The most popular service provided by the Armenian Freenet is free email accounts. Unlike other freenets our service

• delivers email messages "as is", i.e. without any advertising attachments;
• makes it possible for the user to manage the mailbox in at least three ways: web-based email interface, POP3 and telnet;
• for local users provides free access (1) to our servers through dial-up lines, as well as (2) to the computers in our two Public Access Sites.

59-20-00

This number automatically selects one of the 90 available lines.

After establishing a connection via modem, your computer receives an IP address and thus gets an access to ArmFN mail server, as well as to the WWW and FTP servers that are accessible for ArmFN users.

See also:

• How to register an ArmFN account?
• F.A.Q. Part II. Dial-up Service

The fields of the registration form marked with an asterisk(*) are required fields and should be completed. The other fields may be left empty, but it is our request that you fill in all the fields even if they are not required.

The fields "Full Name", "Organisation" and "Title" are important for our ArmFN users database. Please also remember that the field "Full Name" is used by email subsystem: your full name and email address are automatically included in all messages you send.

The field "Suggested Account Name" should indicate an Internet "nickname" that you want to have in the ArmFN. The nickname can contain only Latin characters and figures (no spaces or other symbols or characters), up to 8 characters. The nickname can be your name, surname, initials, or just any name, provided it does not coincide with another name that already exists in the ArmFN. Should there be such a coincidence, you will receive a message informing you about it after you press the "Send" button in the registration form, and you will have to go back to the registration form and change the name.

For example, a user Armen Armenyan can select one of the following nicknames: armen, armenian, aa, arar, aarmen, armena, etc..

The address that you indicate in the field "Your email address" will be used by us as a contact address to send you a message informing that your account is activated, and in the opposite case – why your registration has been refused. In case you do not yet have an email address, please provide one of somebody who will inform you on messages received from ArmFN administration.

Usually, the Internet email address consists of your nickname before the @ symbol and the server name that hosts your account (after the @ symbol). Sometimes, for convenience purposes the so-called mail domains are established - e.g. although the ArmFN mail server name is mail.freenet.am, the mail sent to freenet.am domain will still be sent to this server.

In cases you are sending mail to another ArmFN user, you can skip putting the @ symbol and the domain name. Please also note that the system is case-insensitive, i.e. that upper and lower case characters are taken by the system as identical:

armen@freenet.am
Armen@Freenet.AM
ARMEN@FREENET.AM

is the same address. However, it should be noted that in the process of identification, i.e. when you enter your name and password, the server becomes case-sensitive and differentiates between upper and lower case characters. For example, when a user Armen enters MyPassword, he should always enter his name as "armen" and password as "MyPassword".

What software is required?

The simplest and the most convenient way of working with ArmFN email box is ArmFN Web Mailer.

ArmFN mail server supports both POP3 and IMAP protocols. The software using these protocols are called mail client applications or mail agents. They usually have a very convenient user interface and provide full range of opportunities for sending and receiving both simple text messages, and files of any format including MSWord, graphical and sound files, as well as encrypted messages.

All mail agents operate in a more or less similar manner: during connection to the mail server, you are requested to enter your name and password, then your mail agent transfers incoming messages to your local disk, and then moves outgoing messages from the local disk to the server for subsequent forwarding to recipients. The incoming correspondence always remains on the server until your mail agent transfers it to your personal computer.

• Your full name: input your full name, e.g. Armen Armenian
• Your email address: input yur mail address, e.g. armen@freenet.am
• Protocol: POP3
• POP3 user name: input your nickname, e.g. armen
• Incoming mail server (POP3): mail.freenet.am
• Outgoing mail server (SMTP relay): mail.freenet.am

Some programs can remember your password and skip requesting it every time you log on the server. Remember that although convenient, this may be risky: everyone who has an access to your computer would also receive an access to your correspondence.

Option "Leave messages on server". Many mail agents have an option to leave all incoming messages on server even after they are delivered to your computer. This configuration option is called "Leave messages on server". Using this option may be feasible under some circumstances, but remember that with "Leave messages on server" option on, your mailbox would grow uncontrollably until your disk quota is exhausted, after which the mail will simply stop coming to your mailbox. Therefore, we request you to make sure that this option is off in your mail agent configuration.

For Netscape Communicator, please follow these steps: open Edit --> Preferences --> Advanced --> Proxies, then check "Manual Proxy Configuration", press "View", type "proxy.freenet.am" in HTTP edit box, and type 3128 in the next "Port" box; follow the same sequence in FTP boxes. Press OK, and then another OK in "Preferences" dialogue box.

For MS Internet Explorer, please do the following: open View --> Internet Options --> Connection, check "Access the Internet using a proxy server", then press "Advanced", and in HTTP edit box type "proxy.freenet.am", and in the next box "Port" type 3128; do the same in FTP boxes. Press OK, and then another OK in "Preferences" dialogue box.

Now your browser is connected. To make sure, please try, for example, www.president.am. The catalogues of websites in Armenia can be found at www.aua.am/sites/arm_site.ssi or www.arminco.com. A new catalogue will soon be available at home, in www.freenet.am.

