Communicating: Email and More

Methods of Communicating Electronically

Email and the Web have changed the way we communicate -- at work, at home, and even when we travel. MIT supports many different ways to communicate electronically. These include:

• Email
  
  
• Three email list services: Athena, LISTSERV (web-based email), and Mailman
  
  
• Instant messaging through MIT Jabber Instant Messaging Service for all platforms, or Zephyr for Athena and Linux.
  
  
• Electronic conferencing systems, including MIT Forums and Discuss on Athena.

Email Overview

The MIT email system has over 24,000 users and processes thousands of messages daily, including the exchange of files, meeting reminders, and requests for help or information. You can work with email from a variety of programs on your desktop machine or on the web via WebMail. As a new member of the MIT community, the options may initially seem overwhelming. However, the resources below will help you learn about email at MIT and how you can get started using it.

• Explore How Email Works at MIT to learn more about MIT's email system.
  
  
• Before you can use email at MIT, you need to Get an Account. Your Athena/Kerberos account gives you secure access to many services and features of MITnet in addition to email.
  
  
• Visit Choosing an Email Program at MIT to determine what email program is right for you.
  
  
• Once you choose a program (or programs), click on the name of the product:
  • In the Email Scenarios chart on the Choosing an Email Program at MIT
  or
  
  • In the Supported Software section of Email at MIT.
  From there, you will get an overview of the application, how to obtain it for your computer, and how to configure your email.
  
  
• Finally, Email at MIT is a useful clearinghouse of email information. From there, you can find and download supported software, check the latest announcements about email at MIT, learn more about Email services, and find out where to go for help for any email related issues.

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Email Services

IS&T provides a variety of services to help support the Institute's use of email. Behind the scenes, these services include account maintenance, management of outgoing and incoming mail servers, email quotas, email security and more. In addition to help desk support for email and WebMail, two popular end user services provided by IS&T are Spam Screening and the Auto-Responder (Out of Office/Vacation Email) services.

Spam Screening
Users of MIT email have the option of screening incoming messages for spam. MIT Spam Screening performs a series of tests on an incoming email message, scores it according to a set of criteria, and can optionally filter any message that qualifies as spam.

Auto-Responder (Out of Office/Vacation Email)
The Auto-Responder (Out of Office/Vacation Email) service allows you to set an automatic reply to messages sent to your email address. This feature is useful for setting a response when you go away on vacation or if you know you are going to be away from email for a period of time. The auto-responder will reply to every message you receive where your email address is in the to: or cc: line.

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Electronic Mailing Lists

Electronic mailing lists are generally used to distribute messages to multiple recipients. IS&T provides three email list services: Athena lists, LISTSERV lists, and Mailman lists.

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Instant Messaging

As an alternative to teleconferencing and email, instant messaging has been growing in popularity.

IS&T supports Jabber, an instant messaging system that allows MIT users to communicate with one another and Jabber users elsewhere on the Internet. Jabber also supports creation and joining of chat rooms for group communication. Many Jabber clients include support for other instant messaging systems such as AIM (AOL) and YIM (Yahoo). Jabber clients are available for Athena, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows.

Zephyr is an MIT-developed, real-time messaging and notification system for Athena and Linux.

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Electronic and Web-Based Conferencing

MIT's electronic and web-based conferencing systems let you participate in online discussions, whether they are about academic courses, computing issues, or any topic of interest to faculty, students, researchers, and administrators. IS&T offers two conferencing options: the web-based MIT Forums and Discuss, an electronic conferencing service similar to bulletin board programs.

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