The Project Gutenberg eBook of Zen and the Art of the Internet, by Brendan P. Kehoe

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Part A

Zen and best portable dollhouses for 6 year olds under 30 dollarsthe Art of the Internet

Copyright (c) 1992 Brendan P. Kehoe

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of thisguide provided the copyright notice and this permission notice arepreserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions ofthis booklet under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided thatthe entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of apermission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of thisbooklet into another language, under the above conditions formodified versions, except that this permission notice may be statedin a translation approved by the author.

Zen and the Art of the Internet
A Beginner's Guide to the Internet
First Edition
January 1992

by Brendan P. Kehoe

This is revision 1.0 of February 2, 1992.
Copyright (c) 1992 Brendan P. Kehoe

The composition of this booklet was originally started because the
Computer Science department at Widener University was in desperate
need of documentation describing the capabilities of this "great new
Internet link" we obtained.

It's since grown into an effort to acquaint the reader with much ofwhat's currently available over the Internet. Aimed at the noviceuser, it attempts to remain operating system "neutral"—-littleinformation herein is specific to Unix, VMS, or any otherenvironment. This booklet will, hopefully, be usable by nearlyanyone.

A user's session is usually offset from the rest of the paragraph, assuch:

prompt> commandThe results are usually displayed here.

The purpose of this booklet is two-fold: first, it's intended toserve as a reference piece, which someone can easily grab on the flyand look something up. Also, it forms a foundation from which peoplecan explore the vast expanse of the Internet. Zen and the Art of theInternet doesn't spend a significant amount of time on any one point;rather, it provides enough for people to learn the specifics of whathis or her local system offers.

One warning is perhaps in order—-this territory we are entering canbecome a fantastic time-sink. Hours can slip by, people can come andgo, and you'll be locked into Cyberspace. Remember to do your work!

With that, I welcome you, the new user, to The Net.

[email protected] Chester, PA

Acknowledgements

Certain sections in this booklet are not my original work—-rather,they are derived from documents that were available on the Internetand already aptly stated their areas of concentration. The chapteron Usenet is, in large part, made up of what's posted monthly tonews.announce.newusers, with some editing and rewriting. Also, themain section on archie was derived from whatis.archie by PeterDeutsch of the McGill University Computing Centre. It's availablevia anonymous FTP from archie.mcgill.ca. Much of what's in thetelnet section came from an impressive introductory document puttogether by SuraNet. Some definitions in the one are from anexcellent glossary put together by Colorado State University.

This guide would not be the same without the aid of many people on TheNet, and the providers of resources that are already out there. I'dlike to thank the folks who gave this a read-through and returned someexcellent comments, suggestions, and criticisms, and those whoprovided much-needed information on the fly. Glee Willis deservesparticular mention for all of his work; this guide would have beenconsiderably less polished without his help.

Andy Blankenbiller <[email protected]>
Andy Blankenbiller, Army at Aberdeen

[email protected] Emtage, McGill University Computer Science Department

Brian Fitzgerald <[email protected]>
Brian Fitzgerald, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

John Goetsch <[email protected]>
John Goetsch, Rhodes University, South Africa

[email protected] Kellem, Boston University's Chemistry Department

[email protected] Krauss, Moravian College

Steve Lodin <[email protected]>
Steve Lodin, Delco Electronics

Mike Nesel <[email protected]>
Mike Nesel, NASA

Bob <[email protected]>
Bob Neveln, Widener University Computer Science Department

[email protected] (Wanda Pierce)Wanda Pierce, McGill University Computing Centre

[email protected]
Joshua Poulson, Widener University Computing Services

[email protected] Sill, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

[email protected] Smart, CitiCorp/TTI

[email protected] Vielmetti, Vice President of MSEN

Craig E. Ward <[email protected]>
Craig Ward, USC/Information Sciences Institute (ISI)

Glee Willis <[email protected]>
Glee Willis, University of Nevada, Reno

Charles Yamasaki <[email protected]>
Chip Yamasaki, OSHA

Network Basics

We are truly in an information society. Now more than ever, movingvast amounts of information quickly across great distances is one ofour most pressing needs. From small one-person entrepreneurialefforts, to the largest of corporations, more and more professionalpeople are discovering that the only way to be successful in the '90sand beyond is to realize that technology is advancing at a break-neckpace—-and they must somehow keep up. Likewise, researchers from allcorners of the earth are finding that their work thrives in anetworked environment. Immediate access to the work of colleaguesand a "virtual" library of millions of volumes and thousands ofpapers affords them the ability to encorporate a body of knowledgeheretofore unthinkable. Work groups can now conduct interactiveconferences with each other, paying no heed to physicallocation—-the possibilities are endless.

You have at your fingertips the ability to talk in "real-time" withsomeone in Japan, send a 2,000-word short story to a group of peoplewho will critique it for the sheer pleasure of doing so, see if aMacintosh sitting in a lab in Canada is turned on, and find out ifsomeone happens to be sitting in front of their computer (logged on)in Australia, all inside of thirty minutes. No airline (or tardis,for that matter) could ever match that travel itinerary.

The largest problem people face when first using a network isgrasping all that's available. Even seasoned users find themselvessurprised when they discover a new service or feature that they'dnever known even existed. Once acquainted with the terminology andsufficiently comfortable with making occasional mistakes, thelearning process will drastically speed up.

Domains

Getting where you want to go can often be one of the more difficultaspects of using networks. The variety of ways that places are namedwill probably leave a blank stare on your face at first. Don't fret;there is a method to this apparent madness.

If someone were to ask for a home address, they would probably expecta street, apartment, city, state, and zip code. That's all theinformation the post office needs to deliver mail in a reasonablyspeedy fashion. Likewise, computer addresses have a structure tothem. The general form is:

a person's email address on a computer: [email protected] computer's name: somewhere.domain

The user portion is usually the person's account name on thesystem, though it doesn't have to be. somewhere.domain tellsyou the name of a system or location, and what kind of organization itis. The trailing domain is often one of the following:

comUsually a company or other commercial institution or organization,like Convex Computers (convex.com).

eduAn educational institution, e.g. New York University, named nyu.edu.

govA government site; for example, NASA is nasa.gov.

milA military site, like the Air Force (af.mil).

netGateways and other administrative hosts for a network (it does notmean all of the hosts in a network). { The Matrix, 111. One suchgateway is near.net.}

org
This is a domain reserved for private organizations, who don't
comfortably fit in the other classes of domains. One example is the
Electronic Frontier Foundation named eff.org.

Each country also has its own top-level domain. For example, theus domain includes each of the fifty states. Other countriesrepresented with domains include:

au Australiaca Canadafr Franceuk The United Kingdom. These also have sub-domains of things likeac.uk for academic sites and co.uk for commercial ones.

FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name)

The proper terminology for a site's domain name (somewhere.domainabove) is its Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). It is usuallyselected to give a clear indication of the site's organization orsponsoring agent. For example, the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology's FQDN is mit.edu; similarly, Apple Computer's domain nameis apple.com. While such obvious names are usually the norm, thereare the occasional exceptions that are ambiguous enough tomislead—-like vt.edu, which on first impulse one might surmise is aneducational institution of some sort in Vermont; not so. It'sactually the domain name for Virginia Tech. In most cases it'srelatively easy to glean the meaning of a domain name—-suchconfusion is far from the norm.

Internet Numbers

Every single machine on the Internet has a unique address, { At leastone address, possibly two or even three—-but we won't go intothat.} called its Internet number or IP Address. It's actually a32-bit number, but is most commonly represented as four numbersjoined by periods (.), like 147.31.254.130. This is sometimes alsocalled a dotted quad; there are literally thousands of differentpossible dotted quads. The ARPAnet (the mother to today's Internet)originally only had the capacity to have up to 256 systems on itbecause of the way each system was addressed. In the early eighties,it became clear that things would fast outgrow such a small limit;the 32-bit addressing method was born, freeing thousands of hostnumbers.

Each piece of an Internet address (like 192) is called an "octet,"representing one of four sets of eight bits. The first two or threepieces (e.g. 192.55.239) represent the network that a system is on,called its subnet. For example, all of the computers for WesleyanUniversity are in the subnet 129.133. They can have numbers like129.133.10.10, 129.133.230.19, up to 65 thousand possiblecombinations (possible computers).

IP addresses and domain names aren't assigned arbitrarily—-thatwould lead to unbelievable confusion. An application must be filedwith the Network Information Center (NIC), either electronically ([email protected]) or via regular mail.

Resolving Names and Numbers

Ok, computers can be referred to by either their FQDN or their
Internet address. How can one user be expected to remember them all?

They aren't. The Internet is designed so that one can use eithermethod. Since humans find it much more natural to deal with wordsthan numbers in most cases, the FQDN for each host is mapped to itsInternet number. Each domain is served by a computer within thatdomain, which provides all of the necessary information to go from adomain name to an IP address, and vice-versa. For example, whensomeone refers to foosun.bar.com, the resolver knows that it shouldask the system foovax.bar.com about systems in bar.com. It asks whatInternet address foosun.bar.com has; if the name foosun.bar.comreally exists, foovax will send back its number. All of this"magic" happens behind the scenes.

Rarely will a user have to remember the Internet number of a site(although often you'll catch yourself remembering an apparentlyobscure number, simply because you've accessed the systemfrequently). However, you will remember a substantial number ofFQDNs. It will eventually reach a point when you are able to make areasonably accurate guess at what domain name a certain college,university, or company might have, given just their name.

The Networks

InternetThe Internet is a large "network of networks." There is noone network known as The Internet; rather, regional nets like SuraNet,PrepNet, NearNet, et al., are all inter-connected(nay, "inter-networked") together into one great living thing,communicating at amazing speeds with the TCP/IP protocol. Allactivity takes place in "real-time."

UUCPThe UUCP network is a loose association of systems all communicatingwith the UUCP protocol. (UUCP stands for `Unix-to-Unix CopyProgram'.) It's based on two systems connecting to each other atspecified intervals, called polling, and executing any workscheduled for either of them. Historically most UUCP was done withUnix equipment, although the software's since been implemented onother platforms (e.g. VMS). For example, the system oreganopolls the system basil once every two hours. If there's anymail waiting for oregano, basil will send it at that time;likewise, oregano will at that time send any jobs waiting forbasil.

