&Lauri.Watts;
Setting up an Internet Connection
&kde; offers a complete Internet experience, with all the
programs you'll need to make the most of the Web, email, Usenet and
many other Internet technologies. But before you can enjoy &kde;'s
advanced features, you'll need to get online. Here's how:
If you're using dialup
(that is, connecting to
the Internet with a modem connected to a telephone line), you'll want
to set up the &kde; dialing program, &kppp;. If that sounds
complicated, don't worry: &kppp; has an advanced configuration wizard,
which will usually take the pain out of setting up your dialup
connection. Take a look at the next two sections for more
details.
If you're using a broadband connection, or connecting via a
local network, things are easier (from the point of view of
&kde;). Once you've set up the connection with the tools provided by
your &Linux; or &UNIX; distribution, &kde; will use the connection
automatically.
Getting online the easy way
A few things you should have ready before you start
If you have a fairly modern &Linux; distribution, you might find the rest
of this document superfluous. &kppp; comes with a clever little wizard that in
many cases can have you up and running with an internet connection in just a few
minutes.
Whether using the wizard or not, you should know the following information
before you begin:
Your ISP modem pool phone
number.
Your username and password for your
ISP.
Your ISP's DNS servers
(one is sufficient, but two is better).
Other optional information you should find out to fully access your
ISP's services are:
The incoming mail server address (often pop.yourisp.com or mail.yourisp.com).Also find out if
your ISP uses the POP3 protocol or IMAP.
The outgoing (SMTP) mail server address (it
could be the same as the incoming mail server, or it is often called something
like smtp.yourisp.com).
The Usenet News (NNTP) server address (possibly
news.yourisp.com or nntp.yourisp.com).
Any proxy servers your ISP has set
up.
All this information is probably available on any paperwork you received
from your ISP when you signed up with them, or you can find
it out from your ISP's support telephone line.
Armed with the above, and a fairly recent default installation
of &Linux;, you may well find that setting up an internet connection
is as simple as running the &kppp; wizard.
The &kppp; wizard
Starting the Wizard.
You can start the wizard from &kppp;'s initial screen. Start &kppp; from
your K menu, where you will find its entry in the
Internet as &kppp; (Internet Dial-Up
Tool.
The following dialog will appear:
The &kppp; dialer startup dialog
The &kppp; dialer startup dialog
The &kppp; dialer startup dialog
It will probably not have any entries to begin with, and that's
what we're about to do now.
Click the Configure... button to begin setting up a new
Internet connection.
The wizard will offer you three choices, Wizard,
Dialog Setup and Cancel
The wizard asks you what you want to do...
The wizard asks you what you want to
do...
The wizard asks you what you want to do
Cancel
Choose this if you really don't want to be setting up a new
account right now. The message box will go away, and you will be left with the
dialer window as before.
Wizard
If you have a fairly standard modem, and use one of the larger
ISP's for your country, the wizard will probably be able to set you up
immediately with a working Internet Connection. Try this first, before you try
to set up the connection manually.
Dialog Setup
If you don't succeed with the Wizard, or you just want to do
things yourself, choose this. The wizard currently is only useful for a small
subset of countries and Internet Providers.
For the purposes of this chapter, we'll assume you are choosing
Wizard, and the dialog based setup will be
described in a later chapter.
The Rest of the Wizard
The first window you see contains just introductory text, explaining the
things you read about in the first section of this chapter. Click
Next to move on.
The second window asks you to choose the country you live in. Not all
countries are represented here, and if the country you live in is not listed,
you will have to click Cancel, in which case the Dialog-based setup will start for you to continue
with.
On the next window, you will be given a choice of Internet
Providers that &kppp; knows about, based on your choice of location in
the previous window. Again, if your ISP is not
listed here, you will have to click Cancel and
do your setup in the Dialog-based setup
You will now be asked to enter your username and password for your
internet connection. Please note, that for some ISPs this
differs from your mail account user name and password, so make sure you use the
right one. Choose Next to continue.
On the next window, you have a chance to enter any special dial prefixes
you might have - for example, if you must dial 0
for an outside
line, or if you have a prefix you can dial to turn off call waiting. Choose
Next to continue.
And that's all! If you want to revisit any of your choices, you can use
the Back and Next buttons to move
back and forth through the dialogs. When you're done with your settings, click the
Finish button, and you're all done.
If you need more details, you can read the full &kppp;
manual in the &kde; Help Center, or by typing
help:/kppp in the Location
bar in &konqueror;.