This article contains somewhat technical information that you can use to configure your email software for both fixed and mobile access to your BNT Solutions mail service.

Thank you for choosing BNT Solutions, Inc. for your internet services and Welcome to BNT Solutions E-Mail service.

Your User ID and Password

You will receive a separate email containing your email address, User ID and Password Information. Please keep this information handy as you will need it, along with the information below, to access your email.

Fixed or Mobile?

There are various ways to send and receive emails. In general, though, the manner in which you configure your mail depends largely on where you might be when using the service:

• Fixed computers - such as desktops at home or at the office - can use any available mail configuration. For simplicity sake it is generally most convenient to use:
  • POP3 to get your email from the BNT mail server
  • Open SMTP through your Internet Service Provider to send email through your ISP.

  Note that Open SMTP relays can only be safely provided by your local ISP. The name of your local SMTP mail relay was provided to you by your ISP (ie: relais.videotron.ca for Videotron customers and smtp10.sympatico.ca for some Sympatico customers in Montreal.) To find the name of your ISP's Open SMTP server you should check their self-service web pages or contact their technical support staff.
  

• Mobile computers - such as notebooks that you take with you to hotels when you travel - should be configured to bypass the security and firewall restrictions imposed by ISP's, hotels and businesses.
  • POP3s to get your email from the BNT mail server
  • SMTPs to send email through the BNT mail server

  Email service for mobile computer users is often called Road Warrior access. Road Warrior access uses a Secure Socket Layer transport (SSL) to encrypt your email. In practice this does not provide any additional security for your communications as email is transmitted in Clear Text form (unsecured,) between mail servers. However, the SSL communications are rarely blocked by your ISP, airports, hotels and most businesses. This allows you to simply use your notebook computer wherever you happen to be.

Configuration Details

Below is the configuration information for both fixed and mobile connections. Note that you must provide your User ID and Password for POP3, POP3s (SSL) and SMTPs (SSL) connections. Email software that supports SSL connections will often give you the option of using the POP3 UserID and password rather than having to type it a second time for the SMTPs protocol.

• Fixed

  Service	Function	Host	Port	Encryption
  POP3	Receive Email	mail2.bnt.ca	110	none
  Open SMTP	Send Email	(ask your ISP)	25	none

  
  
• Mobile

  Service	Function	Host	Port	Encryption
  POP3s	Receive Email	mail2.bnt.ca	995	SSL
  SMTPs	Send Email	mail2.bnt.ca	465	SSL

Notes

• Many hotels and business will block SMTP traffic on their networks. This is because SMTP is a highly insecure protocol and can be used to send spam without identifying the spammer. Most ISP's will block SMTP traffic to all SMTP servers (except their own) on their residential networks.
• Many businesses will block POP3 traffic on their networks for all POP3 service other than their own. This is because they don't want their employees downloading personal email at the office.
• The protocols shown above are Secure POP3 (POP3s) and Secure SMTP (SMTPs.) They do not offer any additional security for your mail because the mail will still travel between servers in unencrypted form. However, the secured mail protocols are rarely blocked by hotel firewalls. This Road Warrior service is designed to allow you to use the BNT Mail services from your notebook computer while you travel.
• If you are behind a corporate firewall and can't access your BNT Mail service, you can always try the webmail service through a web browser.
• Your local ISP will provide you with an SMTP server that you can use to send email using the non-secure SMTP protocol. You can use this server if your email software does not support authenticated SMTP.
• You must use authentication to send email through the BNT Mail server. This option is called SMTP Requires Authentication - Use Same Info as POP3. in Microsoft Outlook.