This section of the system dialog tab specifies the basic information about your computer and its TCP/IP connections to the world. Because setup guides you through your basic configuration, you should only need to change this information if your configuration changes, for example, if you switch ISPs.
The node name needs to be fully qualified. That is, it should include your primary domain. If your system is named ntserver, and your domain is large.university.edu, the node name that should be in this field is ntserver.large.university.edu.
During installation, the setup utility queries your TCP/IP stack for the IP address of your system and fills in this field. By default this will be the primary IP address set for your machine in Windows NT's Network Properties.
If your machine has multiple IP addresses, SLmail has the ability to bind to any of those IP addresses or all of the IP addresses. To allow SLmail to bind to all IP addresses, you will want to enter 0 in for the IP address range. Otherwise, you will want to enter the specific IP address.
Note: SLmail cannot bind to more than one IP address without binding to all IP addresses.
Internet mail servers may make use of another mail host to deliver mail they cannot deliver themselves.
This other host is called the "Smarthost." When you submit mail to SLmail, it will try to find the addressee of the mail, using its own MX records and the name server. If it cannot find the addressee of the mail, SLmail can then forward the mail to the specified Smarthost.
For large networks, your Smarthost may be a more central computer that knows more about your network than the SLmail host may. While the importance of a Smarthost has dwindled with the advent of direct connections and MX records, the concept of having an authoritative source to send mail messages of seemingly unknown destination to is still valid and useful. For reasons of economy, efficiency, or implementation there is often a single Smarthost or a single group of Smarthosts that service a given domain. While this may induce some congestion at the selected mail node, the centralized processing of the mail messages may offset this mail congestion.
For most sites, however, the Smarthost is your ISP's mail server. Your ISP can tell you what address to enter in this field. It should be a fully qualified domain name such as isp.com or mailhost.isp.com.
A Domain Name Server (DNS) is a host capable of resolving computer names in the form domain.com (the computer name from the address support@domain.com) into IP addresses in the form 192.168.20.85. Large sites may have their own DNS server, which may either be running on the same host as SLmail or on another system. It is more common, however, for DNS to be provided by your ISP. Your ISP can tell you what address to enter in this field. It should be a fully qualified domain name, in the same form as the Smarthost, for example, isp.net or ns.isp.net, or it may be entered as an IP address.
Note: You may specify 2 DNS servers by separating them with a semi-colon (;) For example:
Note: If you are using a Dialup Network Connection, the Name Server must be entered as an IP address. If you have a Dedicated Network Connection, the Name Server can be entered either as a name or as an IP address.
In addition to using the external DNS, SLmail will also cache information locally wherever possible to improve performance.