General Settings Information 

Hint: It may make sense to print, and write your particular details in the provided spaces, and then to save that printout as a reference.
(Jump to [ Jump Links ] at the bottom)

Authentication: In setting up email retrieval and sending, as well as for dialup-access, your 'accountname' for authentication purposes is of the form: username@iwaynet.net This is true even if you are in a managed domain that receives email under different addresses as well. The full part starting with and to the right of the at symbol ... @iwaynet.net is needed for SMTP and POP authentication. For example, when we have a customer that has a domain administered as to email by us, and receives email as: wbrown@example.com, we 'map' their authentication login to something like: wbrown.example@iwaynet.net   This is not a contrived example ... during the first twenty years that Iwaynet has been in business, we have had five separate customers each named William Brown ;)

We require authentication for use of our services as part of our efforts to help control 'spam', and to protect customer privacy. You may test your credentials here.

Sending: If you have trouble sending (outgoing) email, check the SMTP server settings, and change the outgoing port from the old default port: 25 to the more 'spam resistant' port: 587  —  Port 587 is the so-called (authenticated) Message Submission Port, and is supported by all modern email clients. Sadly, this often needs to be changed from the older default of '25' in some mail client implementations. An error message about being 'unable' to reach a remote mail-server is a common symptom that this issue is in play.

Setting up Microsoft Outlook is often challenging for a several reasons:

1. They use a 'wizard' approach, and the wizard is rather addled. It will decide it wants to follow a bad approach, and then refuse to listen when told to 'forget' its bad result in favor of the correct one. Sometimes a shutdown and re-start of the Outlook email client is necesary to 'clear its cached' decisions.
2. They want to use their proprietary Secure Password Authentication authentication ("SPA") protocol rather than the ISP industry standard Internet Engineering Task Force ("IETF") approach of commonly developed, and portable 'RFC's ("Request For Comment"). Microsoft has NOT released the needed details to permit the IETF to implement SPA, we assume as a matter of seeking a commercial differentiation and vendor lock-in. DO NOT select: SPA. The diagnostic symptom of an authentication faulure, either due to SPA, or bad credentials is a: 551 5.7.1 Go Away! message.
3. For cosmetic reasons, Microsoft has 'moved around' the graphic menu system layout, that is: where to make setup edits, and sometimes 'hides' needed setting under sub-panels called:
   1. Advanced,
   2. 'More Settings', or such
   These are usually on the lower right side of the SMTP server setup menu, as a sub-menu. Also, they do not use the industry standard names for an option along side their 'friendly name' approach. Of course those 'friendly names' change over time without warning. As such it is usually something of a process of hunting through menus to do a setup.
4. They, and others as well, return seemingly meaningful messages, but do not return the raw RFC response values. This makes it harder to understand why a task is failing. We at 'Support' sometimes need to work around this problem by 'watching the logs' in real time on a given server when doing diagnostics, and a call to the office is needed for this.

Reading: The retrieval of email (incoming) may be done by either pop or imap. POP and IMAP are ports 110 and 143, respectively, and usually need not be changed.

Multiple clients: We recommend in the general case that email be deleted after retrieval. BUT only a single computer should be set to do deletions. Some email clients have a 'delete after 30 days' feature, and that is a good one to use. If you have both a mobile device and a desktop 'checking mail', only ONE should be doing automatic deletions after retrieval. Also with more than one device checking, one device can 'lock out' the other and an error message results. Checking on demand as needed, but automatically no more frequently than every 15 minutes, will avoid such lock-outs.

Mail Folder Size: If you feel a need to 'keep old email around for a while', please be aware that there are some size quota limits, which vary by account type and pricing. Most users never hit those quotas. The current size of email folders on the server may be viewed (select: Folder Sizes, over on the left): here If you are close to 250 Meg of email, you probably need to 'clean house'. Please call 'support' if you need more space. When a quota is hit, an error message about being unable to delete email is sometimes returned, and inbound email is declined with a temporary failure, and request that the remote sender try again later. When the quota pressure is relieved, email automatically flows in again. Perhaps obviously, we do not control remote senders' email servers, so one wants to address such messages promptly to avoid email loss as 'undeliverable'.

Individual Mail Piece Size, and Sending Limits: The ISP industry (including Google, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Apple -- the 'big guys') has pretty well settled on an upper limit per piece which a bit above 32 megabytes including all attachments and so forth. Similarly, most providers limit the number of outbound pieces send to around a thousand a day. We have automated monitoring which watch so-called 'traffic counts' and we have found that when that limit is exceeded, it is usually a sign that the authentication credentials on a given account have been compromised, and that a 'spammer' is using them to pump out spam through our systems. We lock the account and attempt to contact the customer in response.

If you (or more commonly, your company) feel a need for greater limits, we are happy to set up a dedicated email server for your use. Please call 'Support' for an analysis and quote. We set up and run custom email servers regularly for some firms that need custom spam filtering, or to send hundreds of thousands of email pieces a day to subscribers (interestingly, primarily state wide high school sports leagues, and other recreational sports related entities). As you might suspect, the 'big guys' with 'free' (really not free, of course -- advertising, and invasion of privacy supported) email account also restrict the number of pieces per day they are willing to RECEIVE from a given sender; we have made arrangements (particularly with AOL and Hotmail) to obtain greater limits for our clients.

Spam marking: We mark, but do NOT delete potential spam. Editting filtering levels, as well as 'whtelisting' and 'blacklisting'' are available 'self serve' in the webmail client (select: Filters link up at the top right) here. Please call 'support' if you have any questions, as this is an unfamiliar area to most people. Additionally we publish a quick tutorial or 'cheat sheet', as to reading mail headers to which we may ask you to refer.

Password Changes: For privacy and security reasons, we only support requests for password changes through a phone call to Tech Support. As mentioned above, we have had some problems with customers inadvertently 'falling prey' to so-called 'phishing' attacks, and inadvertently exposing their credentials to abusive third parties. We will NEVER send an email or webform requiring use of your account password other than the authentication to the webmail.

Viewing your account: For the view bill interface, we use a different (and stronger) approach to confirm your identity, not requiring knowledge of your authentication password. We do not, and have not retain credit card numbers, validation codes, or such. Our payment links are outsourced to entities dedicated to confirming to the tight Credit Card Payments Processing Industry privacy and anti-compromise standards. We offer a choice between two vendors ('PayPal' and 'Stripe'), and are set up to accept periodic recurring subscription payments through one ('Stripe').

E-Mail from us ... 'Phishing': We ONLY send out email TO customers in the following circumstances:

1. rendering a periodic bill, with a link to the SSL secured payment server: stronghold.iwaynet.net
2. when we are on the phone with you with a link to some resource (usually this page), and
3. in response to an email from you

Clip and Save: You may wish to print a copy of this web-page, and note your account name and password on the form for future reference.

Jump Links: [ Top ]  [ Authentication ]  [ Sending ]  [ Reading ]  [ Multiple clients ]  [ Mail Folder Size: ]  [ Limits ]  [ Spam marking ]  [ Password Changes ]  [ Viewing your account ]  [ Phishing ]  [ Clip and Save ]  [ Jump Links ]