03-2000, 08:12 AM

Accessing mail via browser

This is pretty much what I have, though I use a different router, Alex. Well, actually, it's a little different: the address for my NT server is actually translated at the router from my realworld IP to my internal 10. address (this may go away when I move to the new location). None of my machines has a realworld IP address, except for my router. In general, I think I see how this all works. It's not a real big deal. Configuring the firewall is probably the biggest thing, and that's more tedious than difficult, especially if I need to support multiple realworld IP addresses (that's less necessary with Microsoft IIS, which is real good about virtual hosting, but some other products ain't as nice about it). My concern here is that once I do get all the mail into the AS/400, how do I access it from the web through a browser (that is, without signing on to the AS/400)? Seems like this is an opportunity waiting to be filled... Joe

**Guest.Visitor** · 10-03-2000, 08:26 AM

Accessing mail via browser

Joe, Once you have the pop server up and your firewall configured, your email client can come through the public internet to check mail on the as/400 pretty much just like you would if your email client was inside your lan. Your email client would be configured for your pop3 server to be as400name.domain.com just like David said in his post. You can test the whole shooting match from the public internet by telnetting to your as400 on port 23 also like David said. Alex Garrison

**J.Pluta** · 10-03-2000, 08:28 AM

Accessing mail via browser

Okay, that means opening up my AS/400 to the real world, if only on port 23. Gotcha. This could actually be doable. Thanks for all the time helping a nitwit with questions. Joe

**Guest.Visitor** · 10-03-2000, 09:00 AM

Accessing mail via browser

Joe, Actually port 25. David Morris

**Guest.Visitor** · 10-05-2000, 09:21 PM

Accessing mail via browser

Go to MDAEMON.COM. MDaemon is an SMTP server that can pick up mail from your ISP and it also includes a web client. We pick up all our mail with MDAEMON and forward it to our internal Domino Server. On the way out the process goes in reverse. Domino-Mdaemon-Internet. For a few hundred dollars it's worth it. It runs on Windows 95/98/NT/2000. We've used it for years. Regards, Richard Schoen RJS Software Systems Inc. "The AS/400 Report and Data Delivery Experts" Email: richard@rjssoft.com Web Site: http://www.rjssoft.com

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