[Iinet-newsletter] October 2003 Newsletter from iinet.com

Wed Oct 8 09:15:58 PDT 2003

Thank you for reading the October 2003 newsletter. An error occured sending the newsletter, and we are resending it. We apologize for any inconvenience, and hope you enjoy the newsletter.

Welcome to the October 2003 Newsletter for Infinity Internet.

We hope that you find our articles interesting and helpful.

Features
     Get Free High Speed Internet Service for Your Business!	
     Online Payment - Now Available!
     New Infinity Internet Forum!
     Spam Filtering - Custom Rules!
     We're Listening - See What's Changed Due To Your Feedback!         

In Every Issue
     Save More Dough
	-  Spread The Word With Our Referral Program
     What To Do Prior To Calling Client Services For Technical Support
     Tech Tip of the Month
	-  Search Engines
     Help Pages
	-  Let Us Know What You Think!
     Internet Smarts
	-  Shutdown
	-  Update Your Modem Driver

The Basics
     Dialup List
     Contact Us
     Cancel Subscription

Get Free High Speed Internet Service for Your Business

Sign up for any new Business DSL account at $99 per month or more during the month of October, and receive the setup and the first month's access charges free!  To take advantage of this offer, call your local Sales Department today.  For Washington and Oregon dial (800) 469-1424.  For California dial 800-706-3896.

Online Payment - Now Available!

We are happy to announce that our Online Payment tool is now available.

To use this new tool, go to https://console.iinet.com/ and log in to the UserConsole.

To log in to the UserConsole, use your e-mail address and password.  Once in the UserConsole system, choose "Make a Payment" from the left side menu.

Once logged in, you will be given a list of outstanding invoices.  Select the invoices you wish to pay by clicking on them.  Then, click on 'Continue'. This will

take you to a page that will ask you for your credit card information.  Also on this new page, is an option to use the credit card you are submitting as an autopay form of payment for all future invoices.  By default, this option is turned off.  You will need to select it.  The next page after entering your credit card information, will be a confirmation page.  It lists the invoices you selected and the amount you will be paying.  Once you click "Continue", your transaction is complete.

Thank you for your attention and business,

Infinity Internet Client Services
feedback at iinet.com

New Infinity Internet Forum!

We are happy to announce a brand new feature to our website. Our new Forums allow people to share ideas, opinions, and information with others in the Infinity Internet community.

To go to the new Forum, simply go to the web site www.iinet.com and click on the "Forums" graphic on the top navigation bar.  Or, go to:

http://www.iinet.com/forums

Log in using your full e-mail address and password.

Let the discussions begin!

Spam Filtering - Custom Rules!

We are pleased to announce that we have recently installed two new spam (junk mail) filters. The first filter is called Spam Assassin, which scans the e-mail just before it is sent to you. It maintains a scoring system for various content in the messages that it is scanning. If the software records too many points or hits the message will be discarded and not delivered to your mailbox.  

This is how Spam Assassin works: 

Go to https://console.iinet.com and after logging in click on Manage Email Filters. 

1- First you have to enable Spam Assassin  
2- then click on the link to set options ("Click Here to set SpamAssassin Options") 
3- Spam Assassin has different levels

low 
medium 
aggressive 
custom 

Note: the custom level is the only one you can change for specific types of filtering. But if you want to create filters it is best to use Spam Filtering.

For more information on Spam Assassin, please go to: http://www.spamassassin.org 

The second filter allows you to set up different criteria such as certain types of message attachments.  Viruses for example typically are specific file types, which the filter will detect and try to prevent from getting to your mailbox. We have installed several different filtering rules as examples for you to use.

This is how you set up custom rules for Spam Filtering: 

After logging into https://console.iinet.com, click on Manage Email Filters. The Email filter needs to be enabled. 

1. Click on "Click Here to Edit Filtering Rules". 
2. Click on "Add a Custom Rule".
3. Name: This is the name for the custom filter. 
4. Description: This is a short description, can be the same as your name for the filter. 
5. Condition field: this is the field that the filter will check.