BITNETBITNET (the "Because It's Time Network") is comprised of systemsconnected by point-to-point links, all running the NJE protocol.It's continued to grow, but has found itself suffering at the hands ofthe falling costs of Internet connections. Also, a number of mailgateways are in place to reach users on other networks.

The Physical Connection

The actual connections between the various networks take a variety offorms. The most prevalent for Internet links are 56k leased lines(dedicated telephone lines carrying 56kilobit-per-second connections)and T1 links (special phone lines with 1Mbps connections). Alsoinstalled are T3 links, acting as backbones between major locationsto carry a massive 45Mbps load of traffic.

These links are paid for by each institution to a local carrier (for
example, Bell Atlantic owns PrepNet, the main provider in
Pennsylvania). Also available are SLIP connections, which carry
Internet traffic (packets) over high-speed modems.

UUCP links are made with modems (for the most part), that run from1200 baud all the way up to as high as 38.4Kbps. As was mentioned inThe Networks, the connections are of the store-and-forwardvariety. Also in use are Internet-based UUCP links (as if thingsweren't already confusing enough!). The systems do their UUCP trafficover TCP/IP connections, which give the UUCP-based network someblindingly fast "hops," resulting in better connectivity for thenetwork as a whole. UUCP connections first became popular in the1970's, and have remained in wide-spread use ever since. Only withUUCP can Joe Smith correspond with someone across the country oraround the world, for the price of a local telephone call.

BITNET links mostly take the form of 9600bps modems connected from siteto site. Often places have three or more links going; the majority,however, look to "upstream" sites for their sole link to the network.

                    "The Glory and the Nothing of a Name"
                    Byron, { Churchill's Grave}

—————-
 Electronic Mail

The desire to communicate is the essence of networking. People havealways wanted to correspond with each other in the fastest waypossible, short of normal conversation. Electronic mail (oremail) is the most prevalent application of this in computernetworking. It allows people to write back and forth without havingto spend much time worrying about how the message actually getsdelivered. As technology grows closer and closer to being a commonpart of daily life, the need to understand the many ways it can beutilized and how it works, at least to some level, is vital.part of daily life (as has been evidenced by the ISDN effort, the needto understand the many ways it can be utilized and how it works, atleast to some level, is vital.

Email Addresses

Electronic mail is hinged around the concept of an address; thesection on Networking Basics made some reference to it whileintroducing domains. Your email address provides all of theinformation required to get a message to you from anywhere in theworld. An address doesn't necessarily have to go to a human being.It could be an archive server, { See Archive Servers, for adescription.} a list of people, or even someone's pocket pager.These cases are the exception to the norm—-mail to most addresses isread by human beings.

%@!.: Symbolic Cacophony

Email addresses usually appear in one of two forms—-using theInternet format which contains @, an "at"-sign, or using theUUCP format which contains !, an exclamation point, also calleda "bang." The latter of the two, UUCP "bang" paths, is morerestrictive, yet more clearly dictates how the mail will travel.

To reach Jim Morrison on the system south.america.org, one wouldaddress the mail as [email protected]. But if Jim's account wason a UUCP site named brazil, then his address would be brazil!jm. Ifit's possible (and one exists), try to use the Internet form of anaddress; bang paths can fail if an intermediate site in the pathhappens to be down. There is a growing trend for UUCP sites toregister Internet domain names, to help alleviate the problem of pathfailures.

Another symbol that enters the fray is %—-it acts as an extra"routing" method. For example, if the UUCP site dream is connectedto south.america.org, but doesn't have an Internet domain name of itsown, a user debbie on dream can be reached by writing to the addressnot smallexample!

debbie%[email protected]

The form is significant. This address says that the local systemshould first send the mail to south.america.org. There the addressdebbie%dream will turn into debbie@dream, which will hopefully be avalid address. Then south.america.org will handle getting the mailto the host dream, where it will be delivered locally to debbie.

All of the intricacies of email addressing methods are fully covered
in the book "!%@@:: A Directory of Electronic Mail Addressing and
Networks" published by O'Reilly and Associates, as part of their
Nutshell Handbook series. It is a must for any active email user.
Write to [email protected] for ordering information.

Sending and Receiving Mail

We'll make one quick diversion from being OS-neuter here, to show youwhat it will look like to send and receive a mail message on a Unixsystem. Check with your system administrator for specificinstructions related to mail at your site.

A person sending the author mail would probably do something like this:

% mail [email protected]: print job's stuck

I typed `print babe.gif' and it didn't work! Why??

The next time the author checked his mail, he would see it listed inhis mailbox as:

% mail"/usr/spool/mail/brendan": 1 messages 1 new 1 unreadU 1 [email protected] Tue May 5 20:36 29/956 print job's stuck?

which gives information on the sender of the email, when it was sent,and the subject of the message. He would probably use thereply command of Unix mail to send this response:

? r
To: joeuser@@foo.widener.edu
Subject: Re: print job's stuck

You shouldn't print binary files like GIFs to a printer!

Brendan

Try sending yourself mail a few times, to get used to your system'smailer. It'll save a lot of wasted aspirin for both you and yoursystem administrator.

Anatomy of a Mail Header

An electronic mail message has a specific structure to it that'scommon across every type of computer system. { The standard is writtendown in RFC-822. See also RFCs for more info on how to get copies ofthe various RFCs.} A sample would be:

>From [email protected] Sat May 25 17:06:01 1991
Received: from hq.mil by house.gov with SMTP id AA21901
(4.1/SMI for [email protected]); Sat, 25 May 91 17:05:56 -0400
Date: Sat, 25 May 91 17:05:56 -0400
From: The President <[email protected]>
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Meeting

Hi Dan .. we have a meeting at 9:30 a.m. with the Joint Chiefs. Pleasedon't oversleep this time.

The first line, with From and the two lines for Received: are usuallynot very interesting. They give the "real" address that the mailis coming from (as opposed to the address you should reply to, whichmay look much different), and what places the mail went through toget to you. Over the Internet, there is always at least oneReceived: header and usually no more than four or five. When amessage is sent using UUCP, one Received: header is added for eachsystem that the mail passes through. This can often result in morethan a dozen Received: headers. While they help with dissectingproblems in mail delivery, odds are the average user will never wantto see them. Most mail programs will filter out this kind of"cruft" in a header.

The Date: header contains the date and time the message wassent. Likewise, the "good" address (as opposed to "real" address)is laid out in the From: header. Sometimes it won't includethe full name of the person (in this case The President), andmay look different, but it should always contain an email address ofsome form.

The Message-ID: of a message is intended mainly for tracingmail routing, and is rarely of interest to normal users. EveryMessage-ID: is guaranteed to be unique.

To: lists the email address (or addresses) of the recipients ofthe message. There may be a Cc: header, listing additionaladdresses. Finally, a brief subject for the message goes in theSubject: header.

The exact order of a message's headers may vary from system to system,but it will always include these fundamental headers that are vital toproper delivery.

Bounced Mail

When an email address is incorrect in some way (the system's name iswrong, the domain doesn't exist, whatever), the mail system willbounce the message back to the sender, much the same way that thePostal Service does when you send a letter to a bad street address.The message will include the reason for the bounce; a common error isaddressing mail to an account name that doesn't exist. For example,writing to Lisa Simpson at Widener University's Computer Sciencedepartment will fail, because she doesn't have an account. { Though ifshe asked, we'd certainly give her one.}

From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON>
Date: Sat, 25 May 91 16:45:14 -0400
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Returned mail: User unknown

——- Transcript of session follows ——-While talking to cs.widener.edu:>>> RCPT To:<[email protected]><<< 550 <[email protected]>… User unknown550 lsimpson… User unknown

As you can see, a carbon copy of the message (the Cc: headerentry) was sent to the postmaster of Widener's CS department. ThePostmaster is responsible for maintaining a reliable mail systemon his system. Usually postmasters at sites will attempt to aid youin getting your mail where it's supposed to go. If a typing error wasmade, then try re-sending the message. If you're sure that theaddress is correct, contact the postmaster of the site directly andask him how to properly address it.

The message also includes the text of the mail, so you don't have toretype everything you wrote.

——- Unsent message follows ——-
Received: by cs.widener.edu id AA06528; Sat, 25 May 91 16:45:14 -0400
Date: Sat, 25 May 91 16:45:14 -0400
From: Matt Groening <[email protected]>
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Scripting your future episodes
Reply-To: [email protected]

…. verbiage …

The full text of the message is returned intact, including any headersthat were added. This can be cut out with an editor and fed rightback into the mail system with a proper address, making redelivery arelatively painless process.

Mailing Lists

People that share common interests are inclined to discuss theirhobby or interest at every available opportunity. One modern way toaid in this exchange of information is by using a mailinglist—-usually an email address that redistributes all mail sent toit back out to a list of addresses. For example, the Sun Managersmailing list (of interest to people that administer computersmanufactured by Sun) has the address [email protected]. Anymail sent to that address will "explode" out to each person namedin a file maintained on a computer at Northwestern University.

Administrative tasks (sometimes referred to as administrivia) areoften handled through other addresses, typically with the suffix-request. To continue the above, a request to be added to or deletedfrom the Sun Managers list should be sent [email protected].

When in doubt, try to write to the -request version of a mailing listaddress first; the other people on the list aren't interested in yourdesire to be added or deleted, and can certainly do nothing toexpedite your request. Often if the administrator of a list is busy(remember, this is all peripheral to real jobs and real work), manyusers find it necessary to ask again and again, often with harsherand harsher language, to be removed from a list. This does nothingmore than waste traffic and bother everyone else receiving themessages. If, after a reasonable amount of time, you still haven'tsucceeded to be removed from a mailing list, write to the postmasterat that site and see if they can help.

Exercise caution when replying to a message sent by a mailing list. Ifyou wish to respond to the author only, make sure that the onlyaddress you're replying to is that person, and not the entire list.Often messages of the sort "Yes, I agree with you completely!" willappear on a list, boring the daylights out of the other readers. Likewise,if you explicitly do want to send the message to the whole list,you'll save yourself some time by checking to make sure it's indeedheaded to the whole list and not a single person.

A list of the currently available mailing lists is available in atleast two places; the first is in a file on ftp.nisc.sri.com calledinterest-groups under the netinfo/ directory. It's updated fairlyregularly, but is large (presently around 700K), so only get it everyonce in a while. The other list is maintained by Gene Spafford([email protected]), and is posted in parts to the newsgroupnews.lists semi-regularly. (Usenet News, for info on how to read thatand other newsgroups.)

