Email SMTP Change Required

The Vanderbilt IT group is changing the way it provides SMTP service for those individuals who use an IMAP or POP3 email client (e.g. Thunderbird). "SMTP" means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and it refers to the part of our email system that actually sends or transmits your email messages. This will require that a change be made to our Thunderbird configuration settings. We are providing these instructions for anyone who wants to make the change themselves.

• This is the email that was sent to network managers describing the change that needs to be made. Note the dates.

• This is a typical Thunderbird SMTP configuration in our environment. These settings are accessed by clicking on the Edit item in the menu bar and selecting the "Account Settings..." item. Then click on the "Outgoing Server (SMTP) item and the Edit button. In most cases, the SMTP Server Name will be "email.mc.vanderbilt.edu" and the port is 25. In some cases the server name will be "x.smtp.vanderbilt.edu" where x is the first letter of your vunetid. The connection security is set to none.

• Change the configuration like in the screen shot below. The server name becomes "smtpauth.vanderbilt.edu" and the port should be 587. Select TLS as the connection security setting. Click OK to save the new settings and OK again to return to the email client. Test to make sure it works. TLS stands for "Transport Layer Security" and using TLS means that the network link between the email client and the SMTP server is encrypted. This adds a level of security to email messages. It does not provide complete security since we cannot know what happens to the email messages after they leave the Vanderbilt servers.