No external mail relaying

In an effort to minimize spam for our users and around the rest of the Internet, the department mail-handling machines will reject any mail that is sent through them that is not either addressed to a local user or coming from a local user. The implication for you, as a local user, is that if you dial in to a commercial ISP and check your mail from home, you must either use your ISP's mail service or an authenticated SMTP server to send mail out.

If you frequently travel or otherwise need to send mail through the department while off-site, there are a couple options.

The first and simplest option is the department authenticated SMTP mail server. You can set up your mail reader to verify your identity to one of the department's mail servers, which will then allow you to send mail out. To use this service, see the FAQ page, http://www.cs.umd.edu/faq/mailclient/. Once set up, this can be used from anywhere.

The second is the department VPN. Once authenticated to the VPN, you will have a network address inside the department, and should be able to send mail without hitting the anti-spam provisions. See the chapter on Network Services for more details, or the online FAQ at http://www.cs.umd.edu/faq/vpn for setup instructions.