Listservs

On BITNET there's an automated system for maintaining discussion listscalled the listserv. Rather than have an already harried andoverworked human take care of additions and removals from a list, aprogram performs these and other tasks by responding to a set ofuser-driven commands.

Areas of interest are wide and varied—-ETHICS-L deals with ethics incomputing, while ADND-L has to do with a role-playing game. A fulllist of the available BITNET lists can be obtained by writing [email protected] with a body containing the command

list global

However, be sparing in your use of this—-see if it's already on yoursystem somewhere. The reply is quite large.

The most fundamental command is subscribe. It will tell thelistserv to add the sender to a specific list. The usage is

subscribe foo-l Your Real Name

It will respond with a message either saying that you've been added tothe list, or that the request has been passed on to the system onwhich the list is actually maintained.

The mate to subscribe is, naturally, unsubscribe. It will remove agiven address from a BITNET list. It, along with all other listservcommands, can be abbreviated—-subscribe as sub, unsubscribe asunsub, etc. For a full list of the available listserv commands,write to [email protected], giving it the command help.

As an aside, there have been implementations of the listserv systemfor non-BITNET hosts (more specifically, Unix systems). One of themost complete is available on cs.bu.edu in thedirectory pub/listserv.

"I made this letter longer than usual because
I lack the time to make it shorter."
Pascal, Provincial Letters XVI

———————

Anonymous FTP

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the primary method of transferringfiles over the Internet. On many systems, it's also the name of theprogram that implements the protocol. Given proper permission, it'spossible to copy a file from a computer in South Africa to one in LosAngeles at very fast speeds (on the order of 5—10K per second).This normally requires either a user id on both systems or a specialconfiguration set up by the system administrator(s).

There is a good way around this restriction—-the anonymous FTPservice. It essentially will let anyone in the world have access toa certain area of disk space in a non-threatening way. With this,people can make files publicly available with little hassle. Somesystems have dedicated entire disks or even entire computers tomaintaining extensive archives of source code and information. Theyinclude gatekeeper.dec.com (Digital), wuarchive.wustl.edu (WashingtonUniversity in Saint Louis), and archive.cis.ohio-state.edu (The OhioState University).

The process involves the "foreign" user (someone not on the systemitself) creating an FTP connection and logging into the system as theuser anonymous, with an arbitrary password:

Name (foo.site.com:you): anonymous
Password: [email protected]

Custom and netiquette dictate that people respond to thePassword: query with an email address so that the sites cantrack the level of FTP usage, if they desire. (Addresses forinformation on email addresses).

The speed of the transfer depends on the speed of the underlyinglink. A site that has a 9600bps SLIP connection will not get the samethroughput as a system with a 56k leased line (The PhysicalConnection, for more on what kinds of connections can exist in anetwork). Also, the traffic of all other users on that link willaffect performance. If there are thirty people all FTPing from onesite simultaneously, the load on the system (in addition to thenetwork connection) will degrade the overall throughput of thetransfer.

FTP Etiquette

Lest we forget, the Internet is there for people to do work. Peopleusing the network and the systems on it are doing so for a purpose,whether it be research, development, whatever. Any heavy activitytakes away from the overall performance of the network as a whole.

The effects of an FTP connection on a site and its link can vary; thegeneral rule of thumb is that any extra traffic created detracts fromthe ability of that site's users to perform their tasks. To help beconsiderate of this, it's highly recommended that FTP sessionsbe held only after normal business hours for that site, preferablylate at night. The possible effects of a large transfer will be lessdestructive at 2 a.m. than 2 p.m. Also, remember that if it's pastdinner time in Maine, it's still early afternoon in California—-thinkin terms of the current time at the site that's being visited, not oflocal time.

Basic Commands

While there have been many extensions to the various FTP clients outthere, there is a de facto "standard" set that everyone expects towork. For more specific information, read the manual for yourspecific FTP program. This section will only skim the bare minimum ofcommands needed to operate an FTP session.

Creating the Connection

The actual command to use FTP will vary among operating systems; forthe sake of clarity, we'll use FTP here, since it's the mostgeneral form.

There are two ways to connect to a system—-using its hostnameor its Internet number. Using the hostname is usually preferred.However, some sites aren't able to resolve hostnames properly,and have no alternative. We'll assume you're able to use hostnamesfor simplicity's sake. The form is

ftp somewhere.domain

Domains for help with reading and using domain names(in the example below, somewhere.domain is ftp.uu.net).

You must first know the name of the system you want to connect to.
We'll use ftp.uu.net as an example. On your system, type:

ftp ftp.uu.net

(the actual syntax will vary depending on the type of system theconnection's being made from). It will pause momentarily then respondwith the message

Connected to ftp.uu.net.

and an initial prompt will appear:

220 uunet FTP server (Version 5.100 Mon Feb 11 17:13:28 EST 1991) ready.Name (ftp.uu.net:jm):

to which you should respond with anonymous:

220 uunet FTP server (Version 5.100 Mon Feb 11 17:13:28 EST 1991) ready.Name (ftp.uu.net:jm): anonymous

The system will then prompt you for a password; as noted previously, agood response is your email address:

331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.Password: [email protected] Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.ftp>

The password itself will not echo. This is to protect a user'ssecurity when he or she is using a real account to FTP files betweenmachines. Once you reach the ftp> prompt, you know you'relogged in and ready to go.

Notice the ftp.uu.net:joe in the Name: prompt? That'sanother clue that anonymous FTP is special: FTP expects a normal useraccounts to be used for transfers.

dirAt the ftp> prompt, you can type a number of commands to performvarious functions. One example is dir—-it will list the filesin the current directory. Continuing the example from above:

ftp> dir

200 PORT command successful.150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.total 3116drwxr-xr-x 2 7 21 512 Nov 21 1988 .forward-rw-rw-r— 1 7 11 0 Jun 23 1988 .hushlogindrwxrwxr-x 2 0 21 512 Jun 4 1990 Censusdrwxrwxr-x 2 0 120 512 Jan 8 09:36 ClariNet … etc etc …-rw-rw-r— 1 7 14 42390 May 20 02:24 newthisweek.Z … etc etc …-rw-rw-r— 1 7 14 2018887 May 21 01:01 uumap.tar.Zdrwxrwxr-x 2 7 6 1024 May 11 10:58 uunet-info

226 Transfer complete.5414 bytes received in 1.1 seconds (4.9 Kbytes/s)ftp>

The file newthisweek.Z was specifically included because we'llbe using it later. Just for general information, it happens to be alisting of all of the files added to UUNET's archives during the pastweek.

The directory shown is on a machine running the Unix operatingsystem—-the dir command will produce different results on otheroperating systems (e.g. TOPS, VMS, et al.). Learning to recognizedifferent formats will take some time. After a few weeks oftraversing the Internet, it proves easier to see, for example, howlarge a file is on an operating system you're otherwise not acquaintedwith.

With many FTP implementations, it's also possible to take the outputof dir and put it into a file on the local system with

ftp> dir n* outfilename

the contents of which can then be read outside of the live FTPconnection; this is particularly useful for systems with very longdirectories (like ftp.uu.net). The above example would put thenames of every file that begins with an n into the local fileoutfilename.

cd

At the beginning of an FTP session, the user is in a "top-level"directory. Most things are in directories below it (e.g. /pub). Tochange the current directory, one uses the cd command. To change tothe directory pub, for example, one would type

ftp> cd pub

which would elicit the response

250 CWD command successful.

Meaning the "Change Working Directory" command (cd) workedproperly. Moving "up" a directory is more system-specific—-in Unixuse the command cd .., and in VMS, cd [-].

get and put

The actual transfer is performed with the get and putcommands. To get a file from the remote computer to the localsystem, the command takes the form:

ftp> get filename

where filename is the file on the remote system. Again usingftp.uu.net as an example, the file newthisweek.Z can beretrieved with

ftp> get newthisweek.Z200 PORT command successful.150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for newthisweek.Z (42390 bytes).226 Transfer complete.local: newthisweek.Z remote: newthisweek.Z42553 bytes received in 6.9 seconds (6 Kbytes/s)ftp>

The section below on using binary mode instead of ASCII will describewhy this particular choice will result in a corrupt and subsequentlyunusable file.

If, for some reason, you want to save a file under a different name(e.g. your system can only have 14-character filenames, or can onlyhave one dot in the name), you can specify what the local filenameshould be by providing get with an additional argument

ftp> get newthisweek.Z uunet-new

which will place the contents of the file newthisweek.Z inuunet-new on the local system.

The transfer works the other way, too. The put command willtransfer a file from the local system to the remote system. If thepermissions are set up for an FTP session to write to a remotedirectory, a file can be sent with

ftp> put filename

As with get, put will take a third argument, letting youspecify a different name for the file on the remote system.

ASCII vs Binary

In the example above, the file newthisweek.Z was transferred, butsupposedly not correctly. The reason is this: in a normal ASCIItransfer (the default), certain characters are translated betweensystems, to help make text files more readable. However, when binaryfiles (those containing non-ASCII characters) are transferred, thistranslation should not take place. One example is a binaryprogram—-a few changed characters can render it completely useless.

To avoid this problem, it's possible to be in one of two modes—-ASCIIor binary. In binary mode, the file isn't translated in any way.What's on the remote system is precisely what's received. Thecommands to go between the two modes are:

ftp> ascii200 Type set to A. (Note the A, which signifies ASCII mode.)

ftp> binary200 Type set to I. (Set to Image format, for pure binary transfers.)

Note that each command need only be done once to take effect; if theuser types binary, all transfers in that session are done inbinary mode (that is, unless ascii is typed later).

The transfer of newthisweek.Z will work if done as:

ftp> binary200 Type set to I.ftp> get newthisweek.Z200 PORT command successful.150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for newthisweek.Z (42390 bytes).226 Transfer complete.local: newthisweek.Z remote: newthisweek.Z42390 bytes received in 7.2 seconds (5.8 Kbytes/s)

Note: The file size (42390) is different from that donein ASCII mode (42553) bytes; and the number 42390 matches the onein the listing of UUNET's top directory. We can be relatively surethat we've received the file without any problems.

mget and mput

The commands mget and mput allow for multiple filetransfers using wildcards to get several files, or a whole set offiles at once, rather than having to do it manually one by one. Forexample, to get all files that begin with the letter f, onewould type

ftp> mget f

Similarly, to put all of the local files that end with .c:

ftp> mput *.c

Rather than reiterate what's been written a hundred times before,consult a local manual for more information on wildcard matching(every DOS manual, for example, has a section on it).

