How Does Sky Broadband work ?

[sarah_louise]

I recently connected up a neighbours computer to his newly installed Sky Broadband. (Yes.... Sky send the bits and pieces in the post later and leave you to DIY ).
I got it up and running despite the instructions but am curious to know how it works.
There is the ethernet cable from the PC to the Sky Modem box but also a telephone connection from the modem to a wall socket/filter.

I somehow thought being SKY it was using satellite dish technology but is it in fact just using the BT landline service ?

Can anyone clarify please ?

[Lakitu]

It's not through the Sky dish, it's through the landlines

[sarah_louise]

Wow....was that Answerbanks quickest answer ?

[sarah_louise]

In case anyone has the problem trying to get Outlook Express to pick up a [email protected] email address through POP3 it needs a lot of jiggery pokerey in the Accounts set up.
The error messages you get are in no way helpful to the problem.
You need to set advanced options and override the default SMTP to 465 and POP to 995 (SSL)
It only took me about 3 hours to find that on the Sky Help so I have to tell somone !

[Lakitu]

I can't help you there but Chuck will if he reads this thread, he's clued up on these things LOL

[4candles]

The Post Office supply broadband too, but it doesn't come via the letterbox [;>)

[Lakitu]

^ LOL

Awww, I can see where Sarah was coming from.

LOL!!

[ChuckFickens]

no help needed, she has it sorted it, well done Sarah :)

Though I'd be willing to bet that if you changed the SMTP port back to the standard 25 it would still work but yes 995 is correct for the POP3 port number when using SSL

If your interested what SSL means is you are sending/receiving your email encrypted, so it's nice and secure and nobody can snoop on your emails, well not for that leg of their journey anyhow.

[sarah_louise]

Thanks Everyone.

[gina32]

i had sky a few weeks ago and i just pit the instruction disk in and 10 mins later i was connected never known a braodband connection so easy

[Mac70]

I just started with Sky this morning. There is one problem. It has dropped a connection and I get the box associated with routers asking for admin username and password.
The Sky details dont work and the only answer I have found is to reset the router.
It has only done it once so hopefully all is well.

I also set up OE to get my email because using Sky's service is a lot of hassle.
I used Imap instead of POP3 though. I just wish OE would behave properly. Messenger still starts up even though I have unchecked that box and removed it through msconfig and Winpatrol!!!!

[sarah_louise]

The above two answers are like "sweet" and "sour" arent they ?
I too was getting incorrect responses to Account Name (all upper case)......password mixed case and numerics.....email address the same as account name but lower case of course. They were all copied in correctly every time giving problems then all of a sudden acceptable. Grrrrrrrrrr

Please tell me more about IMAP Mac70 ?

[Mac70]

Hmm. Imap is above my non-existant pay grade. I read about it in Sky's email page when I was looking for the server address's to configure OE.
It says Imap is better, and explains why, but I didnt really read past the word "better". That's just me, always willing to try something new.

[ChuckFickens]

Hi again sarah..

There are 2 main standards for dealing with your email, POP3 and IMAP

With POP3 the emails are sent to SKYs mail server and then your computer connects to that server and downloads the mails onto your computer and they are then deleted from the server and stored on your computer.

With IMAP the emails are sent to SKYs mail server and then your computer connects to that servers and you can view all your emails but they say on the server and are not stored locally on your computer anywhere.

The advantage of IMAP is that because the mails are stored on the server and not your computer then if for any reason your computer dies then you just set your account up on another computer, connect to the server again and as if by magic there are all your emails just as you last viewed them on the old computer. this also means that you can have your mail account setup on several different computers at the same time and it doesn't matter which one you use or when you use it they will always show the same emails on whichever computer yoou use.

if you set a POP3 account up on several different computers then you would get a couple of mails on one a few on another and so on.

Imap also means that because the mails are all stored on SKYs server you can log onto your mail account using there webmail from any computer (even one at an internet cafe or a public place) and view all your back catalog of emails, if you use POP3 then when you login from somewhere like a internet cafe then the only mails you would be able to see are the new one that have arrived since you last collected the mail.

See easy :)

[ChuckFickens]

oh and mac70 your login details for your router should be

username: admin
Password: sky

(the admin may have a capitol A... can't remember for sure)

[Mac70]

Aye, I found that. Also followed the advice to turn off uPnP as we were having more drops. Not sure if it actually helps yet.

[sarah_louise]

Thanks Again