If you have a static IP address, select the 'Change
IP' option, and create a host with your static IP address e.g. mail.yourdomain.com.
Now use the 'Change MX' option to make that host your mail server.
3. The email server.
At the time of writing this, a small barebone server called the
400SC could be purchased from Dell for as little as $299. This will
work fine for our project, but if you need redundant drives in your
server, you should remember to order those as well. For an operating
system, Windows XP Home or XP Professional or Windows 2000 Professional
will do nicely. Set up the server like a conventional desktop, make
sure that you run all Microsoft's Critical Updates. We will make
the assumption that you are using a small consumer class 'firewall'
since not using one would be a significant risk. Set your PC to
a specific address on your network, and make sure that you can still
browse the internet. Finally, log into your firewall and configure
it to direct port 25 traffic also known as SMTP to the IP address
that you set your server to.
4. Email server software.
David Harris of Pegasus Mail provides a free email server package
for Windows called Mercury/32. This is a very reliable, infinitely
configurable package that is truly a joy to work with. Download
and install Mercury Mail taking care to answer all the questions
in the initial setup correctly. You can now add as many users as
you like. Since Mercury Mail does not run as a system service, you
need to make sure that your server automatically logs in, and runs
the mercury mail program. You can use
TWEAKUI
from Microsoft to enable auto-logins.
That's it ! Now just configure your email program on your desktop
PC(s) to point to the new server and you should be in business !