Normally, FTP assumes a user wants to be prompted for every file in amget or mput operation. You'll often need to get a whole set offiles and not have each of them confirmed—-you know they're allright. In that case, use the prompt command to turn the queries off.

ftp> promptInteractive mode off.

Likewise, to turn it back on, the prompt command should simplybe issued again.

Joe Granrose's List
Monthly, Joe Granrose ([email protected]) posts to Usenet
(Usenet News) an extensive list of sites offering anonymous FTP
service. It's available in a number of ways:

The Usenet groups comp.misc and comp.sources.wanted

Anonymous FTP from pilot.njin.net [128.6.7.38], in/pub/ftp-list.

Write to [email protected] with a Subject: line of listserv-requestand a message body of send help. Please don't bother Joe with yourrequests—-the server will provide you with the list.

The archie Serverarchie is always in lowercase

A group of people at McGill University in Canada got together and created aquery system called archie. It was originally formed to be aquick and easy way to scan the offerings of the many anonymous FTPsites that are maintained around the world. As time progressed,archie grew to include other valuable services as well.

The archie service is accessible through an interactive telnetsession, email queries, and command-line and X-window clients. Theemail responses can be used along with FTPmail servers for those noton the Internet. (FTP-by-Mail Servers, for info on using FTPmailservers.)

Using archie Today

Currently, archie tracks the contents of over 800 anonymous FTParchive sites containing over a million files stored across theInternet. Collectively, these files represent well over 50 gigabytesof information, with new entries being added daily.

The archie server automatically updates the listing information fromeach site about once a month. This avoids constantly updating thedatabases, which could waste network resources, yet ensures that theinformation on each site's holdings is reasonably up to date.

To access archie interactively, telnet to one of the existingservers. { See Telnet, for notes on using the telnet program.} Theyinclude

archie.ans.net (New York, USA)archie.rutgers.edu (New Jersey, USA)archie.sura.net (Maryland, USA)archie.unl.edu (Nebraska, USA)archie.mcgill.ca (the first Archie server, in Canada)archie.funet.fi (Finland)archie.au (Australia)archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (Great Britain)

At the login: prompt of one of the servers, enter archie to log in.A greeting will be displayed, detailing information about ongoingwork in the archie project; the user will be left at a archie>prompt, at which he may enter commands. Using help will yieldinstructions on using the prog command to make queries, set tocontrol various aspects of the server's operation, et al. Type quitat the prompt to leave archie. Typing the query prog vine.tar.Z willyield a list of the systems that offer the source to the X-windowsprogram vine; a piece of the information returned looks like:

Host ftp.uu.net (137.39.1.9)
Last updated 10:30 7 Jan 1992

Location: /packages/X/contrib
FILE rw-r—r— 15548 Oct 8 20:29 vine.tar.Z

Host nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100)
Last updated 05:07 4 Jan 1992

Location: /pub/X11/contrib
FILE rw-rw-r— 15548 Nov 8 03:25 vine.tar.Z

archie Clients

There are two main-stream archie clients, one called (naturallyenough) archie, the other xarchie (for X-Windows). They query thearchie databases and yield a list of systems that have the requestedfile(s) available for anonymous FTP, without requiring an interactivesession to the server. For example, to find the same information youtried with the server command prog, you could type

% archie vine.tar.Z
Host athene.uni-paderborn.de
Location: /local/X11/more_contrib
FILE -rw-r—r— 18854 Nov 15 1990 vine.tar.Z

Host emx.utexas.edu
Location: /pub/mnt/source/games
FILE -rw-r—r— 12019 May 7 1988 vine.tar.Z

Host export.lcs.mit.edu
Location: /contrib
FILE -rw-r—r— 15548 Oct 9 00:29 vine.tar.Z

Note that your system administrator may not have installed the archieclients yet; the source is available on each of the archie servers, inthe directory archie/clients.

Using the X-windows client is much more intuitive—-if it's installed,just read its man page and give it a whirl. It's essential for thenetworked desktop.

Mailing archie

Users limited to email connectivity to the Internet should send amessage to the address [email protected] with the single wordhelp in the body of the message. An email message will be returnedexplaining how to use the email archie server, along with the detailsof using FTPmail. Most of the commands offered by the telnetinterface can be used with the mail server.

The whatis database

In addition to offering access to anonymous FTP listings, archie alsopermits access to the whatis description database. It includesthe names and brief synopses for over 3,500 public domain softwarepackages, datasets and informational documents located on theInternet.

Additional whatis databases are scheduled to be added in thefuture. Planned offerings include listings for the names and locationsof online library catalog programs, the names of publicly accessibleelectronic mailing lists, compilations of Frequently Asked Questionslists, and archive sites for the most popular Usenet newsgroups.Suggestions for additional descriptions or locations databases arewelcomed and should be sent to the archie developers [email protected].

"Was f@"ur pl@"undern!"
("What a place to plunder!")
Gebhard Leberecht Bl@"ucher

———
 Usenet News

Original from: [email protected] (Chip Salzenberg)
[Most recent change: 19 May 1991 by [email protected] (Gene Spafford)]

The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widelymisunderstood. Every day on Usenet the "blind men and theelephant" phenomenon appears, in spades. In the opinion of theauthor, more flame wars (rabid arguments) arise because of alack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than from any othersource. And consider that such flame wars arise, of necessity, amongpeople who are on Usenet. Imagine, then, how poorly understood Usenetmust be by those outside!

No essay on the nature of Usenet can ignore the erroneous impressionsheld by many Usenet users. Therefore, this section will treatfalsehoods first. Keep reading for truth. (Beauty, alas, is notrelevant to Usenet.)

What Usenet Is

Usenet is the set of machines that exchange articles tagged with oneor more universally-recognized labels, called newsgroups (or"groups" for short). (Note that the term newsgroup is correct,while area, base, board, bboard, conference, round table, SIG, etc.are incorrect. If you want to be understood, be accurate.)

The Diversity of Usenet

If the above definition of Usenet sounds vague, that's because it is.It is almost impossible to generalize over all Usenet sites in anynon-trivial way. Usenet encompasses government agencies, largeuniversities, high schools, businesses of all sizes, home computers ofall descriptions, etc.

Every administrator controls his own site. No one has any realcontrol over any site but his own. The administrator gets his powerfrom the owner of the system he administers. As long as the owner ishappy with the job the administrator is doing, he can do whatever hepleases, up to and including cutting off Usenet entirely. C'estla vie.

What Usenet Is Not

Usenet is not an organization.Usenet has no central authority. In fact, it has no central anything.There is a vague notion of "upstream" and "downstream" related tothe direction of high-volume news flow. It follows that, to theextent that "upstream" sites decide what traffic they will carry fortheir "downstream" neighbors, that "upstream" sites have someinfluence on their neighbors. But such influence is usually easy tocircumvent, and heavy-handed manipulation typically results in abacklash of resentment.

Usenet is not a democracy.A democracy can be loosely defined as "government of the people, bythe people, for the people." However, as explained above, Usenet isnot an organization, and only an organization can be run as ademocracy. Even a democracy must be organized, for if it lacks ameans of enforcing the peoples' wishes, then it may as well not exist.

Some people wish that Usenet were a democracy. Many people pretendthat it is. Both groups are sadly deluded.

Usenet is not fair.After all, who shall decide what's fair? For that matter, if someoneis behaving unfairly, who's going to stop him? Neither you nor I,that's certain.

Usenet is not a right.Some people misunderstand their local right of "freedom of speech"to mean that they have a legal right to use others' computers to saywhat they wish in whatever way they wish, and the owners of saidcomputers have no right to stop them.

Those people are wrong. Freedom of speech also means freedom not tospeak; if I choose not to use my computer to aid your speech, that ismy right. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.

Usenet is not a public utility.Some Usenet sites are publicly funded or subsidized. Most of them,by plain count, are not. There is no government monopoly on Usenet,and little or no control.

Usenet is not a commercial network.Many Usenet sites are academic or government organizations; in fact,Usenet originated in academia. Therefore, there is a Usenet custom ofkeeping commercial traffic to a minimum. If such commercial trafficis generally considered worth carrying, then it may be grudginglytolerated. Even so, it is usually separated somehow fromnon-commercial traffic; see comp.newprod.

Usenet is not the Internet.The Internet is a wide-ranging network, parts of which are subsidizedby various governments. The Internet carries many kinds of traffic;Usenet is only one of them. And the Internet is only one of thevarious networks carrying Usenet traffic.

Usenet is not a Unix network, nor even an ASCII network.

Don't assume that everyone is using "rn" on a Unix machine. Thereare Vaxen running VMS, IBM mainframes, Amigas, and MS-DOS PCs readingand posting to Usenet. And, yes, some of them use (shudder) EBCDIC.Ignore them if you like, but they're out there.

Usenet is not software.There are dozens of software packages used at various sites totransport and read Usenet articles. So no one program or package canbe called "the Usenet software."

Software designed to support Usenet traffic can be (and is) used forother kinds of communication, usually without risk of mixing the two.Such private communication networks are typically kept distinct fromUsenet by the invention of newsgroup names different from theuniversally-recognized ones.

Usenet is not a UUCP network.

UUCP is a protocol (some might say protocol suite, but that's atechnical point) for sending data over point-to-point connections,typically using dialup modems. Usenet is only one of the variouskinds of traffic carried via UUCP, and UUCP is only one of the varioustransports carrying Usenet traffic.

Well, enough negativity.

Propagation of News

In the old days, when UUCP over long-distance dialup lines was thedominant means of article transmission, a few well-connected siteshad real influence in determining which newsgroups would be carriedwhere. Those sites called themselves "the backbone."

But things have changed. Nowadays, even the smallest Internet sitehas connectivity the likes of which the backbone admin of yesteryearcould only dream. In addition, in the U.S., the advent of cheaperlong-distance calls and high-speed modems has made long-distanceUsenet feeds thinkable for smaller companies. There is only onepre-eminent UUCP transport site today in the U.S., namely UUNET. ButUUNET isn't a player in the propagation wars, because it neverrefuses any traffic—-it gets paid by the minute, after all; torefuse based on content would jeopardize its legal status as anenhanced service provider.

