Information Technology
Computer Support Center
E-mail requires that you have access to a computer and that the computer
be linked to the outside world, via a modem and phone line, or via
fiber optic cable (such as the SIUC Campus Area Network). E-mail is
not like a conventional letter in that:
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E-mail is thousands of times faster.
A message can go from Illinois to Australia in seconds! |
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E-mail is free on campus--there
is no "postage" cost to students. |
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E-mail is not as private as a regular
letter. |
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E-mail requires learning how to
use computer programs and having a "sign-on" to the
electronic mail system. |
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E-mail can be sent to many people
at the same time, and you can participate in on-going discussions
on many subjects at the same time. |
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E-mail can access information and
file libraries--you'll send a message and get a document back
within minutes. |
E-mail is like a conventional letter in that:
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You must have an address to receive
e-mail. For example, it could be jdoe@siu.edu. The address guides
you to the sender. The extensions at the end of the address
tell you something:
edu = school (academic institutions like
universities and colleges)
com = private businesses
gov = government
Therefore jdoe@siu.edu means: John Doe at siu,
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
specific name of school), and the extension is a
school, edu.
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General Guidelines:
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Avoid cluttering your messages
with excessive emphasis. DO NOT USE ALL CAPS (they have the
effect of shouting).
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If you are responding to a message,
only include part of the original message--NOT the whole message!
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Make sure you clearly refer to
the original message's contents.
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Always include a descriptive subject
line in your message.
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Advantages of E-mail Over the Telephone:
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You send your message when it's
convenient for you, even at 2 AM.
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Your recipient responds at his
convenience. No more telephone tag.
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E-mail is cheaper by far--it lets
you exchange vast amounts of mail for only pennies, even if
the other person is in New Zealand.
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E-mail Addresses: E-mail uses the concept of unique addresses.
Your e-mail address provides all the information required to get a
message to and from anywhere in the world. Every computer on the international
network called the Internet has a network address that uniquely identifies
it. E-mail addresses usually appear in the format which contains "@"
(an "at" sign). To reach Jim Morrison on the system south.america.org,
one would address the mail as jm@south.america.org". Another
symbol that enters the fray is "%"--it acts as an extra
"routing" method. For example, if the site dream is connected
to south.america.org, but doesn't have an Internet domain name of
its own, a user debbie on dream can be reached by writing to the address
debbie%dream@south.america.org. The form is significant. This address
says that the local system should first send the mail to south.america.org.
There, the address debbie%dream will convert to debbie@dream. Then
south.america.org will handle getting the mail to the host dream,
where it will be delivered locally to debbie. All the intricacies
of e-mail addressing methods are fully covered in the book, A Directory
of Electronic Mail Addressing and Networks, published by O'Reilly
and Associates, as part of their Nutshell Handbook series. It is a
must for any active e-mail user. Write to nuts@ora.com for ordering
information.
Sending and Receiving Mail: Check with your system administrator
for specific instructions related to mail at your site. A person sending
the CWIS Team mail would probably do something like this (using a
POP mail program such as Eudora):
To: webmaster@siu.edu
From: johndoe@siu.edu
Subject: About The CWIS Home Page
Text of message...... Try sending yourself mail a few times, to get
used to your system's mailer. It will save a lot of wasted aspirin
for both you and your system administrator.
Anatomy of a Mail Header: An
electronic mail message has a specific structure that is common across
every type of computer system. Using the previous example, the received
message could be:
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 16:10:57 -0600
X-Sender: jdoe@saluki-mail.siu.edu
To: webmaster@siu.edu
From: jdoe@siu.edu (John Doe)
Subject: About The CWIS Home Page
Text of message......
The "Date:" header contains the date and time the message
was sent. The 'X-Sender:' header is usually not very interesting.
