EnServe Administrators Manual
contents
 Managing Incoming E-mail

Not only can the EnServe manage your network's internal e-mail it can collect e-mail from the Internet and deliver it to the people using your network.
It can collect e-mail from a mail-server using the SMTP protocol.
Once e-mail is collected from the Internet the EnServe takes care of delivering it to the right person or people depending on how you have set it up.

Local Delivery

If the EnServe receives an e-mail containing only a username (no @, host or domain part) in the destination address it delivers it to the person owning that username or an alias that matches the address. People on your network can send e-mail to other people on your network this way, for example e-mail addressed to enbox-admin will arrive in the enbox-admin users mailbox. When we talk about local delivery this is what we mean, deliver based only on the username part of the address.
Local delivery requires no additional configuration of the EnServe other than setting up mailboxes and/or aliases for people.

Collecting POP3 / IMAP mail from mailboxes on the Internet

Currently we DO NOT support collecting POP3 mail from your ISP.

Receiving E-Mail from a SMTP server.

Some ISPs provide what is called an 'SMTP feed' to the EnServe. What this means is that rather than store e-mail until the EnServe 'asks' for it using POP3 the ISP's mail server forwards any incoming mail directly to the EnServe using SMTP. If the EnServe is not available for some reason (your ADSL connection is down for example) the e-mail is usually stored (spooled) until the EnServe is available again.

Once the e-mail arrives on the EnServe the EnServe strips off the domain part (the @ and everything after it) of the e-mail address the e-mail was originally sent to and delivers it locally based on the username part of the address (see local delivery above).

The SMTP feeds is always delivered locally and cannot be sent to a single person or e-mail address. The box listing servers you accept SMTP mail from is purely for reference and has no effect on operation.

Advanced : The EnServe will function as an SMTP node for incoming e-mail even without an ISP to feed you mail. So long as the MX records for the domains you wish to collect mail for are pointing at your ADSL's public IP address and the EnServe is configured for SMTP as described above the EnServe will accept the mail.

An Important Note on SMTP Feeds and Firewalls.

NB : In order to receive SMTP e-mail you have to allow incoming connections from the Internet to the EnServe. Your ADSL router or modem most probably acts as a 'firewall' preventing any incoming connections. You have to configure your router/modem to allow incoming connections to the EnServe on port 25. Usually this is achieved through the router/modem's normal configuration menu by either setting up port forwarding and specifying the EnServe as the local server for port 25 or setting up a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and forwarding all incoming connections to the EnServe. Forwarding all incoming connections to the EnServe is safe (in fact it is preferred) as the EnServe runs its own firewall to prevent unauthorised connections from the Internet to your network.

Configuring your PC

See the mail section of the User Manual for details on setting up PC's.
contents