All of the above applies to the U.S. In Europe, different coststructures favored the creation of strictly controlled hierarchicalorganizations with central registries. This is all very unlike thetraditional mode of U.S. sites (pick a name, get the software, get afeed, you're on). Europe's "benign monopolies", long uncontested,now face competition from looser organizations patterned after theU.S. model.

Group Creation

As discussed above, Usenet is not a democracy. Nevertheless,currently the most popular way to create a new newsgroup involves a"vote" to determine popular support for (and opposition to) aproposed newsgroup. Newsgroup Creation, for detailed instructions andguidelines on the process involved in making a newsgroup.

If you follow the guidelines, it is probable that your group will becreated and will be widely propagated. However, due to the nature ofUsenet, there is no way for any user to enforce the results of anewsgroup vote (or any other decision, for that matter). Therefore,for your new newsgroup to be propagated widely, you must not onlyfollow the letter of the guidelines; you must also follow its spirit.And you must not allow even a whiff of shady dealings or dirty tricksto mar the vote.

So, you may ask: How is a new user supposed to know anything about the"spirit" of the guidelines? Obviously, she can't. This fact leadsinexorably to the following recommendation:

If you're a new user, don't try to create a new newsgroup alone.

If you have a good newsgroup idea, then read the news.groupsnewsgroup for a while (six months, at least) to find out how thingswork. If you're too impatient to wait six months, then you reallyneed to learn; read news.groups for a year instead. If you justcan't wait, find a Usenet old hand to run the vote for you.

Readers may think this advice unnecessarily strict. Ignore it at yourperil. It is embarrassing to speak before learning. It is foolish tojump into a society you don't understand with your mouth open. And itis futile to try to force your will on people who can tune you outwith the press of a key.

If You're Unhappy…Property rights being what they are, there is no higher authority onUsenet than the people who own the machines on which Usenet traffic iscarried. If the owner of the machine you use says, "We will notcarry alt.sex on this machine," and you are not happy withthat order, you have no Usenet recourse. What can we outsiders do,after all?

That doesn't mean you are without options. Depending on the natureof your site, you may have some internal political recourse. Or youmight find external pressure helpful. Or, with a minimal investment,you can get a feed of your own from somewhere else. Computers capableof taking Usenet feeds are down in the $500 range now, Unix-capableboxes are going for under $2000, and there are at least two Unixlookalikes in the $100 price range.

No matter what, appealing to "Usenet" won't help. Even if those whoread such an appeal regarding system administration are sympathetic toyour cause, they will almost certainly have even less influence atyour site than you do.

By the same token, if you don't like what some user at another site isdoing, only the administrator and/or owner of that site have anyauthority to do anything about it. Persuade them that the user inquestion is a problem for them, and they might do something (if theyfeel like it). If the user in question is the administrator or ownerof the site from which he or she posts, forget it; you can't win.Arrange for your newsreading software to ignore articles from him orher if you can, and chalk one up to experience.

The History of Usenet (The ABCs)

In the beginning, there were conversations, and they were good. Thencame Usenet in 1979, shortly after the release of V7 Unix with UUCP;and it was better. Two Duke University grad students in NorthCarolina, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computerstogether to exchange information with the Unix community. SteveBellovin, a grad student at the University of North Carolina, puttogether the first version of the news software using shell scriptsand installed it on the first two sites: unc and duke. At thebeginning of 1980 the network consisted of those two sites and phs(another machine at Duke), and was described at the January 1980Usenix conference in Boulder, CO. { The Usenix conferences aresemi-annual meetings where members of the Usenix Association, agroup of Unix enthusiasts, meet and trade notes.} Steve Bellovinlater rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were neverreleased beyond unc and duke. Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel didanother implementation in the C programming language for publicdistribution. Tom Truscott made further modifications, and thisbecame the "A" news release.

In 1981 at the University of California at Berkeley, grad student MarkHorton and high school student Matt Glickman rewrote the news softwareto add functionality and to cope with the ever increasing volume ofnews—-"A" news was intended for only a few articles per group perday. This rewrite was the "B" news version. The first publicrelease was version 2.1 in 1982; all versions before 2.1 wereconsidered in beta test. As The Net grew, the news software wasexpanded and modified. The last version maintained and releasedprimarily by Mark was 2.10.1.

Rick Adams, then at the Center for Seismic Studies, took overcoordination of the maintenance and enhancement of the news softwarewith the 2.10.2 release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volumeof news was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groupswas added to the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspiredby ARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin boardsystems. In late 1986, version 2.11 of news was released, including anumber of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups,enhanced batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme controlmessages, and other features. The current release of news is 2.11,patchlevel 19.

A new version of news, becoming known as "C" news, has beendeveloped at the University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and HenrySpencer. This version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news toincrease article processing speed, decrease article expirationprocessing and improve the reliability of the news system throughbetter locking, etc. The package was released to The Net in theautumn of 1987. For more information, see the paper News Need Not BeSlow, published in the Winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conferenceproceedings.

Usenet software has also been ported to a number of platforms, fromthe Amiga and IBM PCs all the way to minicomputers and mainframes.

HierarchiesNewsgroups are organized according to their specific areas ofconcentration. Since the groups are in a tree structure, thevarious areas are called hierarchies. There are seven major categories:

compTopics of interest to both computer professionals andhobbyists, including topics in computer science, software sources, andinformation on hardware and software systems.

misc
Group addressing themes not easily classified into any of the other
headings or which incorporate themes from multiple categories.
Subjects include fitness, job-hunting, law, and investments.

sciDiscussions marked by special knowledge relating to research in orapplication of the established sciences.

socGroups primarily addressing social issues and socializing. Includedare discussions related to many different world cultures.

talkGroups largely debate-oriented and tending to feature longdiscussions without resolution and without appreciable amounts ofgenerally useful information.

 news
Groups concerned with the news network, group maintenance, and software.

 rec
Groups oriented towards hobbies and recreational activities

These "world" newsgroups are (usually) circulated around the entireUsenet—-this implies world-wide distribution. Not all groupsactually enjoy such wide distribution, however. The European Usenetand Eunet sites take only a selected subset of the more "technical"groups, and controversial "noise" groups are often not carried by manysites in the U.S. and Canada (these groups are primarily under the talkand soc classifications). Many sites do not carry some or all ofthe comp.binaries groups because of the typically large size ofthe posts in them (being actual executable programs).

Also available are a number of "alternative" hierarchies:

altTrue anarchy; anything and everything can and does appear;subjects include sex, the Simpsons, and privacy.

 gnu
Groups concentrating on interests and software with the GNU
Project of the Free Software Foundation. For further info on what the
FSF is, FSF.

 biz
Business-related groups.

Moderated vs Unmoderated

Some newsgroups insist that the discussion remain focused andon-target; to serve this need, moderated groups came to be. Allarticles posted to a moderated group get mailed to the group'smoderator. He or she periodically (hopefully sooner than later)reviews the posts, and then either posts them individually to Usenet,or posts a composite digest of the articles for the past day ortwo. This is how many mailing list gateways work (for example, theRisks Digest).

news.groups & news.announce.newgroups

Being a good net.citizen includes being involved in the continuinggrowth and evolution of the Usenet system. One part of thisinvolvement includes following the discussion in the groupsnews.groups and the notes in news.announce.newgroups. It is therethat discussion goes on about the creation of new groups anddestruction of inactive ones. Every person on Usenet is allowed andencouraged to vote on the creation of a newsgroup.

How Usenet Works

The transmission of Usenet news is entirely cooperative. Feeds aregenerally provided out of good will and the desire to distribute newseverywhere. There are places which provide feeds for a fee (e.g.UUNET), but for the large part no exchange of money is involved.

There are two major transport methods, UUCP and NNTP. The first ismainly modem-based and involves the normal charges for telephonecalls. The second, NNTP, is the primary method for distributing newsover the Internet.

With UUCP, news is stored in batches on a site until theneighbor calls to receive the articles, or the feed site happens tocall. A list of groups which the neighbor wishes to receive ismaintained on the feed site. The Cnews system compresses its batches,which can dramatically reduce the transmission time necessary for arelatively heavy newsfeed.

NNTP, on the other hand, offers a little more latitude with how newsis sent. The traditional store-and-forward method is, of course,available. Given the "real-time" nature of the Internet, though,other methods have been devised. Programs now keep constantconnections with their news neighbors, sending news nearlyinstantaneously, and can handle dozens of simultaneous feeds, bothincoming and outgoing.

The transmission of a Usenet article is centered around the uniqueMessage-ID: header. When an NNTP site offers an article to aneighbor, it says it has that specific Message ID. If the neighborfinds it hasn't received the article yet, it tells the feed to send itthrough; this is repeated for each and every article that's waitingfor the neighbor. Using unique IDs helps prevent a system fromreceiving five copies of an article from each of its five newsneighbors, for example.

Further information on how Usenet works with relation to the varioustransports is available in the documentation for the Cnews and NNTPpackages, as well as in RFC-1036, the Standard for Interchange ofUSENET Messages and RFC-977, Network News Transfer Protocol: AProposed Standard for the Stream-Based Transmission of News. TheRFCs do tend to be rather dry reading, particularly to the new user.

Mail Gateways

A natural progression is for Usenet news and electronic mailing liststo somehow become merged—-which they have, in the form of newsgateways. Many mailing lists are set up to "reflect" messages notonly to the readership of the list, but also into a newsgroup.Likewise, posts to a newsgroup can be sent to the moderator of themailing list, or to the entire mailing list. Some examples of this inaction are comp.risks (the Risks Digest) andcomp.dcom.telecom (the Telecom Digest).

This method of propagating mailing list traffic has helped solve theproblem of a single message being delivered to a number of people atthe same site—-instead, anyone can just subscribe to the group.Also, mailing list maintenance is lowered substantially, since themoderators don't have to be constantly removing and adding users toand from the list. Instead, the people can read and not read thenewsgroup at their leisure.

from "Dear Emily Postnews" by Brad TempletonUsenet "Netiquette"

There are many traditions with Usenet, not the least of which isdubbed netiquette—-being polite and considerate of others. Ifyou follow a few basic guidelines, you, and everyone that reads yourposts, will be much happier in the long run.

