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Installing TCP/IP

TCP/IP is the networking protocol used by the Internet and Internet based applications. It comes for free with Windows and it is fairly straight forward to install. POP3 based e-mail clients such as Outlook and Outlook Express use SMTP and POP3 to send and receive e-mail to and from the computer running WorkgroupMail. POP3 and SMTP are TCP/IP-based protocols and so, in order to work, TCP/IP must be installed. Most computers these days usually have TCP/IP installed. If it is not installed on your network, then follow this simple procedure for setting it up:

Open the Network dialog box by double clicking on the Network applet in Control Panel.

Click the Add… button. The Select Network Component Type dialog box is displayed.

Select Protocol and press the Add… button. The Select Network Protocol dialog box is displayed.

In the left-hand window, select Microsoft. In the right-hand window, select TCP/IP and press OK. When you do this, a TCP/IP entry will appear in the Network dialog box for each network adapter connected to the computer. In most cases, there will just be one entry, corresponding to the network card in the computer. If the computer has a modem, there will also be a TCP/IP entry binding to a dial-up adapter.

Select the TCP/IP entry that is bound to your internal network card and press the Properties… button. The TCP/IP Properties dialog box will appear.

In the IP Address page, you must specify an IP address and sub-net mask for the computer. Each computer in your network should have a different IP address to identify itself uniquely. Enter the address 192.168.0.1 for the first computer and then assign 192.168.0.2 to the second computer, 192.168.0.3 to the third computer and so on. All computers should have the same sub-net mask which should be set to 255.255.255.0 .

Press OK to save your changes. Windows may ask you to re-boot the computer. When you do this, TCP/IP will be installed on this computer. The same procedure should be performed on each computer in your network, remembering to assigned each computer a different IP address as explained above.