General E-mail Information

The Helpdesk Suggests...

There are many different options for reading your WPI e-mail. While you may use any method available, these are our suggestions:

New faculty and staff are given an Exchange account upon receipt of the CCC Account Request form, completed by their department head or supervisor. We strongly suggest using the Exchange server to read your mail. This method also provides access to the Faculty and Staff Global Address Book, shared calendars, and various additional capabilities. Exchange users can access their e-mail through the Outlook client and on the web via Outlook Web Access (OWA). For more information, see the Exchange Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
New students are given an Exchange account as part of the account creation process. This will allow them access to shared calendars to facilitate meetings with other students, faculty and staff. They can access their Exchange e-mail by using the Outlook Client, or on the web via Outlook Web Access (OWA) and through UNIX if necessary. For more information, see the Exchange Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).

All of Your Options

Do you access an Exchange server, or a UNIX mail server?

Depending on your familiarity with computer systems, you may wish to simply take our suggestions above. However, we provide the following as a general explanation of the many different ways to access your e-mail. If you would like clarification on any of these methods, please feel free to contact the Helpdesk at x5888 from on-campus or 508-831-5888 from off-campus.

Exchange Mail Options
- Outlook with Exchange.
  Exchange mail provides access to the Calendar and Global Address Book features. See the Exchange FAQ.
UNIX Mail Options
- UNIX mail-reader on the CCC systems (ccc.wpi.edu) with alpine and connection to the IMAP server.
  This method is very simple, in that it is the default setup if you read mail using alpine. Any folders you create may be either local or IMAP, depending upon your settings. See our page on alpine for more information.
- Outlook / Outlook Express / other graphical client with IMAP.
  If you want to read your WPI e-mail using a graphical client without connecting to an Exchange server, then this is a method for you. See our Accessing mail using IMAP page.
Webmail Options
- Outlook Web Access for Exchange
- UNIX Webmail (Squirrel Mail)

Sending E-mail

If you are sending e-mail from on-campus, then set smtp.wpi.edu as your Outgoing Mail server. The method to set this depends on your client program of choice. If you have any questions on how to set it using your particular client program, please contact the Helpdesk

Due to several incidents where off-campus organizations abused WPI as an e-mail relay, we have had to shut down relay via smtp.wpi.edu. Therefore, if you are sending mail via SMTP from an off-campus Internet Service Provider, you must use submission.wpi.edu. This is an authenticating SMTP server, so you will have to set up your client with your login and password.

Another option to access smtp.wpi.edu from off campus is using the Virtual Private Network (VPN) client. This gives your computer access to the campus network as if you were on campus. Information on the VPN client can be found on the Network Operations VPN page. submission is recommended, since you will have to always remember to start up the VPN before you send email.

Additional E-mail Information

Is there an e-mail message size limit?

Yes. The e-mail virus scanner limits message sizes to 20MB. Any message larger than 20MB will not be delivered and may bounce back to the sender. The 20MB limit is for the actual message size. Attachments must be encoded into a form that standard mail servers can handle and because of this, the size of binary attachments increases by approximately one third. This causes a 15MB e-mail to expand to 20MB. Thus, WPI e-mail users can only send or receive e-mail attachments that are 15MB or smaller.

What other e-mail resources are available?

The CCC can help you set up the following things:

Forwarding your e-mail to another location.
Notifying your e-mail correspondents that you are on vacation.
E-mailing your advisees.
Standing List Management for campus notification lists.

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Last modified: Apr 25, 2011, 16:43 EDT