&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;.