Signatures

At the end of most articles is a small blurb called a person'ssignature. In Unix this file is named .signature in theperson's login directory—-it will vary for other operating systems.It exists to provide information about how to get in touch with theperson posting the article, including their email address, phonenumber, address, or where they're located. Even so, signatures havebecome the graffiti of computers. People put song lyrics, pictures,philosophical quotes, even advertisements in their ".sigs".(Note, however, that advertising in your signature will more oftenthan not get you flamed until you take it out.)

Four lines will suffice—-more is just extra garbage for Usenet sitesto carry along with your article, which is supposed to be the intendedfocus of the reader. Netiquette dictates limiting oneself to this"quota" of four—-some people make signatures that are ten lines oreven more, including elaborate ASCII drawings of their hand-writtensignature or faces or even the space shuttle. This is notcute, and will bother people to no end.

Similarly, it's not necessary to include your signature—-if youforget to append it to an article, don't worry about it. Thearticle's just as good as it ever would be, and contains everythingyou should want to say. Don't re-post the article just to include thesignature.

Posting Personal Messages

If mail to a person doesn't make it through, avoid posting the messageto a newsgroup. Even if the likelihood of that person reading thegroup is very high, all of the other people reading the articles don'tgive a whit what you have to say to Jim Morrison. Simply wait for theperson to post again and double-check the address, or get in touchwith your system administrator and see if it's a problem with localemail delivery. It may also turn out that their site is down or ishaving problems, in which case it's just necessary to wait untilthings return to normal before contacting Jim.

Posting Mail

In the interests of privacy, it's considered extremely bad taste to postany email that someone may have sent, unless they explicitly give youpermission to redistribute it. While the legal issues can be heavilydebated, most everyone agrees that email should be treated as anythingone would receive via normal snailmail, { The slang for the normal land and airpostal service.} , with all of the assumed rights that are carried with it.

Test Messages

Many people, particularly new users, want to try out posting beforeactually taking part in discussions. Often the mechanics of gettingmessages out is the most difficult part of Usenet. To this end,many, many users find it necessary to post their tests to "normal"groups (for example, news.admin or comp.mail.misc). This isconsidered a major netiquette faux pas in the Usenet world. There area number of groups available, called test groups, that exist solelyfor the purpose of trying out a news system, reader, or even newsignature. They include

alt.testgnu.gnusenet.testmisc.test

some of which will generate auto-magic replies to your posts tolet you know they made it through. There are certain denizens ofUsenet that frequent the test groups to help new users out. Theyrespond to the posts, often including the article so the poster cansee how it got to the person's site. Also, many regional hierarchieshave test groups, like phl.test in Philadelphia.

By all means, experiment and test—-just do it in its proper place.

Famous People Appearing

Every once in a while, someone says that a celebrity is accessiblethrough "The Net"; or, even more entertaining, an article is forgedto appear to be coming from that celebrity. One example is StephenSpielberg—-the rec.arts.movies readership was in an uproar fortwo weeks following a couple of posts supposedly made by Mr.Spielberg. (Some detective work revealed it to be a hoax.)

There are a few well-known people that are acquainted withUsenet and computers in general—-but the overwhelming majority arejust normal people. One should act with skepticism whenever a notablepersonality is "seen" in a newsgroup.

Summaries

Authors of articles occasionally say that readers should reply bymail and they'll summarize. Accordingly, readers should do justthat—-reply via mail. Responding with a followup article to such anarticle defeats the intention of the author. She, in a few days,will post one article containing the highlights of the responses shereceived. By following up to the whole group, the author may notread what you have to say.

When creating a summary of the replies to a post, try to make it asreader-friendly as possible. Avoid just putting all of the messagesreceived into one big file. Rather, take some time and edit themessages into a form that contains the essential information thatother readers would be interested in.

Also, sometimes people will respond but request to remain anonymous(one example is the employees of a corporation that feel theinformation's not proprietary, but at the same time want to protectthemselves from political backlash). Summaries should honor thisrequest accordingly by listing the From: address asanonymous or (Address withheld by request).

Quoting

When following up to an article, many newsreaders provide the facilityto quote the original article with each line prefixed by >, as in

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] wrote:> I agree, I think that basketweaving's really catching on,> particularly in Pennsylvania. Here's a list of every person> in PA that currently engages in it publicly: line … etc …

This is a severe example (potentially a horribly long article), butproves a point. When you quote another person, edit out whateverisn't directly applicable to your reply. { But not changing theirwords, of course. } This gives the reader of the new article a betteridea of what points you were addressing. By including the entirearticle, you'll only annoy those reading it. Also, signatures in theoriginal aren't necessary; the readers already know who wrote it (bythe attribution).

Avoid being tedious with responses—-rather than pick apart anarticle, address it in parts or as a whole. Addressing practicallyeach and every word in an article only proves that the personresponding has absolutely nothing better to do with his time.

If a "war" starts (insults and personal comments get thrown backand forth), take it into email—-exchange email with the personyou're arguing with. No one enjoys watching people bickerincessantly.

Crossposting

The Newsgroups: line isn't limited to just one group—-anarticle can be posted in a list of groups. For instance, the line

Newsgroups: sci.space,comp.simulation

posts the article to both the groups sci.space andcomp.simulation. It's usually safe to crosspost to up to threeor four groups. To list more than that is considered "excessivenoise."

It's also suggested that if an article is crossposted aFollowup-To: header be included. It should name the group towhich all additional discussion should be directed to. For the aboveexample a possible Followup-To: would be

Followup-To: sci.space

which would make all followups automatically be posted to justsci.space, rather than both sci.space and comp.simulation. If everyresponse made with a newsreader's "followup" command should go tothe person posting the article no matter what, there's also amechanism worked in to accommodate. The Followup-To: header shouldcontain the single word poster:

Followup-To: poster

Certain newsreaders will use this to sense that a reply should neverbe posted back onto The Net. This is often used with questions thatwill yield a summary of information later, a vote, or anadvertisement.

Recent News

One should avoid posting "recent" events—-sports scores, a planecrash, or whatever people will see on the evening news or read in themorning paper. By the time the article has propagated across all ofUsenet, the "news" value of the article will have become stale.(This is one case for the argument that Usenet news is a misnomer.{ Note that the Clarinet News service (Clarinet) offers news items ina Usenet format as a precise alternative to the morning paper, et.al.)

Quality of Postings

How you write and present yourself in your articles is important. Ifyou have terrible spelling, keep a dictionary near by. If you havetrouble with grammar and punctuation, try to get a book on Englishgrammar and composition (found in many bookstores and at garagesales). By all means pay attention to what you say—-it makes you whoyou are on The Net.

Likewise, try to be clear in what you ask. Ambiguous or vaguequestions often lead to no response at all, leaving the posterdiscouraged. Give as much essential information as you feel isnecessary to let people help you, but keep it within limits. Forinstance, you should probably include the operating system of yourcomputer in the post if it's needed, but don't tell everybody whatperipherals you have hanging off of it.

Useful Subjects

The Subject: line of an article is what will first attractpeople to read it—-if it's vague or doesn't describe what's containedwithin, no one will read the article. At the same time,Subject: lines that're too wordy tend to be irritating. Forexample:

 Good
Subject: Building Emacs on a Sun Sparc under 4.1

 Good
Subject: Tryin' to find Waldo in NJ.

 Bad
Subject: I can't get emacs to work !!!

BadSubject: I'm desperately in search of the honorable Mr. Waldo in the stateof…

Simply put, try to think of what will best help the reader when he orshe encounters your article in a newsreading session.

Tone of Voice

Since common computers can't portray the inflection or tone in aperson's voice, how articles are worded can directly affect theresponse to them. If you say

Anybody using a Vic-20 should go buy themselves a life.

you'll definitely get some responses—-telling you to take a leap.Rather than be inflammatory, phrase your articles in a way thatrationally expresses your opinion, like

What're the practical uses of a Vic-20 these days?

which presents yourself as a much more level-headed individual.

Also, what case (upper or lower) you use can indicate how you'retrying to speak—-netiquette dictates that if you USE ALL CAPITALLETTERS, people will think you're "shouting." Write as you would ina normal letter to a friend, following traditional rules of English(or whatever language you happen to speak).

Computer Religion

No matter what kind of computer a person is using, theirs is alwaysthe best and most efficient of them all. Posting articlesasking questions like What computer should I buy? An Atari ST or anAmiga? will lead only to fervent arguments over the merits anddrawbacks of each brand. Don't even ask The Net—-go to a local usergroup, or do some research of your own like reading some magazinereviews. Trying to say one computer is somehow better than another isa moot point.

The Anatomy of an Article

Frequently Asked Questions

A number of groups include Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) lists,which give the answers to questions or points that have been raisedtime and time again in a newsgroup. They're intended to help cutdown on the redundant traffic in a group. For example, in thenewsgroup alt.tv.simpsons, one recurring question is Did you noticethat there's a different blackboard opening at the beginning of everySimpsons episode? As a result, it's part of the FAQ for that group.

Usually, FAQ lists are posted at the beginning of each month, and areset to expire one month later (when, supposedly, the next FAQ will bepublished). Nearly every FAQ is also crossposted to news.answers,which is used as a Usenet repository for them.

The Pit-Manager Archive

MIT, with Jonathan Kamens, has graciously dedicated a machine to thearchiving and storage of the various periodic postings that arepeppered throughout the various Usenet groups. To access them, FTP tothe system pit-manager.mit.edu and look in the directory/pub/usenet.

"Be it true or false, so it be news."
Ben Jonson, News from the New World

——-
 Telnet

Telnet is the main Internet protocol for creating a connectionwith a remote machine. It gives the user the opportunity to be on onecomputer system and do work on another, which may be across the streetor thousands of miles away. Where modems are limited, in the majority,by the quality of telephone lines and a single connection, telnetprovides a connection that's error-free and nearly always faster thanthe latest conventional modems.

Using Telnet

As with FTP (Anonymous FTP), the actual command for negotiating a telnetconnection varies from system to system. The most common istelnet itself, though. It takes the form of:

telnet somewhere.domain

To be safe, we'll use your local system as a working example. By now,you hopefully know your site's domain name. If not, ask or tryto figure it out. You'll not get by without it.

