the100thmonkey

not necessarily. although not having a static IP makes the forwarding a pain in the arse, because your forwarding IP address can change every time you switch your computer off... i don't use outlook, so i can't really help you with diagnosing that problem - i know it's never happened to me with thunderbird.

type 192.168.1.1 into your browser address bar - it will bring up your router admin page. find the tab called "game", "forwarding", or sometimes "DMZ control, or something like that. you should be presented with a screen that allows you to forward ports to a specific computer in the network - i.e. choose the port on your router that receives the data, and tell it which computer to forward the data to. just like setting up a forwarding address when you move house. try www.portforward.com for more details - it lets you search by router model, and then provides detailed instructions on how to set up the forward.

it's actually becoming common here - at least three companies now offer a 100mbps connection, hooking into a 1gbps local backbone, hooked into a 60gbps national backbone. it's still pretty expensive, but the prices are dropping constantly. the main problem is actually getting it, given that it's very common for landowners to have an "arrangement" with a local provider - they limit competition by only allowing one company to hook up the apartment complex, and get nice kickbacks.. interestingly, i can pull 20mbps on my connection on a japanese server, but testmy.net's servers generaly show me at around 4*5 mbps, so there's no point in posting my results...