It gives the "real" address that the mail is coming from
(as opposed to the address you should reply to, which may look much
different), and what places the mail went through to get to you. Over
the Internet, there is always at least one "Received:" header
and usually no more than four or five. When a message is sent using
UUCP, one "Received:" header is added for each system that
the mail passes through. This can often result in more than a dozen
"Received:" headers. While they help with dissecting problems
in mail delivery, odds are the average user will never want to see
them. Most mail programs will filter out this kind of "cruft"
in a header. The "good" address (as opposed to "real"
address) is laid out in the "From:" header. Sometimes it
will not include the full name of the person (in this case "John
Doe"), and may look different, but it should always contain an
e-mail address of some form. "To:" lists the e-mail address
(or addresses) of the recipients of the message. There may be a "Cc:"
header, listing additional addresses. Finally, a brief subject for
the message goes in the "Subject:" header. The exact order
of a message's headers may vary from system to system, but it will
always include these fundamental headers that are vital to proper
delivery. Bounced E-mailWhen an e-mail address is incorrect in some
way (the system's name is wrong, the domain doesn't exist, whatever),
the mail system will bounce the message back to the sender, much the
same way that the Postal Service does when you send a letter to a
bad street address. The message will include the reason for the bounce;
a common error is addressing mail to an account name that doesn't
exist. For example, writing to John Doe at Southern Illinois University
at Carbondale will fail, because he does not have an account:
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 16:32:52 -0600
From: MAILER-DAEMON (Mail Delivery Subsystem)
Subject: Returned mail: User unknown
To:
----- Transcript of session follows -----
>>> RCPT To:
<<< 550 User 'jdoe' Unknown 550 ... User unknown
The message also includes the bounced text, so you
do not have to retype everything you wrote.
----- Unsent message follows -----
Received: from xxxxxx.c-cwis.siu.edu by saluki-mail.
fiber2.siu.edu (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03)
id AA18539; Wed, 8 Feb 1995 16:32:51 -0600
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 16:32:51 -0600
Message-Id: <9502082232.aa18539@saluki-mail.fiber2.siu.edu>
X-Sender: xxxxxxx@saluki-mail.siu.edu
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: jdoe@siucvmb.siu.edu
From: xxxxxxx@siu.edu (xxxxxxxÆs Name)
Subject: About The Meeting Yesterday
Text of message...... The full text of the message is returned intact,
including any headers that were added. This can be cut out with an
editor and fed right back into the mail system with a proper address,
making redelivery a relatively painless process. Mailing ListsPeople
who share common interests are inclined to discuss their hobby or
interest at every available opportunity. One modern way to aid in
this exchange of information is by using a mailing list--usually an
e-mail address that redistributes all mail sent to it back out to
a list of addresses. For example, the Sun Managers mailing list (of
interest to people that administer computers manufactured by Sun)
has the address "sun-managers@eecs.nwu.edu". Any mail sent
to that address will "explode" out to each person named
in a file maintained on a computer at Northwestern University.
Administrative tasks (sometimes referred to as administrivia) are
often handled through other addresses, typically with the suffix "-request".
To continue the example above, a request to be added to or deleted
from the Sun Managers list should be sent to "sun-managers-request@eecs.nwu.edu".
When in doubt, try to write to the "-request" version of
a mailing list address first; the other people on the list aren't
interested in your desire to be added or deleted, and can certainly
do nothing to expedite your request. Often if the administrator of
a list is busy (remember, this is all peripheral to real jobs and
real work), many users find it necessary to ask again and again, often
with harsher and harsher language, to be removed from a list. This
does nothing more than waste traffic and bother everyone else receiving
the messages. If, after a reasonable amount of time, you still have
not succeeded in being removed from a mailing list, write to the postmaster.
Exercise caution when replying to a message sent by a mailing list.
If you wish to respond to the author only, make sure that the only
address you are replying to is that person, and not the entire list.
Often messages of the sort "Yes, I agree with you completely!"
will appear on a list, boring the daylights out of the other readers.
Likewise, if you explicitly do want to send the message to the whole
list, you'll save yourself some time by checking to make sure it's
indeed headed to the whole list and not a single person. A list of
currently available mailing lists is available in at least two places;
the first is in a file on ftp.nisc.sri.com called "interest-groups"
under the "netinfo/" directory. It's updated fairly regularly,
but it is large (presently around 700K).