Do not forget your new password!

The most vulnerable part of the security system is the user password. There are innumerable examples as to how accounts with easy-to-guess passwords are "broken" with quite grave consequences for the user (e.g. a fraud letter from his/her account), or, which is even worse, a hacker attack on other servers from the broken account. On top of a possibility that a hacker would figure out your password, there are programs that can "guess" the password by trying all the English words and the words that are immediately related to you, like name, surname, date of birth, etc.. All these key words can also be tried in combination with figures and special symbols. Here are some examples to illustrate which passwords are "easy" and which ones are more "secure". For a user Armen Armenian, bad passwords are:

armen
armen1 - or with any other combination digit
armen! - or with any other special symbol
1971
pass - or any other English word

etc. Here are some examples of good passwords:

Richard III
ar12me96n
tGiF! - an abbreviation for "thanks God it's Friday!"
TheBulbulator - a piece of nonsense

etc. (N.B. the above examples of good passwords automatically become bad passwords!)

In case your account security is really important for you or your organisation, it is worth taking the following measures as well: regularly, e.g. every month, change your password; try to enter the password only on your personal computer; do not enter your password in the presence of strangers. You can also consult your LAN manager on how secure your network routing is in terms of unauthorised network monitoring, etc. In order to ensure confidentiality of correspondence, you can use various encryption methods. Almost all mail agents have built-in modules for encrypting of messages based on some key sequences; however, this issue is not covered by this FAQ.

Usually, when you connect to a remote UNIX machine by TELNET, you receive an opportunity to work in the system shell. Since we do not provide a full range of Internet services, we have designed a considerably restricted shell specially tailored to the ArmFN with a selection of the most required commands that enable changing passwords, read mail in console mode, chat with other users on-line, do telnet to other machines, etc. The selection of the commands may change from time to time.

There are quite a few various client programs for telnet connection. A generic telnet program is available under Windows standard distribution. This program can hardly be found in the system Start Menu, but it is there and can be found under C:\Windows directory. Try to login and type "help". You will see a list of available commands with brief descriptions.

When working with telnet it is important to remember that some keys do not work on the server, in particular: function keys, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, etc., neither does the mouse; however, the control functions are executed by simple keys combined with Ctrl.

During connection to the server, the WS_FTP program requests server name (type users.freenet.am), your nickname and password. After successful connection, the left part of the window will show the contents of the current catalogue of your computer, and the right part - your home catalogue on the server. Now you can start file transfer from the server to the local disk and back. Do not forget about disk quotas on the server!

• Connect to the server using FTP protocol as described in What is FTP and how is it used?
• Create on server a sub-directory "public_html" and enter it.
• Transfer files related to your site to the "public_html" sub-directory on the server.

In case your site contains sub-catalogues, the WS_FTP program can transfer all the sub-directories sequentially.

Now your site is accessible all over the Internet. Your URL -

http://users.freenet.am/~username

where username is your nickname on the ArmFN server (e.g. http://users.freenet.am/~armen).

Remember that every sub-directory should contain a file named "index.html" - this is the page that appears when a user types URL without a filename. For example, if a user types "http://users.freenet.am/~armen", the server will return a file "http://users.freenet.am/~armen/index.html" (in reality, the server shows the file "index.html" that is in the "public_html" catalogue of the user armen).

This document does not cover web design issues. The only more thing that we want to remind you is that the user websites hosted on the ArmFN server should not contain commercial advertising or other things that are prohibited on the Internet in general.

How to forward mail to a different address?

The ArmFN, unlike many other free email services (e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) provides an opportunity for automatic mail forwarding. In order to designate the forwarding address (or turn off the forwarding), log in the ArmFN server using telnet and type "forward" command. This command is interactive, and with its help you can designate, change, or turn off mail forwarding to this or that address.

Example: a user armen has an address armen@freenet.am and also an address armen@undp.am, and he wants to receive all his correspondence to the last address. For this, he should log in mail.freenet.am server and activate forwarding to armen@undp.am – after which all the messages coming to armen@freenet.am will be automatically forwarded to armen@undp.am.

Of course, you should be very careful when entering the forwarding address – if you type in a wrong address, all your mails will be lost. To make sure that you have done everything correctly, send a test message to the forward address.

• Server disk space, including user website – here we have soft and hard quotas (see below). If you are using your account for mail only, this point does not refer to you. For those who are building websites, we have provisions for softening quotas in cases we find the websites interesting and useful. At present, the quota is 7 MB.
• Incoming mailbox size – in case this parameter is exceeded, all subsequent incoming correspondence will be sent back with an error message. Thus, the author of the correspondence will learn that you have not received it. At present, the mailbox size quota = 5 MB.
• Maximum size of one email message = 1 MB.

These parameters may change upwards and downwards from time to time, depending on how loaded are the ArmFN servers and the Internet channel.

Should the terms of the User Agreement be breached by any ArmFN user, the ArmFN administration reserves the right to temporarily lock or close such user accounts without, in certain cases, giving a prior notification to the user whose account is being blocked or closed.