To Tourville Residents who use our tourvilles.com email server :       

The best  way to see if your email account is working :  go right to our tourvilles.com website.    Then click on the link that says "Resident E-mail"     Type in your user name and password.  Next click "Logon" .   You are now communicating directly with our email server.  You can read and send email right at the server.   If this works, then you know your email account is definitely alive and well.

This method will also tell you if there's bad news :  If while clicking these pages you observe that everything is loading very slow, then  you know that our email will be slow, too.  Even worse, if you can't get to the www.tourvilles.com web site at all, this means that our site and server are down at that moment.   If it is down, you won't be able to receive email until it comes back up.  Fortunately, this is rare.  Once in a while it goes down for a few minutes while their server reboots.  Once in a while it might slow down for a bit because its real "busy" at that moment.  And, yes, once in a great while it just crashes, plain and simple.  But they are pretty good about getting it back online quickly. 

If you use an email client program such as Outlook Express: 

After you've clicked TOOLS , ACCOUNTS and PROPERTIES, You need to use the following SERVER Settings :

1) Email RECEIVING  (called "POP3" server) :
This setting needs to be "tourvilles.com"   (Don't use pop.tourvilles.com).
 We have one and only one email server that receives your incoming emails.  It is in northern Virginia.  That's where the server physically sits.  That server is part of our website server www.tourvilles.com  They are actually on the same hardware box.   If that server is dead then we are dead.  Again, this is rare.  
Note - If you happen to use Norton Antivirus, you will notice that Norton changes this setting to be pop3.norton.antivirus.   Leave well enough alone.
2) Email SENDING :  (called "SMTP server")
This is the server you use to SEND emails on their way.  This server doesn't store your emails, it just grabs whatever email you're trying to send and shoots it out on the internet towards the place that you have your email addressed to.
We are unique in a good way.  We actually can choose from TWO different servers if we want to.  The vast majority of home internet users have one and only one choice for sending email.  But because of our direct internet connection through Charter's Network headquarters up by the old airport , we actually have TWO choices for SENDING :   

****** UPDATE - OCTOBER 2002 : Don't use A) , just use B) ******

 
A) The "usual" type of sender , which is : tourvilles.com    
(Don't use mail.tourvilles.com).
This uses that same email server in Virginia that I described above.  This works fine.  The hassle is that you need to do a couple of extra steps when you first do this setting.  Under that same SERVERS tab, you need to also check "my server requires authentication" , and then click "settings" and then type in your account name and password once again.  Then save these settings.  So, yes, you will have actually typed in your password two different times in setting this up.  Do NOT check any of the "Log on using Secure" stuff.   These extra steps are a pain, but most/all email servers are now requiring this extra authentication step in order to prevent from being abused by spam relaying.
 
or , for sending you can use :
 
B) Charter .   Due to our direct hookup through Charter , Charter's email server will SEND stuff out for us.  And that server is nearby, up by the old airport.  
Its name is mail.chartermi.net    This is the one I normally recommend.  And this one does not require any of that authentication stuff.
 
In theory , life is perfect and servers never get slow of have problems or lock up or get nailed with flooded virus traffic.  So for sending, in theory you can use either A or B.  It doesn't matter. 
 
In practice, things are not perfect.  During the latter part of January, Charter was having trouble with their email servers.  Around Feb 6th they seem to have gotten all that fixed. (They did a $50,000 mail server upgrade).  So I think Charter's end is good now for sending out your email if you want to use them. 
So my message for sending email is :
If A is sick, use B.   If B is sick, use A.   Or if changing your settings is too much hassle, sit tight and wait for the problem to clear.   Myself, when one server gets problems I switch to the other.    Again, this doesn't happen very often at all.  Charter's email servers (and tourvilles.com) have been solid for many months.  And again, the fact that we have two SENDING choices is a unique perk compared to everyone else.
 
As a reminder,  if your email client  program gives you grief , try going web-based :
go to www.tourvilles.com  and click on   "Resident email"   and type in your
username and password.  This web-based method is also a great way for you to  get to your email when you're not on your computer at home.  For example,  if  you're out of town, or at the Library, or at work, or at any computer anywhere in the world that has internet access, you can use our web site to get your email.