HardWare & Software

An Introduction to the Windows 2003 POP3 Service

This document is intended to give the reader a brief introduction to the Windows 2003 POP3 service - just one of the many new features offered by the Windows 2003 Server family.

Introduction

What is POP3?

POP3 is a client-server protocol in which email is received and held by a mail server. Messages are downloaded to a local computer all at once, thereby making offline reading easier. You can specify whether to keep copies of the messages on the server. The default port number for POP3 is 110.

What is the POP3 Service?

The POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) service is an email service that retrieves email messages. Administrators can use the POP3 service to store and manage email accounts on the mail server. Although the Microsoft Exchange family provides more flexibility to a mail server, the user experience on an email client (such as Outlook Express) - when sending or receiving email - is the same. The end user will not notice the difference when downloading their personal email from the server.

Pros

Very good for small sized companies who wish to setup a basic mail system.
Support for multiple domains if using either Active Directory or encrypted password file authentication.
Cheaper than the alternative method of having to buy Exchange Server.

Cons

Windows Server POP3 email should be backed up when it is offline. Having to back up while offline could lead to a service interruption for users.
The Windows Server POP3 service does not support AVAPI

Installing the POP3 Service

Navigate to the Add/Remove programs icon in the control panel and double click it. This will open the window on which you must click the Add/Remove windows components button. Tick the E-Mail Services option and press details.

A window will open allowing you to select whether or not you want the POP3 Service Web Administration facility installed as well. (This is disabled by default). Web Administration allows you to administer the POP3 Service via the web browser, using HTTP.

Press OK and Next to start the installation. Once this is complete, close all open windows.

Setting up a mailbox in the Windows 2003 POP3 Service.

After you have installed the POP3 Service, you are ready to setup and configure mailboxes. Open the main window by pressing Start > Programs > Adminstrative Tools > POP3 Service.

Before proceeding with the setup, make sure you have configured the authentication from the properties box. You can tick the Secure Password Authentication (SPA) check box for increased security.

Once that is done, the first thing you have to do is create a domain. Do this by right clicking the server name in the main window, select new > domain. Type the name of your desired domain and click OK.

Further to this, you are now able to create a mailbox by right clicking the domain, pressing New > Mailbox (as shown below).

The following screen will appear. Type the mailbox name and the password in the appropriate boxes and press OK.

A confirmation box should pop up notifying you that the mailbox was successfully added. Select the "Do not show this message again" if you do not wish to have this box appear everytime you add a mailbox.

The new mailbox you created is shown in the main window. As you can see in the following window, the "State" of the mailbox is "Unlocked" and therefore available for use. If you right click the mailbox and select "Lock", you will disable it.

That's it - you're new mailbox has been setup successfully. If you have multiple POP3 servers you can connect to them remotely by right clicking the root node in the POP3 Service MMC window and selecting "Connect..." (as shown below).

Type the name of an available server or browse to one on your network.

Press OK to establish the connection.

This document is intended to give the reader a brief introduction to the Windows 2003 POP3 service - just one of the many new features offered by the Windows 2003 Server family. The Internet Information Services manager offers SMTP, FTP, WEB server administration - these three services can be set up and configured from here. It may be of interest to you to take a look at the SMTP service as it is related to mail servers.

How do I configure LDAP on Outlook on Exchange

In Outlook click Tools then Email Accounts..., then select Add a new directory or address book
Click Next, select Internet Directory Service (LDAP), and click Next.>

Enter in ldap.columbia.edu as the Server Name and then click More Settings....
Select the Search tab, and enter the Search base: o=Columbia University, c=us and click OK

Restart Outlook after adding the ldap address book

To access it, make a new email message, click on To:. Select ldap.columbia.edu from the Show Names from the: field.
Click Advanced --> Find....
Enter in the First Name and Last Name and click OK. Note: You can not use the Display Name field.

DHCP Server Installation

Once our server can resolve names and IP addresses and already works in Active Directory mode, only the DHCP server (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is missing. By default, every windows computer looks for such a server in order to pick up its IP address, the Internet gateway and various other network parameters.

After service is installed via [Control Panel] - [Software] - [Windows Components] - [Network Services], it must be managed using the management console. Here, we need an IP address range (see screenshot above).

In turn, address spaces can be excluded from the address range.

The IP lease is a time value that stands for the validity of an IP address. In networks with only a few changes, this lease can easily be a month long, while the use of shorter leases (a few days) makes more sense in frequently changing systems.

