• Mac OS X: How to connect to the Internet with PPP (dial-up access) and a modem
• Mac OS X: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for PPP Modem Connections

This is useful if you are not going to be using your HiWAAY account for an extended period of time. It will automatically reply to any incoming e-mail alerting them of your absence. You can type whatever you prefer in your ‘vacation’ message. The instructions are as follows:

1. SSH or telnet to fly.hiwaay.net, and log in. If you get a menu listing of items to choose from, choose Option 6 “Exit to command shell”.

2. Type cd and then press enter to get to your root directory.

3. At the UNIX prompt ($), type the following:
pico .vacation.msg
*note the period before the word .vacation.msg

4. This will open up the pico text editor. Type your vacation message in the body of the file. For Example:

From: username@hiwaay.net
Subject: Vacation
Hello,
I am out on vacation and will not be able to respond to your message till I get back. If you wish to contact me, call 555-5555.
Sincerely,
Your Name

*This needs to be customized for your vacation message for, ie. username@hiwaay.net would be your email address.

5. When you are done, press Control key and X at the same time, then press Y, to save the file and enter to exit. You are done creating the .vacation.msg file.

6. Next, you’ll need to turn vacation messaging on, at the $ prompt, type the following:
vacation -I (No space after the dash)

(Note: This is a case sensitive command!)

7. Next, open your browser and navigate to https://mail.hiwaay.net/login.cgi?go=email and log in with the account name you wish to have the vacation message on.

8. Select “Deliver to user@hiwaay.net mailbox” at the top, where “user@hiwaay.net is your email address.

9. Next, go to the bottom of the page and select “Filter email with custom script”. Then enter “/usr/bin/vacation user” as the script, where “user” is your user name, not the full e-mail address.

10. Then check the “Deliver to user@hiwaay.net mailbox also” box (otherwise a response will be sent but incoming messages will be silently deleted). When you are done click on “Set Delivery Options” to save the settings that you created.

11. That is all there is to it. You may test your work by sending an e-mail to yourself from an alternate e-mail account or by having someone send you an e-mail.

When you are ready to remove the vacation message, return to the website (https://mail.hiwaay.net/login.cgi?go=email, login with your username and password, and then set the advanced filtering options to None.

This will store the vacation message so that you can use it at a later day.

If you wish to permanently delete the vacation message, telnet or ssh into fly.hiwaay.net.
Login with your username and password, type cd and then click the enter button, and then type rm .vacation.msg

How do I forward my HiWAAY E-mail to another address?

You can forward E-mail addressed to your HiWAAY account to any number of other email addresses. Just go to HiWAAY’s Account Service Center and log in with your HiWAAY account name and password.

After logging in you’ll get a menu with several options. Click “Set email delivery options”.

In the “Email Delivery Options” menu select “Forward this address” and in the text box below type the email address to which you want your email delivered.

Click the “Set delivery options” button and you’re done!

Some subscribers would like to have a separate login id for family members who wish to have a private mailbox. Dial-up subscribers may have up to 10 additional mailboxes for their immediate family at no extra charge.

Please note that only the primary account (the one you use to connect to HiWAAY) may establish a dialup session, but once the session has been established the mailbox accounts may use their login ids with our mail server to exchange mail. Each mailbox account also includes full unlimited Telnet access for reading mail, news or chatting through our shell server.

You can setup an extra email account at any time by logging into the Account Service Center and login with your HiWAAY login name and password. Select “Manage your mailboxes” and follow the online instructions.

If you have a @hiwaay.net email account and are unable to send email, you need to make a simple change to your email software.

You need to set your email program to use authentication for the outgoing email server. This is usually nothing more than ticking a checkbox and entering the same user name and password you use for downloading your email.

However, every email program is different, so if you need some help, please give Support a call at 888-244-9229.

In general, you need to be connected to HiWAAY to use to use HiWAAY’s outgoing email server (mail.hiwaay.net) to send email. If you are connected to another ISP, then you should use that ISP’s outgoing, or SMTP, mail server for sending email. This is a very simple setup and needs to be done only once unless your connection changes regularly. HiWAAY Support can help you configure your email software to check your HiWAAY email account and use your ISP’s mail server for sending email.

