FAQs

The PPP Dialer is probably the most sophisticated piece of software used for your dial-up Internet connection.  Without it, there is no simple way for you to get on-line to send or retrieve email or to browse the World Wide Web.  The PPP Dialer is in charge of making your computer modem dial, connect, log-in with your Username and Password, and then allow your Internet programs to communicate over the Internet.  Most Internet connection problems occur when the PPP Dialer is not functioning correctly or when it can’t complete its job due to some other obstacle. Since the PPP Dialer is such an important component to getting online, you should always pay  close attention to it if you experience problems using the Internet.  And remember: don’t alter its settings unless you have specific reasons to do so.

See our Internet Broadband & Support section

There are several things that can affect your connection speed.

The first and most important, according to most experts in the field, is the length and quality of the local loops involved. Local loops are the lengths of copper between your connection (your house) and the phone company central station to which your line is connected, and the same length and quality between the place you are connecting to and their phone company's central station. The "wire" between central stations is not really an issue since the phone company makes sure that all those station to station connections are well shielded, high quality connections.  We monitor our local loop to make sure that it is of the highest quality.  If you have questions about the loop between you and your telephone company’s central station, you should be able to get information and assistance from their customer service.

Another factor is the quality of the modems on each end and their "compatibility".  We use only top-quality modems, which have been proven in many tests and our ongoing experience to be compatible with the most brands of consumer modems.  (No single modem will be perfect with every other modem, but some are more compatible with more brands than others.)  Both the brand of your modem and how it's tuned may affect your connection. “Tuning” means the settings with which you initialize your modem. Most people use the default settings, but there may be more optimal settings for you to use. If you would like information about our modems so that you can contact your modem manufacturer and ask for an optimal setting to use to initialize your modem, [contact] our Tech Support team.  One of our Tech Support reps can also explain to you how to use the new settings to initialize your modem automatically before making your PPP connection.

homepage.tinet.ie/~leslie/testpage.htm

Please check our Internet & Broadband Account Settings section.

When you send email using Outlook Express you can identify yourself using any of the accounts you have set up. 

With Outlook Express running:

• Click on the Compose Message button
• Compose the new message
• Click on File at the top of the screen
• Move your pointer to Send Message Using
• Click on the account you want to identify yourself as

At this point the message will go to the outbox with the header for the selected account.  Now click Send and Receive.

MS Exchange can be configured to pickup email from multiple email boxes by completing the following steps: 

Select "Start – Settings - Control Panel" 
Select "Mail and Fax" icon 
Select "Show Profiles" button 
Select "Internet Mail" service
Select "Copy" button 
Enter desired name for this "New Profile" 
Select "OK" button 
Select "Properties" button 
Change "Full Name" for new address 
Change "Email Address" to the newly added email address 
(Internet Mail Server should already be correct) 
Change "Account Name" to the newly added email account name 
Change "Password" to new account password 
Select "OK" buttons twice 
Select "Close" button 
Launch Inbox icon 

Now, you will be given an opportunity to select the new (or desired) profile for/from which you wish to retrieve/send your email and use MS Exchange as normal.

We currently don’t limit your storage based on time.  If your email box is too full, though, your email program could have problems downloading mail, even to the point of it becoming impossible. E-mail accounts have 10 MB of space allocated to them (additional space can be purchased for a monthly fee).  If your mailbox exceeds your alotted space, messages will be rejected.

If you aren't on emailing lists, and don't have people sending you large attachments, you shouldn’t experience any problems with email storage on our server.

To delete the mail on our server, simply uncheck the "leave mail on server" option, and check your mail again. It will check for new messages it hasn't downloaded yet, and then delete the entire mail file off of our server.

Please view our Spam Filtering FAQs

There are numerous FTP programs available. 

Cute FTP  and WS_FTP. each have multiple FTP software options for Windows users.

Netscape Composer has a built in tool for loading your files up to your html directory.
Choose File, Select Publish
In the box labeled "Upload files to this location...", enter:
ftp://username@www2.whidbey.net.
Replace "username" with your username, If this is a personal site, your web directory name will be the same as your username.
(If you have a commercial website, "www2.whidbey.net" should be replaced with the name of the server your site is hosted on.
Enter your own password at Password

Microsoft's FrontPage can use the Microsoft Web Publishing Wizard to publish your page to a server that doesn't have the FrontPage extensions installed. Our personal website server does not have the extensions installed.  Please go to our page containing instructions for using the Web Publishing Wizard if you will be using FrontPage to publish your page to the personal website server.  The wizard is available as a free download from Microsoft.
You can request that your site be hosted on a server with FrontPage extensions. We do charge commercial rates for the FrontPage server.  For a full breakdown of our commercial web site pricing please go to [link to Internet & Broadband/Products Services/Web Hosting/Features Pricing]

If you are a Mac user, the tool you need to use is Fetch. Fetch may have been included in the installation disk given to you when you registered. If not, you can get a copy of it at http://fetchsoftworks.com.

The answer is -- it depends! Each FTP application has a different set of commands to transfer files to your website but they all need the same information to connect to our server.

