Email

2.1 I just sent an email to a friend, and I got a message back saying it couldn't be delivered! What's up?

Well, this depends a lot on where you were sending the email.

If you sent an email to a friend who is not a Niagara Internet (System Resource) user, then it's not our mail server that said the user didn't exist. Your friend's ISP has its own mail server, and it is the final authority on users that exist there. Our mail server connects to other mail servers on the Internet, and it says it has email for a specific user there, and if the other mail server says there is no such user...then there is no such user.

This is how a bounce will look when you've sent email to a remote site and their mail server rejected it:

Task 'mail.sysr.com - Sending' reported error (0x800CCC6D) : 'Your outgoing (SMTP) e-mail server has reported an internal error. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).  The server responded: 552 MessageWall: BACKEND/REJECT: Server refused message'

In any case, look carefully at the bounce you received. Chances are, you'll notice that you misspelled your friend's email address, or misspelled the domain name.

It's important to note that our mail server does not return emails without a very good reason.
 

2.2 I'm telling you, it's not possible that this email bounced, because I am just replying to an email my friend sent me, and they can't send me an email without a valid address.

Just because you receive an email from someone doesn't mean their return address is valid or even works.

What this means is that you may, from time-to-time, receive email from persons who have mistyped or otherwise incorrectly specified their return address in their mail software settings. When you reply to their message, your mail will bounce.

What can you do? Well, if their error is obvious, just fix their email address in the To line of your mail composition, and make sure to let them know their error!

The other possibility is that your friend's ISP's mail server is misconfigured. If you contact your friend and tell them of the bounce and they assure you that address is correct, it could be that mail server has problems. In that case, you should be a good netizen and contact their postmaster or webmaster. It is required that all domains have a working postmaster address, and to reach them you simply email postmaster@theirdomain.com. For example, to reach System Resource's postmaster, send an email to support@niagarainternetco.m. When telling the postmaster of the trouble, make sure to forward the failure notice you received along with your note.
 

2.3 My friends tell me that they keep sending email to me and it's bouncing!

We've found that the vast majority of problems like this are because users send out email with invalid return addresses (the From line in an email, usually). When your friend replies to you, their email software will use the return address listed in your email to them. Well, if your return address is wrong and your friend doesn't notice it, it will certainly bounce.

Netscape users:

Most problems with return addresses come from people using Netscape to send and receive email.

It's very important that you make sure you have specified a correct return address in Netscape's mail options. Specifically, problems with Netscape mail tend to be caused by users using an address like this in the section labeled Email address in Netscape's mail options:

Your name yourusername@sysr.com

A correct options setup would be:

Name field: Joe User
Email address field: joeuser@niagarainternet.com
Reply-to address field: joeuser@niagarainternet.com
Older users would recognize : joeuser@sysr.com

2.4 I am getting email but there is nothing in the message!

Netscape users often have trouble because the mail window in Netscape uses panes. Sometimes the horizontal pane has been dragged all the way to the bottom and all that you can see is your inbox. To fix this, drag the pane up the window until you can actually see the text of the email you are viewing.
 

2.5 I'm having big trouble retrieving my email. I keep getting the same messages over and over, or the transfer of my first message is timing out.

Very often this is due to you having been sent a very large email (1megabyte or larger). Dialup users can sometimes have trouble when trying to download large emails. Please also make sure that your e-mail program is set to delete messages off the server after retrieval.
 

2.6 When my mail software connects to System Resource, I get the message Authentication failed.

Many new users make the mistake of specifying that their POP3 username is username@sysr.com. That's incorrect! Our POP server will reject your connection because of an invalid username.

Of course, if you are sending the wrong password, that will also cause you trouble. Remember to check your caps lock key.

Your username is the portion before the @ in your full email address.
 

2.7 I should be able to get huge emails, all of my friends do. I think your mail server is broken.

There are a number of issues that make the sending of extremely large files via email a bad idea. There are much better ways to get large files. For example, most large files can be had if the sender decides to not attach it, but rather send an email with a URL so that you can go on the web and download the file yourself if you wish. There is also FTP. Both of these protocols were designed for the transfer of large files...email was designed for the transfer of small to moderately-sized messages.

The POP3 server has a specified timeout on the transfer of mail to you. If we set the timeout to be too long, the mail server could get bogged down or behave poorly due to lack of resources. Most Internet providers also have decided to not have drastically large timeouts for POP3 transfers.

