Network Configuration

2.1 Introduction

"Rainmail Server" works with all kinds of clients (Windows NT, Windows 95/98, Linux, etc.). For these clients to make use of the facilities offered by "Rainmail Server", they have to be configured in the following way. The basic idea is to name the "Rainmail Server" machine as its gateway as well as the DNS Server. Since "Rainmail Server" acts as a central domain name server, it needs to have the database of all the machines in the LAN. For any client, it is necessary to do the following steps:

2.2 Configuring DNS

Click Start button on the taskbar in Windows'98 ; select Settings and then Control Panel. Double-click the Network icon to open it. In the Configuration tab scroll down the network components to the installed TCP/IP->Ethernet interface components. The Network adapter used (in this case,) is a "Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC Card". You might see different value depending on your Network card type. Make sure that the Primary Network Logon is Client for Microsoft Networks and File and Print sharing is enabled and double click.

TCP/IP Properties window opens. Tabs for specifying various settings for TCP/IP will be displayed. Select "Specify an IP address" if not already selected and enter the IP address of the machine (obtained from "Rainmail Server") in the "IP Address" field.

Select DNS Configuration tab. Rainmail Server acts as the DNS Server for all the machines in your LAN. Therefore you need to specify the IP address of Rainmail Server in the DNS section. To do this click on the "DNS Configuration" tab. Choose "Enable DNS" option. In the "Host Name" field enter the name of the Windows computer name (in this case: Uma ). In the "Domain" field enter the name of our local network, "mydomain.com" (in this case: carizen.com). In the "DNS Server Search Order" section, enter the IP address of Rainmail Server and click on the "Add" button .

 

2.3 Configuring Gateway

Rainmail Server acts as your gateway to the Internet. Enter the IP address of the Rainmail Server, 192.168.1.4, in the "New gateway" field and click on the "Add" button. This will make Rainmail Server the gateway of your machine.

Click "OK" in the above dialog.

2.4 Configuring Workgroup Name

Click the Start button on the taskbar; select Settings and then Control Panel. Double-click the Network icon to open it. With the Identification tab selected, enter the "Computer Name" and "Workgroup" fields. These will be provided by your System Administrator. In this case the computername is "uma" and the workgroup is "tech"

Click OK. You will be asked to restart the machine. Configuration will be complete when the machine is restarted. Upon completion of configuration, select Run from the Windows Start menu. In the dialog that appears, type in "ping < IP address of Rainmail Server>" (in this case 192.168.1.4) . That will check if the basic network is set up right. If the network is configured properly, you will see output of the form "Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32". If the installation was not successful, you will see an output of the form "Request timed out.".

<Back> <Table Of Contents> <Next>