The email software must be configured (or set up) to work correctly with your ISP connection or network. All of the information you require to send and receive email will be provided by your ISP (or your network administrator). You need to give that information to your software program so it can find everything it needs. In Netscape Mail the critical settings are found under the menu item Options | Preferences in the Servers and Identity tabs In the images below, the parts in red are necessary for your email to work.

If you are using a different email program, these are the most important bits to look for:-

Outgoing Mail Server, SMTP	This will be an address something like smtp.blahblah.com SMTP = Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Incoming Mail Server, POP3	This will be an address something like pop3.blahblah.com POP = Post Office Protocol
POP3 User Name	If your email address is yournamehere@blahblah.com, then your user name would generally be yournamehere.
Your email address and identity information	Your email address should be pretty easy and will be in the form yournamehere@blahblah.com. There is a section where you put information to identify yourself, the name you want mail recipients to see as the sender of the message, your return email address and such. What you put here is entirely up to you.

There are other things about your email software that you can configure. But these are the ones important to the proper functioning of email.

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