Sender 
Subject 
Body 
Recipient 

6. Condition Value: This is any text that you want to find in the field just selected. 
7. Action: This is what you want done with the email that has the value selected. 
8. Forward to: This is an optional, but if you want to forward the Spam to some other email address you can. 

Both of these filters are off by default for all of our accounts. If you would like to enable mail filtering you can activate it at https://console.iinet.com

We're Listening!

We want to hear from you! This month we are including a survey with the newsletter. It's a short, 7 question survey about how we have done in providing email, DSL, dialup, and other services. The survey can be found at: http://64.255.200.7/survey/public/survey.php?name=How_Are_We_Doing and will run through the second week of November. Thank you for letting us know how we are doing.

Thank you all for filling out our survey in the August Newsletter. We wanted to let everyone know what things have been added or changed as a result of the feedback that you've given us.

·  User console: Using our console page at <https://console.iinet.com> you can:
	·  Change your dialup or email password.
	·  Add / Remove email forwarding.
	·  Add / Remove vacation auto responders.
	·  Delete all the email in your mailbox.
	·  Manage your own personal Spam filtering, or disable filtering entirely.
	·  View your dialup or DSL usage.
        ·  Personal Homepage Options.
        ·  More Coming All the Time!
·  Hold times: We put the ability to view our current hold time up on our web page. You can view it at <http://www.iinet.com>. We have also increased our staffing to handle more calls coming into our support department.
·  Service changes: We have added a Bulletins page to our websites. If we are going to change, upgrade, or perform maintenance on any of our services, we will post it to:
<http://www.infinityinternet.com/bulletins/report.php>
·  Outage times: We do not schedule any maintenance during normal business hours. Maintenance will be scheduled at least 24 hours beforehand, and between the hours of 12:00 AM and 5:00 AM. 
·  Spam filtering: We filter all email for Spam. We use a tool called RBL+ to examine each message, and if it is from a known Spam provider, we discard the message. You can disable this filtering, or enable even more filtering with Spam Assassin at <https://console.iinet.com>.

Save More Dough 

Spread The Word With Our Referral Plan!

And reap the benefits with our Friends and Family referral plan! Most of us already tell others who our Internet provider is, so why not get some credit for it?  With our Friends and Family Referral Program you can get credit on your account for referring people that sign up for our services.  So tell the people you know and see the savings! 

Take at a look at http://www.iinet.com/services/referral for more details! 

For more information, please contact one of our Client Services Specialists at: 
	· 1-800-211-2772
	· billing at iinet.com 

What To Do Prior to Calling Client Services For Technical Support

In order for us to be able to better help you with our Technical Support, please be sure to do a couple of things that will help us get your issue resolved.  These are:

	1.  Please be in front of your computer with it turned on.  If you have more than one phone line in the house, please be sure you are calling in on the one NOT in use by your computer.
	2.  Also, if you have your account number with us handy, that would be very helpful.  This number is located in the upper right hand corner of your invoice.
	3.  If you are getting an error message, please have it either up on your screen or written down when you call so you can read it to the technician.  Many error messages are very similar and having the exact message is often times important.

These steps will help us trouble shoot any difficulties you're having to a large extent.

Tech Tip of the Month - Search Engines

Anyone who has used the World Wide Web for anything from in depth research to checking local movie listings has probably gotten an impression of just how large it is. Currently there are billions of websites available to view and browse. With topics ranging from the latest sports scores to the dietary needs of tree frogs the obvious questions is: How do I find what I'm looking for? Fortunately for us there are also a large number of sites that help us do just that. The two primary ways to navigate the Internet are by using a web search engine, or a web directory. 

Web search engines in their simplest form allow you to type in one or more words and then search for them in the list of web pages that the search engine has access to. Depending on what the specific search words you choose are and the list the search engine checks the web page against you may find exactly what you're looking for or something completely different. This is usually one of the fastest ways of looking for a website especially as you become more experienced with how to use the specific engine.

