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Step One: Pinging an IP Address
The first step to determining your ISP’s web and e-mail server address is to
ping its IP address.
1. Power on the computer and the cable or DSL modem, and restore the
network configuration set by your ISP if you have since changed it.
2. Click Start, then Run, and type command. This will bring up the DOS
window.
3. At the DOS command prompt, type ping mail (assuming that the loca-
tion for which you’re trying to find an IP address is configured as mail).
Press Enter. Information such as the following data, taken from a ping of
Microsoft Network’s e-mail server, will be displayed.
C:\>ping mail
Pinging mail [24.53.32.4] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 24.53.32.4: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 24.53.32.4: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 24.53.32.4: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 24.53.32.4: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Ping statistics for 24.53.32.4:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0%
loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
4. Write down the IP address returned by the ping command. (In the
example above: 24.53.32.4.) This IP address is the actual IP address of the
server mail, or any other word or value you have pinged.
Figure C-1
Appendix C:How to Ping Your
ISP’s E-mail & Web Addresses
Virtually all Internet addresses are configured with words or characters (e.g.,
www.linksys.com, www.yahoo.com, etc.) In actuality, however, these Internet
addresses are assigned to IP addresses, which are the true addresses on the
Internet. For example, www.linksys.com is actually 216.23.162.142. Type it into
your web browser and you will wind up at the Linksys home page every time.
There are servers that translate the URL to an IP address; this is called Domain
Name System (DNS).
IP and web addresses, however, can sometimes be long and hard to remember.
Because of this, certain ISPs will shorten their server addresses to single words
or codes on their users’ web browser or e-mail configurations. If your ISP’s e-
mail and web server addresses are configured with single words (www, e-mail,
home, pop3, etc.) rather than whole Internet addresses or IP addresses, your
Router may have problems sending or receiving mail and accessing the
Internet. This happens because your Router has not been configured by your
ISP to accept their abbreviated server addresses.
The solution is to determine the true web addresses behind your ISPs code
words. You can determine the IP and web addresses of your ISP’s servers by
“pinging” them.
Important: If you don’t have your ISP’s web and e-mail IP
addresses, you must either get them from your ISP or follow these
steps prior to connecting your Cable/DSL Router to your network.