If you have an @hiwway.net account, you can alternatively setup your email software to use HiWAAY’s mail.hiwaay.net as the outgoing mail server, even if you are connected to another ISP, by using authentication. Every email program will use slightly different terms to describe this process (often known technically as SMTP AUTH), but it simply means that you need to tell your email software to use same HiWAAY login name and password you use for downloading your email for also sending email. Again, this is usually a simple setup in most email software, and HiWAAY Support will be happy to help you configure your email client for SMTP authentication.

Some ISPs may require another step to make SMTP authentication work. Because they block the standard outgoing mail server port (port 25) to mail servers on other networks, you might have to tell your email software to use the non-standard port 587. In most email software this is an easy change, but some applications don’t allow any change to the outgoing, or SMTP, server port. Please call HiWAAY Support if you have any questions about setting this option with your email software.

We also strongly recommend that, if your email software supports it, you enable SSL encryption if you use authentication. This will protect your email password from any prying eyes on a less than secure network.

Of course, all @hiwaay.net accounts have access to Webmail which allows you to securely send and receive email without having to configure any local email software. This is often a great solution for someone who is travelling or might otherwise be temporarily away from his or her primary computer or connection. HiWAAY also offers Webmail solutions to Hosting customers that give all your staff the same secure web-based email tools enjoyed by HiWAAY’s @hiwaay.net customers.

At sometime or the other all of us need to get a large file to someone else on the Internet. The method that first suggests itself to many users is to send the file as an attachment to an email message. What could be easier? You just click a button and select the file you want to transfer and presto-changeo the job is done. And of course, HiWAAY’s high speed connection to the Net should make sending and receiving multi-megabyte messages and attachments painless. Unfortunately, this ignores the facts that the sender and recipient are usually at end of a dial-up or slow dedicated connection and that different email servers and client software sometimes don’t play well together.

The problems that can result form transferring a large email file are not fatal but can be quite infuriating. The usual symptoms can include a file corrupted by incompatible MIME* protocols (*MIME is the standard protocol use to transfer binary files via email and the web.) or a jammed mailbox where the user’s email software just blows up and can’t complete the download of a large multi-megabyte file. At the minimum this means lost time to replace or repair a corrupted file or a jammed mailbox where the recipient’s email software keeps blowing up during the long downloads required to receive the big message. (A large binary of the multi-megabyte variety can take a dial-up user hours to download. Email software often isn’t able to remain stable during such a long connection.) Needless to say no other email can be downloaded until the email message causing the jam is removed. HiWAAY’s Technical Support staff unjams a couple of dozen mailboxes a week. Many others are repaired by the owners.

To alleviate this problem most ISP’s do not pass messages beyond a reasonable size. You can expect that a mail message size of 32,767 bytes (32KB) or less will work with any E-mail system. Most accept something larger, often 1MB to as large as 5MB, but then the user’s email software may or may not work when attempting to download a file at the upper end of the limit. In our experience transfer problem start when the message size exceeds 1MB. Over this size email file tranfers are just not reliable and are dependent upon what the destination and any intermediate ‘hops’ will accept. HiWAAY currently put a 28MB limit on incoming or outgoing email messages so it’s a good idea to add some of the following procedures and tools to your Internet toolbox.

How To Delete a Large Email Message With Pine
If your mailbox has been jammed by a large message which you are unable to download and delete because it locks up your mail reader software, you can remove it by following these steps (Please note that all the commands must be typed in lower case.):

Telnet to fly.hiwaay.net and login to your shell account using your HiWAAY Login ID and Password.
When you see the menu type “1” for mail and hit the enter key.
A new screen will open and if you’ve never read your mail this way you be asked if you want email instructions emailed to you. Type “n” for no and hit the enter key otherwise just hit the enter key.
Hit the enter key again.
Hit the enter key one more time.
You’ll now see a list of the email messages in your mailbox. The numbers in parentheses show the message size. Use your arrow keys to scroll up and down the list and look for a message with a size like 2,657k. (It could be any size.) This is a 2.7MB monster and is the kind of message you’ll want to delete.
While the big message is highlighted type “d”.
Now type “q”.
Then type “y”.
Type one more “y”.
Now you’ll see the menu again. Just type “8” to logout.
You should now be able to receive email once again. If you need general help with telnet then take a look at our FAQ about Using Your Shell Account. If you run into any problems contact HiWAAY Technical Support at 533-4296 or use the form on our Support Page to send us email (It’ll work even if you can’t send email any other way..)