Specifying an Internet gateway is very important for the users. In small environments, this is usually the DSL router.

DHCP Server Installation, Continued

Specifying a domain name as well as the DNS server is also important. Here, many DNS servers can be specified, if they are available. For reasons of reliability, the IP address of the DSL router can be given here so that the user can still connect to the Internet if the server crashes or is restarted.

If you didn't install the WINS server, then leave the text boxes empty. Otherwise, the same thing applies as for the DNS settings.

After successfully setting up an address range (scope), the DNS server still has to be authorized in order to work in the Active Directory. A right-click and the right choice of the respective item is all you need. The procedure only takes half a minute.

Finished - DHCP works! However, make sure that only one DHCP server is providing its services in the network. DSL routers often provide similar functions, which of course have to be deactivated.

Configuring Outlook 2007 for LDAP

This document describes how to configure Outlook 2007 (for Windows) to access the campus LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server for directory service information.

To Setup LDAP in Outlook 2007:

Launch Outlook.
Click on the Tools menu and select Account Settings.
Select the Address Books tab and click the New... button.

Select the item titled Internet Directory Service (LDAP), and click Next to continue.
In the Server Name: field, type ldap.services.wisc.edu and click on the More Settings...button.
Clicking the More Settings... button might cause an Add E-mail Account warning to appear. Just click OK to continue.
On the "Microsoft LDAP Directory" screen, click on the Search tab at the top.
In the Search Base section, click Custom: and enter dc=wisc,dc=edu in the text field. Click the OK button.
Click Next > and then Finish, and then close the "Account Settings" window to complete the setup.
This service is now setup. Like the warning message said we need to restart Outlook before we can use this service, so close Outlook by choosing Exit from the File menu.

To use the LDAP Directory Service in Outlook 2007:

Launch Outlook. Click on the Tools menu, and select Address Book.
Select Options from the Tools menu.
For the option entitled "Show this address list first:", choose ldap.services.wisc.edu from the dropdown menu. Also, use the up and down arrows to position ldap.services.wisc.edu at the top of the list of address books. Click OK.
Now when you're composing a new message, you can click the button to open the Select Names Window.
Type your search terms in the text box and click the Go Button to perform an LDAP query. You can use the "Advanced Find" link if you wish to perform a more specific LDAP query.
Select the recipients from the results of your search and use the , , and to add them to the message. When you have finished adding recipients to the message, click OK to return to the message window.

DNS Server Installation

The DNS service (Domain Name Service) is the Achilles heel of an Active Directory structure. Since network communication is performed by only using names for reasons of understandability (e.g. www.tomshardware.com), there must be a quasi-permanent conversion between the names and the IP addresses that are behind them - and vice versa. A forward lookup searches for an IP address based on a name, while the reverse lookup searches for a computer name based on an address.

The installation of the DNS service is over in a jiffy (screenshot above), only it usually doesn't work as desired right from the start.

Function of a Reverse Lookup. Source: Microsoft.

It is very important to install a Reverse Lookup Zone. It is only with this that the DNS server also able to establish names based on IP addresses.

DNS Server Installation, Continued

For our purposes, we need a primary zone, because we want to serve our complete local network with the DNS server. Selecting the option for Active Directory integration at the bottom of the dialog box is important.

Of course, we enter the address space of our local network as a network ID. In this case it is 192.168.1.x. We left the subnet mask at 255.255.255.0, as it was before in the properties of the network connection so that we can include 254 computers in the network. This is enough for small and medium-sized companies. Changing it to 255.255.0.0 would expand the segment to 64,516 possible computers, or more specifically, 64,516 IP addresses (254 times 254).

We only want safe dynamic updates. Manual updates take a lot of effort and therefore this option is skipped for most applications.

After confirmation, the Reverse Lookup Zone is installed.

DNS Server Installation, Continued

The last thing we still need is a pointer, which points to our subnet 192.168.1.0.

Here, the fully qualified domain name of the server must be given, which is testserver.testdomain.com in this case.

The best way to check if the DNS configuration was successful is via an nslookup, a ping. So that addresses and names outside the local network can also be addressed, we must still inform the DNS server about which server is higher-ranking than it is for external requests.

For the sake of simplicity, we enter the IP address of our DSL router as the DNS forwarder. It will automatically forward requests to the DNS server provided by the Internet provider. You could also enter this directly here.