Some of the more popular search engines include the following:

http://www.google.com - Google searches a relatively huge number of websites and is pretty user friendly. Plus it has many built in features that can prove to be very useful.

http://www.altavista.com - Alta Vista is also a good search engine; it allows you access to an online translator called Babelfish. Babelfish allows you to translate sites that you come across into a language you can under stand effectively.

http://www.askjeeves.com - Ask Jeeves is another popular search engine. It is specifically setup to allow you to put in your information request as a question instead of a group of key words. 

Those are just a few of the available search engines. Feel free to do some of your own searching for others. A great number of them can be personalized to your own tastes or have other useful options.

The next way you can search for websites dealing with the topics your interested in is via the use of web directories. These are setup as a nested directory structure with the broader topics located towards the top. This allows you to usually find information on what you're looking for easily but sometimes takes longer then doing a straightforward search. Usually using a web directory works well for people who are fairly new to using search engines.

Here are a few of the more popular Web directories:

http://www.yahoo.com - Yahoo has been and active web directory for quite some time. It also has additional services like news, weather and email. 

http://www.google.com - Google also functions as a web directory and has an absolutely huge number of web pages available to search for. 

http://www.hotsheet.com - Hotsheet has a somewhat different format then Google or Yahoo, it has all of its listings on one page by category. It generally works best if you are looking for a fairly general website in a fairly general category.

Help Pages - Let Us Know What You Think!

The Help site can be viewed at: http://help.iinet.com. 

The help site is set up in a manner that is intended to provide you with quick access to any question you might have.  If you are unable to find the information you are searching for we would like to hear from you.  If you feel that you have information to contribute to the site, that is also something we would enjoy hearing about.  Questions, comments and suggestions are all welcome.  

We look forward to your feedback on the site.  To help us gather feedback, feel free to fill out a survey at the bottom of the first page of the site.  Alternatively, you can email your ideas to us at: support at iinet.com. 

Internet Smarts 

Shutdown

If you are having any difficulties getting a connection to us, we would suggest doing a full shutdown and restart of your system. This usually solves a lot of the issues that can give you connection difficulties. On Windows systems, this can be done by going to the start menu and selecting the shutdown option. Then, select shutdown from the list of available options and click the "OK" button. On a Macintosh, you will want to go to the special menu at the top of your screen and then select the shutdown option. This simple step can help your connection ability a lot more then you may think. 

Update Your Modem Driver

One other thing that we can suggest that can have large effect on your ability to successfully connect to us is your modem driver. We cannot recommend enough making sure you have the most up-to-date drivers for your modem. You can usually find what modem drivers are the latest for your system by going to one of the following sites that provide links to many different modem manufacturer's sites.

	http://www.drivershq.com/Main.asp 
	http://www.download.com 
	http://www.driverguide.com

Another place you check for information about your modem drivers is either the modem manufacturer or in some circumstances, your computer manufacturer. Even if your computer is brand new occasionally new drivers are available for the modem. It's usually a good idea to check just to be sure. 

If you have any questions regarding these suggestions, please feel free to give us a call at 1-800-689-4303. Our technical support team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Dialup List

All of our dialup numbers are listed at: http://www.iinet.com/dialup/

Contact Us

We are available to assist you with your needs at any time of the day or night. 

Voice: 

  ·  Sales - (800) 469-1424

  ·  Billing Support - (800) 211-2772

  ·  Technical Support  - (800) 689-4303

  ·  Business Support  - (800) 291-0682

Via e-mail: 

	For Technical Support: support at iinet.com 

	For Billing Support: billing at iinet.com

	To Signup for a new account: sales at iinet.com

Via Mail:

	Infinity Internet
	PO Box 872890
	Vancouver, WA
	98687-2890

Via Fax:

	Client Services:  360-816-9017
	Administrative:  360-254-3898

Cancel Subscription

While we hope you like hearing what we are doing we completely understand if you do not want to hear from us each month. You can change this yourself by going to the following URL.

https://console.pacifier.com/mailman/listinfo/iinet-newsletter

Possibly you want the newsletter to go to a different address? Please only subscribe yourself not your friends.

|=-------------------------------------------------------------------=|
Nathan Haas
Infinity Internet Quality Assurance
(800)689-4303
|=-------------------------------------------------------------------=|