Overview

Historically, sending email has not been authenticated function - either you could send mail or you couldn't. When the 'net was first put together, this worked out to mean that you could send mail through anybody's mail server; however, as the spammers came onto the 'net this became untenable, and soon you could only send using one or two specially allowed mailers per network. This was most worrisome for travellers, who had to set up a new outgoing mail host for every network they joined.

The solution to the problem was, in theory, simple: require users to log into the mail server to send their messages. However, implementing it in a secure manner has not turned out to be simple. Over the past year or two, however, it has become viable; the SMTP/AUTH standard is supported by many clients, and now by our server.

Using SMTP/AUTH

Because all programs that use SMTP/Auth are set up differently, I can only offer general advice on how to set up your mail clients:

• Connect to mailhost.ks.uiuc.edu at p ort 465 if possible, or 25 if not.
• You will be authenticating with plain or login credentials, not Kerberos or CRAM-MD5.
• You must authenticate securely! We won't even let you try to authenticate with most protocols unless it's set up properly.
• Log in with your standard username and password.

Using normal SMTP

If you can't use SMTP/AUTH for any reason (difficulty configuring it, your client doesn't support it, etc), you must send your email using standard SMTP, and set your outgoing mail server based on the network that you're on. For example:

• Beckman Network: mailhost.ks.uiuc.edu
• UIUC dial-up: staff.uiuc.edu
• Insight @Home (cable modem): mail.chmpgn1.il.home.com