David Largent writes:
> As a company, we do not have internet email or a Web presence for
> that matter. (A couple of us do have email as individuals.) I have
> finally convinced the powers that be that we should have both.
>
> Besides PCs, the only other box we have is our hard-working HP 3000.
> >From what I understand, it is not advisable to connect that directly
> to the 'net - something about security. :-) We don't have much
> "left over" horsepower/disk space on the HP 3000, either. Also, I
> doubt that I can convince them to buy a new box to serve as a
> Web/email server at this point in time.
A web server really isn't too resource intensive unless you have thousands
and thousands of end-users going after lots of graphical data.
For an e-mail server, the question is having enough disk space to store each
user's unread messages.
> So, my question is "What do I need to do/Who do I need to talk to to
> get a Web presence and email capability for the company using our
> own domain name, and permiting employees to have access to their
> email w/o placing a long distance call?"
>
> I have registered a domain name for us (although not yet received
> confirmation of it). I know I can go to my "local ISP" and they can
> host a Web site/provide email for us. Unless I simply don't
> understand however, that would not provide "free" e-mail access to
> the out-of-the-local-area employees.
Your HP3000 can become a DNS server and directly host your domain name data
if you download and install the freeware BIND/iX DNS server from:
http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/bindix.html
Your HP3000 can also act as a web server if you download and install the
freeware Apache/iX web server from:
http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/apacheix.html
There are a number of commercial e-mail solutions for the HP3000. NetMail/3000
from www.3k.com comes to mind. There is a freeware version of NetMail that
supports 2 mailboxes.
I'm not aware of any unrestricted free e-mail solutions for the HP3000. I do
know that some people have attempted a port of the popular sendmail package,
but I don't think it has been completed yet.
Numerous e-mail solutions are available that run on Windows NT.
> I assume that one of you has/had a similar situation. How did you
> address the problem?
One way to do free employee net access would be to add a dial-up PPP router to
your LAN. Your local users would dial into that, and gain access to the
Internet via your Internet gateway router. Your long distance users
could open individual accounts with an ISP in their area.
You could host everybody's mailbox on your 3000 or on one of the PCs (NT?) on
your LAN. Local users would use SMTP/POP/IMAP via the dial-up PPP router,
and long distance users would use SMTP/POP/IMAP via your Internet gateway router
and their local ISPs.
Most e-mail systems permit the use of aliases for redirecting received e-mail.
This let you set up an e-mail server for mycompany.com that hosts only some of
the mailboxes locally, plus aliases that point to other external mailboxes.
For example, [log in to unmask] might be a local mailbox, but
[log in to unmask] might actually be an alias pointing to
[log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
--
Mark Bixby E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist. Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services 1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support Voice: +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)
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