The other list is maintained by Gene Spafford (spaf@cs.purdue.edu),
and is posted in parts to the newsgroup news.lists semi-regularly.
(See section Usenet News, for info on how to read that and other newsgroups.)
What E-Mail Can Mean to You: With e-mail you have a new option for contacting your colleagues. You used to have to see them during office hours,
grab them after class, or phone them. E-mail allows you to write them
anytime. On many campuses, you can e-mail directly to deans and even
the chancellor. But please do not send a complaint via e-mail directly
to the chancellor or dean just because you can. Follow the chain of
command. Often e-mail helps shy people "talk" to professors
in ways that are hard in person. You might find yourself enjoying
your e-mail contact. With e-mail, everyone can be a sender, thus everyone
is a producer. It allows "many-to-many" communication. In
a business or group, each user has, at least in theory, access to
every other user, and an equal chance to be heard. E-mail communities
have sprung up all over the Internet. In these groups, you receive
messages directly to your e-mail mailbox. In a Listserv group, your
appearance, age, and geography do not limit you--others accept your
words at their value. Always remember: your e-mail is not private!
Never send or keep anything that you would not mind seeing on the
evening news.
Common E-mail Goofs:
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Typing your message in the subject
line instead of in the body of the message.
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Forgetting that what you think
is funny or harmless can be misinterpreted at the other end.
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Not signing off when you leave
the computer--someone can use your sign-on to get you into trouble!
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Not checking your e-mail often,
and missing something important.
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Forgetting your password.
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Sending a sign-on or sign-off message
to the whole list by accident.
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To help the university keep our e-mail server running well, please:
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Check your e-mail daily and remain
within your mailbox size quota.
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Delete unwanted messages immediately
since they take up disk storage.
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Keep any messages remaining in
your electronic mailbox to a minimum. Also, keep your attached files
to a minimum. Files and messages which you wish to retain should be downloaded to your personal computer's hard drive or to removable storage media such as USB memory devices, zip disks, or floppy disks.
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Do not steal someone else's work.
When getting programs off the net, you should check for copyright
or licensing agreements. If the program is beneficial to you,
pay the author's registration fee. If you have any
doubt, just do not copy it.
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To become a good Net citizen, you
should read Helpful E-mail Tips.
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If you want to earn your Driver's
License, read the Netnews "road code."
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What kind of E-mail packages does SIUC have?
One option is Eudora. Eudora is a mail program for Macintosh and Windows users. Eudora has a complete graphic interface, so that once it has been set up to communicate with your
e-mail account, you do not need to know anything about the central
service computer or its operating system commands to send and receive
mail. Eudora's text editor makes use of standard word processing features
for creating and manipulating the text of the message. Eudora has
a nicknames facility that makes it easy to send messages to your friends.
A single person's e-mail address can be assigned to one nickname.
Groups can also be assigned nicknames. And Eudora will also let you
create a menu of frequent correspondents' addresses or nicknames for
point-and-click addressing. For Eudora to work, you will first need
an SIU Network ID. You can apply
now from this page. This Network ID will provide you with an e-mail ID as well as access to other campus network facilities. Network ID creation will establish an account on the SIUC IMAP mail server.
POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)are used by the program that collects your mail from the networks and holds it until the email client program (such as Eudora) on your computer calls for it. The mail server also ensures that your mail is only retrieved if the correct password for your account is supplied. All software needed to install Eudora is free or site-licensed.
On the Macintosh, Eudora requires a recent version of the System and
Finder, and a network connection, either Ethernet or Dial-up. Windows
users need either Dial-up networking or a direct ethernet connection,
with TCP/IP. All these programs are available free to University students
and staff. Eudora can be installed on your own computer, the one you
use in your office, on a computer you share with others (each of you
can have Eudora), or on a portable notebook computer.