If you need to transfer a large message or binary attachment then you can use one of the following methods:

1. Use FTP and Avoid Email Problems Altogether.
If the recipient of your email has an ftp server that accepts incoming files then use an ftp client like Cute FTP (for Windows95/NT) or Fetch (for Macs) to upload your file to his server. Not only does this avoid the problems of email transfers but it’s also faster and avoids any potential corruption caused by mail servers with incompatible MIME type protocols.

HiWAAY’s commercial customers all have an anonymous ftp site to which they can post any large file for downloading by their customers. This has the same advantages as the above but also allows the recipient to choose when he’s ready to receive the file so he doesn’t get a multi-megabyte surprise in his mailbox.
2. Zip or Stuff the File to Make it Smaller
Using zip software like Winzip (for Windows) or other compression software like Stuffit (for Macs) you can compress the file you want to transfer and often make it considerably smaller. This is particularly true for things like Word files or spreadsheets. However, some graphic formats like .gif and .jpeg are already compressed and can’t be shrunk any further.

It’s a good habit to always compress large attachments simply to save time in sending and receiving the file. To compress a file just follow the instruction that came with your compression software. If you make the compressed file self-extracting then the recipient won’t even have to own a copy of the compression software to open it up.

3. Zip or Stuff the File and Segment it Into Smaller Pieces
If, after you’ve compressed a file, you find it’s still too large to send reliably, some compression software will allow you to segment it into several smaller pieces that can then be sent by two or more email messages and reassembled by the receiver. A number of small message will have a far better chance of getting through than one really big message. These segmented files can also be made self-extracting which makes reassembling them at the receiving end a simple matter of double clicking on the first segment.

4. UUencode the File and Save It as Smaller Segments
UUencoding files is another method for breaking large files into smaller segments. Most binaries posted to Usenet News Groups are uuencoded although these days most of the news reading software handles all the encoding and decoding for you. For email you’ll need an extra piece of software to do the job. Windows users should investigate Wincode. Mac users can either use Stuffit or use a dedicated uuencode application like UUlite. The recipient will have to have software to decode the uuencoded files sent to him. Any one of the above three applications will work as a decoder too. To create uuencoded files please follow the instructions included with your software.

When the mail reader you use is connecting to our mail server and retrieving your messages, it may be failing to delete the mail from the server once the messages has been retrieved into your computer. Then each time it connects, it just retrieves the same messages (plus any new ones) again and again. Your mail reader should have a setup option which will be titled something like ‘delete retrieved mail from server’ and it should be enabled.

If you have been receiving the same mail message over and over again, and the message is from a mailing list server – what may have happened is that the listserv has developed a problem. Probably someone else on the same list to which you have subscribed has a mailbox that is unreachable, thus bouncing the message. The listserv is retransmitting this bounced mail message to every list subscriber instead of dropping the address from the list.

Unfortunately there is not much we can do other than shutdown your mailbox and change your mail address. You should communicate to the person directly managing the list you have subscribed, forwarding him a copy of the message you are receiving and request that you be removed from the list. It’s not a bad idea to cc: the Postmaster@address at the node where the list is managed from as well.

Many HiWAAY customers use a version of Microsoft’s FrontPage to create and manage their personal web sites.�In an attempt to make it easier for those who are new to publishing web sites or who may not be familiar with CGI scripting, Microsoft built into FrontPage some features which require special capabilities be added into the web server. Microsoft calls these additions FrontPage Server Extensions. HiWAAY’s home.hiwaay.net web server doesn’t include support for FrontPage extensions. However, you can still use FrontPage to design and publish your web site to home.hiwaay.net without FrontPage extensions.