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Higher Performance Email Service

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Email

Email

During the last academic year, NACS made a number of enhancements to the central campus email service.

The most important changes were implemented to improve performance and responsiveness of the email system, including the Webmail interface.

One of those changes was the format in which email was stored (the “mix mailbox format” from the University of Washington) which allows much faster response with large inboxes.  The email servers are connected to disk storage in a new way, improving access speeds.  We’ve also installed new versions of the email server software (the program that supports POP and IMAP), which includes features that improve server performance.

Other enhancements include:

Disk quotas have been expanded to 1Gb for faculty and 500Mb for staff, and larger quotas are on the horizon.

The maximum size of an email message has been expanded from 20 million to 30 million bytes.  Practically, this means you can send larger attachments in a message.  However, large attachments affect email server performance, and may not be acceptable at the destination server.  Therefore, it is prudent to be aware of your attachment size, and you should consider alternatives for file sharing such as sending a link to your document.

In addition to these visible changes, NACS maintains email performance in other ways, such as applying security patches, and refining the rules that identify spam.

Three Common Questions

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I have forgotten my UCInetID password. What can I do now?

  1. Access the UCInetID Web form at: http://activate.uci.edu/ .
  2. Click on “I forgot my password.”
  3. You will be asked to prove your identity with your UCInetID, your date of birth, and the last four digits of your social security number.
  4. Once you have correctly entered that information, you will be asked the password reset question you supplied when you activated your UCInetID.

If you do not have a password question on file, or if you are unable to answer the question, you will have to visit the NACS Response Center in E2130 Engineering Gateway with photo ID. We can reset your UCInetID, at which point you will be able to reactivate it, choosing a new password and establishing a password reset question.

How do I set up my laptop to connect to the wireless network at UCI?

In most cases, there are three basic steps.

  1. Determine the network address of your wireless network device.
  2. Register that address using your UCInetID and password.
  3. Configure your laptop to connect to UCI’s wireless network, UCInet Mobile Access.

Instructions for finding the network address of your wireless card are at: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/mobile/find_mac.html .

Registration of that address can be done at: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/mobile/registration/index.php .

Advice for configuring your system to connect to UCInet Mobile Access can be found at: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/mobile/configure.html .

Can I change my UCI email address?

Email addresses by default are based on your UCInetID and take the form “UCInetID@uci.edu”.

There are two basic ways you can alter the email address you use at UCI.

  1. The simplest way is to choose a “My.Name@uci.edu” address. This service allows faculty and staff to choose a more natural email address based on their name, while keeping their existing UCInetID. (This option is not presently available to students.)To make this request, visit the My.Name page at: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/email/my.name.php .
  2. If you need to, you can change your UCInetID. Please visit this web page for more information: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/ucinetid/change-policy.html .

Three Common Questions

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I have been assigned a phone number that was used by my predecessor, but I can’t get into Infomail (voice mail).  How do I get the password reset?

Please fill out a Service Request Form (SRF) http://www.nacs.uci.edu/service-request/ and specify in the comments section that you need an Infomail password reset. There is a $10 charge to reset the Infomail password. It is reset to the default password (the phone’s 5-digit extension).  This will normally happen the same business day.

What email programs can I use with my NACS email account and how do I configure them?

NACS offers a web-based email program at http://webmail.uci.edu and supports many common desktop email programs. A list of desktop email programs, including Thunderbird, Mac Mail, Outlook, and Eudora, with configuration instructions is available from http://www.nacs.uci.edu/email/settings.html.

What is a ‘Corporate Time’ or ‘Oracle Calendar’ account?  Why do I need one?  What is my password?  How much does it cost?

‘Corporate Time’ is the former name of the campus-wide calendaring service NACS supports.  Since being purchased by Oracle, it has been renamed ‘Oracle Calendar’.

Oracle Calendar allows its users to keep track of tasks, reminders, and meetings (like a planner/organizer), but adds the functionality of viewing and interacting with other users’ accounts, which allows joint planning and collaboration, even between members of different departments.

Many units on campus use Oracle Calendar as their scheduling tool. You can obtain your password by contacting the NACS response center at (949) 824-2222 (extension 42222 on campus).

The cost is $7.00 annually per account, payable by recharge.

For more information, please see our Oracle Calendar web page at http://www.nacs.uci.edu/calendar/

Email Authentication Extended

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Once a convenient alternative to leaving messages on an answering machine, email has become both an almost irreplaceable communication resource and an annoyingly exploited involuntary advertisement and network attack medium.

NACS has taken many measures to return email to a usable and trustworthy service, including aggressive spam filtering and restricting to UCI affiliates the ability to send using campus resources.

The latest step in the program was to require UCInetID authentication to use the campus email gateway “smtp.uci.edu” even when sending mail from on campus. This step was taken to prevent compromised systems from having free rein from inside the campus firewall to email spam and viruses.

This change does not affect people with departmental email servers which provide the SMTP service. It also does not affect users of the Webmail service.

By now most faculty and staff who need to have altered the configuration of their email program (for example, Eudora or Outlook) to “authenticate” (prove their identity with their UCInetID and password). Instructions for doing so can be found at http://www.nacs.uci.edu/email/authsmtp.html and the NACS response center (949-824-2222, nacs@uci.edu) remains available to help solve any residual problems.