Most often, however, the issue with downloading large mails lies with the particular mail software that is being used on someone's computer, since the timeout kicks in only if the connection is idle (there is no traffic being passed between the mail server and your computer).
 

2.8 I sent an email and a few hours later received something from MAILER-DAEMON. It says my email has been undeliverable for 4 hours. Is your mail server working?

Yes, our mail server is doing exactly what it's supposed to!

It happens quite often that email you send may not be delivered right away. This can be due to a number of reasons, such as:

The remote mail server is down.

This is the mail server that handles the email for the recipient's domain. Computers are machines, remember, and they can fail.

The remote mail server is refusing connections.

This is likely because the remote machine is overloaded with connections, as often happens when sending email to large companies such as AOL.

The remote mail server is unreachable.

This can happen when there are problems with a router between us and the remote mail server.

You are using an invalid return address.

Many mail servers on the Internet are now checking that the return address of incoming email points to a valid domain name. If you have an error in your mail setup, such as misspelling niagarainternet.com (sysr.com) or adding a space AFTER sysr.com, your email will not be delivered. Instead, the remote mail server will continue to reject it with a soft error, meaning that it isn't rejected outright, just deferred.

So, if you are actually being told by our mail server that your email has been delayed, you may assume that things are perfectly well on our end! Our mail server will keep trying to deliver your email on a regular basis for seven days. If, at the end of that time, it is still not deliverable, you will be sent a failure notice and your email will be removed from the queue.

If you want to know specifically why your message is being deferred, forward the deferral notice to support@niagarainternet.com and we'll check it out.

Replying to Spam (bulk email). You will almost never be able to reply to a spam and have your message delivered successfully. Most spams are sent with invalid return addresses, so replying with REMOVE is probably useless. You'll likely get a bounce or a delay notification.


You mention that using an invalid return address can cause my email to not be delivered. How can I make sure it's set correctly?

You can send yourself a test email. After you have downloaded the email you sent to yourself, look closely at the return address. Pay particular attention to any spaces that shouldn't be there. If it looks like
'  you@sysr.com", then you'll need to fix it.
 

2.9 Who is this MAILER-DAEMON guy?

MAILER-DAEMON is not actually a real person. It's the address that the mail server uses when it needs to send email for whatever reason.

If you receive an email from MAILER-DAEMON, it will always be some sort of notification regarding email that you have sent. Sometimes, it will be the MAILER-DAEMON here at System Resource, and other times it will be from a remote mail server, probably someplace you have recently sent email.

To define the word, a daemon is a program that runs all the time. Naturally, our mail server is running 24 hours a day, so therefore is considered a daemon.
 

2.10 Do you sell your client list?

No. Niagara Internet never sells nor distributes our clients' names or email addresses.
 

2.11 I use Netscape mail, and it prompts me for my password all the time. It's a pain.

Yes, Netscape will prompt for your password the first time you check your mail in a particular session.

You can work around this by clicking on Edit then choosing Preferences. Double-click on Mail & Groups then click on Mail Server on the left-hand side. You'll see a button that says More Options. In there, click on Remember my mail password.
 

2.12 Why can't I send e-mail through Niagara Internet when logging through another domain?

In an effort to maintain a high level of security and prevent outsiders from accessing and using our servers, we have set our servers to refuse log-in from outside our domain. It's an easy fix for Outlook Express and Netscape users.

In Outlook Express:
Click Tools-Accounts. Select Properties, then Servers Tab. Under Outgoing Mail Server, please check My server requires authentication.

In Netscape:
Click Edit-Preferences. Click the + sign next to Mail Servers. Under the section Outgoing Mail Server, type in your username in the box labeled Outgoing mail server user name:.

Done!
 

2.13 Every time I check my mail using Outlook Express I get disconnected from the Internet. I have no problems staying connected any other time. What is going on?

Outlook Express has an option that, when checked, will disconnect your computer from the Internet after sending and receiving. If you do not wish to disconnect from the Internet after “sending and receiving” then use the following instructions to change that setting on your system.

Open Outlook Express.

Click on Tools located on the top left of the Outlook Express window.

Choose Options from the menu that appears.

Click on the Connections tab.

Uncheck the second check box labeled “Disconnect from the Internet after sending and receiving."

Press Apply and then OK.