1. Host name: this is the host your web site will reside on. If you have a commercial website, you will have been given the hostname to use when your site was set up. Personal sites will reside on www2.whidbey.net.  If you are using WS_FTP fill in the blanks as follows:
2. Host_Type: UNIX (standard)
3. User ID: This will be your account name. For example, my user ID is webmaster.
4. Directories:
   • Remote:
   • /pub/web/your_directory (replace with the directory location you get when signing up for your own website.)
   • Local:
   • where your html files reside on your own system (for example: c:\html)

If you want your homepage to show up instead of a directory listing, call your main page file "index.html" unless you are on the FrontPage server, in which case, you will need to name your homepage default.htm. Also, you'll need to use the Frontpage Client as our Frontpage server does not allow FTP access.

Note: When you FTP your pages and images, remember that UNIX is CASE SENSITIVE! Filenames must exactly match the references in your web pages or your links won't work

The Fetch Software homepage has an online FAQ for the FETCH FTP program as well as a number of other helpful tidbits of information. There is no online manual per se.

Historically, the download link for Internet Explorer on Microsoft's website was messed up.  This was fixed very quickly.  If you can't download the 128-bit encryption version of Internet Explorer, there are several possibilities.  You may have selected the wrong version at the Internet Explorer download site.  In this case, you may need to remove the installed non 128-bit encryption version of Internet Explorer and reinstall the 128-bit encryption version.  You may or may not require the assistance of Microsoft's Technical Support to do this.  If you have a non-US version of Windows (such as an International English version or a non-English native language copy of Windows), you may not be able to download the 128-bit encryption version of Internet Explorer.  The US Government has strict regulations regarding exporting of cryptographic technologies.  You also may not be able to download the 128-bit encryption version of Internet Explorer if you are on a connection outside of the United State, or are using an anonymizing proxy.

Please contact Sales and Information at the appropriate phone number found on our Contact page.

Often, virus warnings sent via email are scare alert hoaxes started by malicious people - and passed on by innocent users who think they are helping the community by spreading the warning. Unfortunately the hoaxes take longer to die because they are continually passed on by good people who don't know that the messages are hoaxes.  Here are some general resources about viruses; for additional information please refer to our Spam and Virus Assistance pages.  Of course, you are always welcome to contact Tech Support.  Additional online sources can be found at the following links:

• CIAC US Department of Computer Incident Advisory Capability (the main authority on viruses):
• http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org - The CIAC’s hoax page
• http://www.datafellows.com/virus-info/hoax/ Interesting site with info about many known hoaxes
• http://www.sarc.com Symantec's Antivirus Research Center
• http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/hoax.html - Symantec's hoaxes listing page
  

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There are many search engines that will help you find things on the World Wide Web.  A search engine is simply a website designed to find other websites.  We have a number of seach engines and other online research tools listed on our Web Search Resources page.  We also have a variety of kid-safe search links on our Just For Kids page.

Microsoft Internet Explorer Users: 

Double Click on the "Internet" icon. Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web Browser should now start. After connecting with Internet Explorer, locate the Address Bar field near the top of the Internet Explorer screen and simply type our Homepage address which is: 

• http://www.whidbeytel.com 

Press your Enter key and you will soon see the Whidbey Telecom Homepage displayed on your screen. To tell Internet Explorer to automatically start on our page each time your launch it, click on the Tools pull-down menu and then click on Internet Options.  Inside of Internet Options, inside the "Homepage" frame, click on Use Current. This will set our homepage as your default.   You can also simply type an address into the homepage address field available in Internet Options.  This is not suggested though as you can make a typo on long URLs.

Netscape users: 

1. Select "Options-General Preferences" menu choice and select the "Appearance" tab. 

2. Enter the following in the "Start" dialog box: 

• Start With: http://www.whidbeytel.com/ 

Select "OK" and return to the Netscape main browser window and click on the "Home" icon, and in a few moments, you should see the Whidbey Telecom Homepage. From this point, each time you start your browser, the Whidbey Telecom Homepage should appear. 

If you get such an error message when you try to access a certain web server, it could indicate any of several problems.

One reason for this might be that the server you're looking for doesn't exist, because you've typed its name incorrectly, or you were given the wrong name to use. 

Sometimes, it is a momentary network problem between your computer and the server out on the Internet, and re-trying will give better results. If re-trying doesn't help, try going back to a previous page that worked, and hit the "re-load" button (button with a circular arrow). 

Dial-up customers:  If it doesn't work anymore, you've probably lost your internet connection. Disconnect, and reconnect to see if this will fix your problem. 

If the problem seems to be random, i.e., sometimes you can open a certain link and sometimes you can’t, check to be sure you have a secondary DNS in your settings and that your connection settings are correct.

Cookies are misunderstood tidbits of information used everywhere today on the Internet.  Cookies can be used for good and bad things on the Internet.  If you've ever used an MSN Hotmail Account, a Message Board, or even adjusted your account settings on our website, you've used cookies.  Cookies are used for security to make sure only you can get into an online account.  They're also used to contain preferences.  For example, if you use the Google search engine, you can specify to only receive English language pages and to do a kid-safe search.  Saving these preferences creates a cookie on your web browser.  The next time you visit Google, it will read the cookie on your computer specific to Google and know exactly how you want it to operate.  Unfortunately, cookies can also be abused for a variety of bad things on the internet.

Here are two cookie-related websites:

• http://www.microsoft.com/info/cookies.mspx
• http://www.cookiecentral.com/