Matilda Internet FAQ - The five questions posted most recently:

How do I setup Outlook Express?

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:55:00 GMT

The following tutorial will guide you through setting up Microsoft's Outlook Express 6 for email.

Open your Outlook Express, click "Tools" and then "Accounts".

In the "Mail" folder you should see your Matilda email account. Remove any accounts you are not using, with the "Remove" button and if you do not have an Matilda account, click on "Add".

Type the name you wish to appear on the emails you send and click "Next".

Enter your Matilda email address in the form john.citizen@matilda.net.au and click "Next".

Set your incoming mail server to "POP3" and set the incoming and outgoing mail servers to mail.matilda.net.au. Click "Next".

Enter your username and password, then click "Next".

Click "Finish"

Your Outlook Express is now setup for Matilda.

Whats the difference between POP3 and IMAP ?

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:05:00 GMT

POP3 is a mail protocol whereas you authenticate to the mail server, once authenticated your email client e.g. Outlook Express will download all the messages from the server onto your laptop, store them locally then delete the messages from the server once they have download to your pc. This can be a timely process especially if you have large emails in your inbox, if you cancel or your connection drops out the process will have to start again from scratch.

POP3 is good when used on fast internet connections, smaller emails and when there is only one pc accessing the same email address.

IMAP is another mail protocol, once authenticated the mail client will download a list of mail headers from the server and store these only on your pc, not the email itself. At all times the email remains on the remote mail server, when you click on a particular email the full message is then downloaded. When you delete a message it then deletes the message from the server and puts it in a remote trash can. This can be useful when you have a slower internet connection and get a lot of large emails, you can delete messages before the need of downloading the whole thing to your pc, also more than one pc can share the same mailbox.

How do I log into my modem ?

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:58:00 GMT

Im not downloading at the speed im synced at, why ?

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:51:00 GMT

You will not always be able to download at the maximum of which the modem is connected. The speed of which you downloading files, music, videos and other internet content is determined by several factors.

1. Source bandwidth

If you are trying to download from say another internet user, their upload speed will be very limited compared to you download speed. Also a lot of webservers these days will restrict the speed that clients are able to download to save the server from being overloaded by high speed links.

2. Distance, congestion and latency.

The further a connection is away ( latency ) will reduce the maximum download speed regardless of the amount of upload that server has. If a server or host is heavily congested it will also reduce the download speed to the client.

3. Back channel

Most internet data is TCP, which basically means a small amount of data needs to be sent in order for data to be received. If you are already using your link to send a lot of data, good example of this is seeding p2p, it will limit these ack and req packets needed to download at high speeds.

Where possible try and find the closest link or mirror to your physical location e.g. a mirror based in the same state that you live in, this will give you the best chance to get the best speed possible.

When churning, cancelling, porting my dsl service, do i need to tell my old service provider?

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:39:00 GMT

No. DSL is setup between providers in a way that every time there is an action or change to the dsl codes on a line the losing provider is notified of the change/loss. This normally is enough so that the end user should not have to contact the losing provider to inform them of the change. To save yourself some possible billing issue it may be worth a 2 minute phone call to ring them and let them know that you wish to close the account.