CSLab Email

There are two primary ways of accessing your email at CSLab. You can either configure and use a client-side mail reader, such as Outlook or Thunderbird, or you can read and send mail via our webmail server (please see the section below on webmail).

Note that you should avoid using more than one program to access your mail account simultaneously, or unexpected results could occur.

Email Client

IMAP is a standard protocol which allows you to retrive emails from your email server. SMTP, on the other hand, is a protocol which allows you to send emails.

To send email via CSLab's standard authenticated mail server you must configure your mail client to use TLS. This prevents your access credentials from being sent in the clear. Please use your CSLab login credentials to access our email servers.
The following are standard settings which should be typical for any client.

IMAP server: imap.cs.toronto.edu
SMTP server: smtp.cs.toronto.edu
Connection security: STARTTLS or TLS
Authentication method: Normal Password

Note that some of the above options may not apply to certain clients.

When using Apple's Mail client, on the 'Server Settings' page, you may need to uncheck 'Automatically manage connection settings' and confirm that the port is 587 and the 'Use TLS/SSL' box is checked. Authentication should be 'Password'. It seems that in some cases these settings are properly automatically detected, and in some they are not.

Alternate SMTP server

If you're unable to use authenticated SMTP for some reason, you can use an alternate SMTP server that does not require authentication called mail.cs.toronto.edu.

This server also supports TLS and should be configured with it if possible.

Be advised that you can only use mail.cs.toronto.edu to send email if you are on one of the CS Department's networks. If you wish to use mail.cs.toronto.edu from outside CSLab networks, please first connect using one of our VPN servers.

Webmail

You may access the Webmail via browsers.