To open the connection, type

telnet your.system.name

If the system were wubba.cs.widener.edu, for example, thecommand would look like

telnet wubba.cs.widener.edu

The system will respond with something similar to

Trying 147.31.254.999…
Connected to wubba.cs.widener.edu.
Escape character is '^]'.

The escape character, in this example ^] (Control-]), is thecharacter that will let you go back to the local system to close theconnection, suspend it, etc. To close this connection, the userwould type ^], and respond to the telnet> prompt with the commandclose. Local documentation should be checked for information onspecific commands, functions, and escape character that can be used.

Telnet Ports

Many telnet clients also include a third option, the port onwhich the connection should take place. Normally, port 23 is thedefault telnet port; the user never has to think about it. Butsometimes it's desirable to telnet to a different port on a system,where there may be a service available, or to aid in debugging aproblem. Using

telnet somewhere.domain port

will connect the user to the given port on the systemsomewhere.domain. Many libraries use this port method to offer theirfacilities to the general Internet community; other services are alsoavailable. For instance, one would type

telnet martini.eecs.umich.edu 3000

to connect to the geographic server at the University of Michigan(Geographic Server). Other such port connections follow thesame usage.

Publicly Accessible Libraries

Over the last several years, most university libraries have switchedfrom a manual (card) catalog system to computerized library catalogs.The automated systems provide users with easily accessible andup-to-date information about the books available in these libraries.This has been further improved upon with the advent of local areanetworks, dialup modems, and wide area networks. Now many of us cancheck on our local library's holdings or that of a library halfwayaround the world!

Many, many institutions of higher learning have made their librarycatalogs available for searching by anyone on the Internet. Theyinclude Boston University, the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries(CARL), and London University King's College.

To include a listing of some of the existing sites would not only befar too long for this document, it would soon be out of date.Instead, several lists are being maintained and are available eitherby mail or via FTP. Also, the Internet Resource Guide (IRG) alsodescribes a few libraries that are accessible—-IRG for furtherinformation.

Art St. George and Ron Larsen are maintaining a list ofInternet-accessible libraries and databases often referred to as"the St. George directory." It began with only library catalogsbut has expanded to include sections on campus-wide informationsystems, and even bulletin board systems that are not on theInternet. The library catalog sections are divided into those thatare free, those that charge, and international (i.e. non-U.S.)catalogs; they are arranged by state, province, or country withineach section. There is also a section giving dialup information forsome of the library catalogs. It's available for FTP (Anonymous FTP)on nic.cerf.net in the directorycerfnet/cerfnet_info/library_catalog. The file internet-catalogs hasa date suffix; check for the most current date. The information isupdated periodically.

Billy Barron, Systems Manager at the University of North Texas,produces a directory as an aid to his user community. It complementsthe St. George guide by providing a standard format for all systemswhich lists the Internet address, login instructions, the systemvendor, and logoff information. The arrangement is alphabetic byorganization name. It's available for FTP on vaxb.acs.unt.edu in thesubdirectory library as the file libraries.txt.

For announcements of new libraries being available and discussion onrelated topics, consult the Usenet newsgroupcomp.internet.library (Usenet News to learn how to readnews).

Bulletin Board Systems

The Cleveland Freenet

Freenets are open-access, free, community computer systems. One suchsystem is the Cleveland Freenet, sponsored by CWRU (Case WesternReserve University). Anyone and everyone is welcome to join and takepart in the exciting project—-that of a National Telecomputing PublicNetwork, where everyone benefits. There's no charge for theregistration process and no charge to use the system.

To register, telnet to any one of

freenet-in-a.cwru.edufreenet-in-b.cwru.edufreenet-in-c.cwru.edu

After you're connected, choose the entry on the menu that signifiesyou're a guest user. Another menu will follow; select Apply foran account, and you'll be well on your way to being a FreeNet member.

You will need to fill out a form and send it to them through thePostal Service—-your login id and password will be created in a fewdays. At that point you're free to use the system as you wish. Theyprovide multi-user chat, email, Usenet news, and a variety of otherthings to keep you occupied for hours on end.

Directories

There are a few systems that are maintained to provide the Internetcommunity with access to lists of information—-users, organizations,etc. They range from fully dedicated computers with access to papersand research results, to a system to find out about the facultymembers of a university.

Knowbot

Knowbot is a "master directory" that contains email addressinformation from the NIC WHOIS database (Whois), the PSI WhitePages Pilot Project, the NYSERNET X.500 database and MCI Mail. Mostof these services are email registries themselves, but Knowbotprovides a very comfortable way to access all of them in one place.Telnet to nri.reston.va.us on port 185.

White Pages

PSI maintains a directory of information on individuals. It willlist the person's name, organization, and email address if it isgiven. Telnet to wp.psi.net and log in as fred. The White PagesProject also includes an interface to use Xwindows remotely.

Faculty and Staff Listings

Many universities offer access to information on current faculty andstaff. Included are:

Cornell Telnet to cuinfo.cornell.edu on port 3000.
NC State Telnet to ccvax1.cc.ncsu.edu and log in as info.
Rutgers Telnet to hangout.rutgers.edu on port 98.
U of Maryland Telnet to umail.umd.edu and log in as lookup.
UNC Chapel Hill Telnet to info.acs.unc.edu and log in as info.
Yale Telnet to yalevm.ycc.yale.edu on port 300.

Databases

For information on database services, Commercial Databases.
Not all databases on the Internet require payment for use, though.
There do exist some, largely research-driven databases, which are
publicly accessible. New ones spring up regularly.

To find out more about the databases in this section, contact thepeople directly responsible for them. Their areas of concentrationand the software used to implement them are widely disparate, and areprobably beyond the author's expertise. Also, don't forget to checkwith your local library—-the reference librarian there can provideinformation on conventional resources, and possibly even thoseavailable over the Internet (they are becoming more common).

Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL)

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL), in associationwith CARL Systems Inc., operates a public access catalog of services.Offered are a number of library databases, including searches forgovernment periodicals, book reviews, indices for current articles,and access to to other library databases around the country. Otherservices are available to CARL members including an onlineencyclopedia. Telnet to pac.carl.org, or write to [email protected] formore details.

PENpages

PENpages is an agriculturally-oriented database administered byPennsylvania State University. Information entered into PENpages isprovided by numerous sources including the Pennsylvania Dept. ofAgriculture, Rutgers University, and Penn State. Easy-to-use menusguide users to information ranging from cattle and agriculturalprices to current weather information, from health information toagricultural news from around the nation. A keyword search optionalso allows users to search the database for related information andarticles. The database is updated daily, and a listing of mostrecent additions is displayed after login. Telnet to psupen.psu.eduand log in as the user PNOTPA.

Clemson Univ. Forestry & Agricultural Network

Clemson maintains a database similar to PENpages in content, but theinformation provided tends to be localized to the Southeastern UnitedStates. A menu-driven database offers queries involving the weather,food, family, and human resources. Telnet to eureka.clemson.edu andlog in as PUBLIC. You need to be on a good VT100 emulator (or a realVT terminal).

University of Maryland Info Database

The Computer Science department of the University of Marylandmaintains a repository of information on a wide variety of topics.They wish to give a working example of how network technology can(and should) provide as much information as possible to those who useit. Telnet to info.umd.edu and log in as info. The informationcontained in the database is accessible through a screen-orientedinterface, and everything therein is available via anonymous FTP.

There is a mailing list used to discuss the UMD Info Database,welcoming suggestions for new information, comments on the interfacethe system provides, and other related topics. Send mail [email protected] with a body of

subscribe INFO-L Your Full Name

Listservs for more information on using the Listserv system.

University of Michigan Weather Underground

The University of Michigan's Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, &Space Sciences maintains a database of weather and relatedinformation for the United States and Canada. Available are currentweather conditions and forecasts for cities in the U.S., a nationalweather summary, ski conditions, earthquake and hurricane updates,and a listing of severe weather conditions. Telnet tomadlab.sprl.umich.edu on port 3000 to use the system.

Geographic Name Server

A geographic database listing information for cities in the UnitedStates and some international locations is maintained by Merit, Inc.The database is searchable by city name, zip code, etc. It willrespond with a lot of information: the area code,elevation, time zone, and longitude and latitude are included. Forexample, a query of 19013 yields

0 Chester1 42045 Delaware2 PA Pennsylvania3 US United StatesF 45 Populated placeL 39 50 58 N 75 21 22 WP 45794E 22Z 19013Z 19014Z 19015Z 19016..

To use the server, telnet to martini.eecs.umich.edu on port3000. The command help will yield further instructions, alongwith an explanation for each of the fields in a reponse.

FEDIX—-Minority Scholarship Information

FEDIX is an on-line information service that links the highereducation community and the federal government to facilitate research,education, and services. The system provides accurate and timelyfederal agency information to colleges, universities, and otherresearch organizations. There are no registration fees and no accesscharges for FEDIX whatsoever.

FEDIX offers the Minority On-Line Information Service (MOLIS), adatabase listing current information about Black and Hispanic collegesand universities.

Daily information updates are made on federal education and researchprograms, scholarships, fellowships, and grants, available usedresearch equipment, and general information about FEDIX itself. Toaccess the database, telnet to fedix.fie.com and log in asfedix.

Science & Technology Information System

The STIS is maintained by the National Science Foundation (NSF), andprovides access to many NSF publications. The full text ofpublications can be searched online and copied from the system, whichcan accommodate up to ten users at one time. Telnet to stis.nsf.govand log in as public. Everything on the system is also available viaanonymous FTP. For further information, contact:

STIS, Office of Information Systems, Room 401National Science Foundation1800 G. Street, N.W.Washington, D.C. [email protected](202) 357-7492(202) 357-7663 (Fax)

Ocean Network Information Center

The University of Delaware College of Marine Studies offers access toan interactive database of research information covering all aspectsof marine studies, nicknamed OCEANIC. This includes the World OceanicCirculation Experiment (WOCE) information and program information,research ship schedules and information, and a Who's Who of email andmailing addresses for oceanic studies. Data from a variety ofacademic institutions based on research studies is also available.Telnet to delocn.udel.edu and log in as INFO.

NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED)

The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) is an ongoing project,funded by NASA, to make data and literature on extragalactic objectsavailable over computer networks. NED is an object-oriented databasewhich contains extensive information for nearly 132,000 extragalacticobjects taken from about major catalogs of galaxies, quasars, infraredand radio sources. NED provides positions, names, and other basicdata (e.g. magnitude types, sizes and redshifts as well asbibliographic references and abstracts). Searches can be done byname, around a name, and on an astronomical position. NED contains atutorial which guides the user through the retrieval process. Telnetto ipac.caltech.edu and log in as ned.

U.S. Naval Observatory Automated Data Service

Operated by the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., thisautomated data service provides database access to informationranging from current navigational satellite positioning, astronomicaldata, and software utilities. A wide variety of databases can besearched and instructions for file transfer are given. Telnet totycho.usno.navy.mil and log in as ads.

"My consciousness suddenly switched locations, for the first time inmy life, from the vicinity of my head and body to a point abouttwenty feet away from where I normally see the world." HowardRheingold, Virtual Reality p255

————————- Various Tools

New and interesting ways to use the Internet are being dreamed upevery day. As they gain wide-spread use, some methods becomenear-standard (or actual written standard) tools for Internet users totake advantage of. A few are detailed here; there are undoubtedlyothers, and new ideas spring up all the time. An active user of theInternet will discover most of the more common ones in time. Usually,these services are free. Commercial Services for applicationsthat are commercially available over the Internet.

Usenet is often used to announce a new service or capability onthe Internet. In particular, the groups comp.archives andcomp.protocols.tcp-ip are good places to look. Informationwill drift into other areas as word spreads. Usenet News forinformation on reading news.

Finger

On many systems there exists the finger command, which yieldinformation about each user that's currently logged in. This commandalso has extensions for use over the Internet, as well. Under normalcircumstances, the command is simply finger for a summary of who'slogged into the local system, or finger username for specificinformation about a user. It's also possible to go one step furtherand go onto the network. The general usage is

finger @hostname

To see who's currently logged in at Widener University, for instance, use

% finger @cs.widener.edu[cs.widener.edu]Login Name TTY Idle When Wherebrendan Brendan Kehoe p0 Fri 02:14 tattoo.cs.widenesven Sven Heinicke p1 Fri 04:16 xyplex3.cs.widen

To find out about a certain user, they can be fingered specifically(and need not be logged in):

% finger [email protected]
[cs.widener.edu]
Login name: bart In real life: Bart Simpson
Directory: /home/springfield/bart Shell: /bin/underachiever
Affiliation: Brother of Lisa Home System: channel29.fox.org
Last login Thu May 23 12:14 (EDT) on ttyp6 from channel29.fox.org.
No unread mail
Project: To become a "fluff" cartoon character.
Plan:
Don't have a cow, man.

Please realize that some sites are very security conscious, and needto restrict the information about their systems and users availableto the outside world. To that end, they often block finger requestsfrom outside sites—-so don't be surprised if fingering a computer ora user returns with Connection refused.

Internet Relay Chat

The Lamont View Server System
On lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu in pub/gb.tar.Z.

Ping

The ping command allows the user to check if another system iscurrently "up" and running. The general form of the commandis ping system. { The usage will, again, vary.}For example,

ping cs.widener.edu

will tell you if the main machine in Widener University's ComputerScience lab is currently online (we certainly hope so!).

Many implementations of ping also include an option to let yousee how fast a link is running (to give you some idea of the load onthe network). For example:

% ping -s cs.swarthmore.eduPING cs.swarthmore.edu: 56 data bytes64 bytes from 130.58.68.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=251 time=66 ms64 bytes from 130.58.68.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=251 time=45 ms64 bytes from 130.58.68.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=251 time=46 ms^C—- cs.swarthmore.edu ping statistics —-3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet lossround-trip min/avg/max = 45/52/66 ms

This case tells us that for cs.swarthmore.edu it takes about 46milliseconds for a packet to go from Widener to Swarthmore College andback again. It also gives the average and worst-case speeds, and anypacket loss that may have occurred (e.g. because of networkcongestion).

While ping generally doesn't hurt network performance, youshouldn't use it too often—-usually once or twice will leaveyou relatively sure of the other system's state.

Talk

Sometimes email is clumsy and difficult to manage when one reallyneeds to have an interactive conversation. The Internet provides forthat as well, in the form of talk. Two users can literally seeeach other type across thousands of miles.

To talk with Bart Simpson at Widener, one would type

talk bart@@cs.widener.edu

which would cause a message similar to the following to be displayedon Bart's terminal:

Message from [email protected] at 21:45 …talk: connection requested by [email protected]: respond with: talk [email protected]

Bart would, presumably, respond by typing talk [email protected] could then chat about whatever they wished, with instantaneousresponse time, rather than the write-and-wait style of email. Toleave talk, on many systems one would type Ctrl-C (hold downthe Control key and press C). Check local documentation to be sure.

There are two different versions of talk in common use today. Thefirst, dubbed "old talk," is supported by a set of Unix systems(most notably, those currently sold by Sun). The second, ntalk(aka "new talk"), is more of the standard. If, when attempting totalk with another user, it responds with an error about protocolfamilies, odds are the incompatibilities between versions of talk isthe culprit. It's up to the system administrators of sites which usethe old talk to install ntalk for their users.

Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS)

The WHOIS Database

The main WHOIS database is run at the Network Information Center(NIC). The whois command will let you search a database of everyregistered domain (e.g. mit.edu) and of registered users. It'sprimarily used by system postmasters or listowners to find the Pointsof Contact for a site, to let them know of a problem or contact themfor one reason or another. You can also find out their postaladdress. For example:

% whois mit.edu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) MIT.EDU 18.72.2.1
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT-DOM) MIT.EDU

Note that there are two entries for mit.edu; we'll go for thesecond.

% whois mit-dom
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT-DOM)
Cambridge, MA 02139

Domain Name: MIT.EDU

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:Schiller, Jeffrey I. (JIS) [email protected](617) 253-8400

Record last updated on 22-Jun-88.

Domain servers in listed order:
STRAWB.MIT.EDU 18.71.0.151
W20NS.MIT.EDU 18.70.0.160
BITSY.MIT.EDU 18.72.0.3
LITHIUM.LCS.MIT.EDU 18.26.0.121

To see this host record with registered users, repeat the command witha star ('*') before the name; or, use '%' to show JUST the registered users.

Much better! Now this information (sought, possibly, by a systemadministrator) can be used to find out how to notify MIT of a securityissue or problem with connectivity.

Queries can be made for individuals as well; the following would yieldan entry for the author:

% whois brendan
Kehoe, Brendan (BK59) [email protected]
Widener University
Department of Computer Science
Kirkbride 219
P.O. Box 83 Widener University
Chester, PA 19013
(215)/499-4011

Record last updated on 02-May-91.

Included is the author's name, his handle (a unique sequence of lettersand numbers), information on how to contact him, and the last time the recordwas modified in any way.

Anyone can register with the whois database. People who areadministrative or technical contacts for domains are registeredautomatically when their domain applications are processed. Fornormal users, one must simply fill out a form from the NIC. FTP tonic.ddn.mil and get the file netinfo/user-template.txt. The completedform should be mailed to [email protected].

Other Uses of WHOIS

Also, many educational sites run WHOIS servers of their own, to offerinformation about people who may be currently on the staff orattending the institution. To specify a WHOIS server, manyimplementations include some sort of option or qualifier—-in VMSunder MultiNet, it's /HOST, in Unix -h. To receiveinformation about using the Stanford server, one might use the command

whois -h stanford.edu help

A large list of systems offering WHOIS services is being maintained byMatt Power of MIT ([email protected]). It is available viaanonymous FTP from sipb.mit.edu, in the directorypub/whois. The file is named whois-servers.list.

The systems available include, but are certainly not limited to,Syracuse University (syr.edu), New York University(acfcluster.nyu.edu), the University of California at San Diego(ucsd.edu), and Stanford University (stanford.edu).

"Fingers were made before forks."
Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation

———-
 Commercial Services

Many services can be accessed through the Internet. As timeprogresses and more outlets for commercial activity appear,once-restricted traffic (by the NSFnet Acceptable Use Policy) may nowflow freely. Now that there are other networks for that informationto travel on, businesses are making their move.

Internet Service Providers

Providers (AlterNet, PSI, etc)…

SupercomputersThe Internet Resource Guide (IRG) contains a chapter oncomputer time that's available for a fee. Rather than reproduce ithere, which would fast become out-of-date as well as triple the sizeof this guide, it's suggested that the reader consult the IRG if suchservices are of interest.

Electronic Journals

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) publishes a hard-copydirectory of electronic journals, newsletters, and scholarlydiscussion lists. It is a compilation of entries for hundreds of

sts, dozens of journals and newsletters, and a many"other" titles, including newsletter-digests, into one referencesource. Each entry includes instructions on how to access thereferenced publication or list.

The documents are available electronically by sending the commands

get ejournl1 directryget ejournl2 directry

to the server at [email protected] for further instructions on using a listserv.

The directory, along with a compilation by Diane Kovacs calledDirectories of Academic E-Mail Conferences, is available inprint and on diskette (DOS WordPerfect and MacWord) from:

Office of Scientific & Academic PublishingAssociation of Research Libraries1527 New Hampshire Avenue, NWWashington, DC [email protected](202) 232—2466(202) 462—7849 (Fax)

The ARL is a not-for-profit organization representing over onehundred research libraries in the United States and Canada. Thepublication is available to ARL members for $10 and to non-membersfor $20 (add $5 postage per directory for foreign addresses). Ordersof six or more copies will receive a 10% discount; all orders must beprepaid and sent to the ARL.

Commercial Databases

The American Institute of Physics maintains the Physics InformationNetwork. It contains the bibliographic SPIN and General PhysicsAdvanced Abstracts databases. Also available is access to bulletinboards and several searchable lists (job notices, announcements, etc).Telnet to pinet.aip.org; new users must log in as NEWand give registration information.

Some of the databases accessible through WAIS (WAIS) areavailable for a fee.

Clarinet News

Clarinet's an electronic publishing network service that providesprofessional news and information, including live UPI wireservicenews, in the Usenet file format.

Clarinet lets you read an "electronic newspaper" right on the localsystem; you can get timely industry news, technology relatedwirestories, syndicated columns and features, financial information,stock quotes and more.

Clarinet's provided by using the Usenet message interchange format,and is available via UUCP and other delivery protocols, includingNNTP.

The main feature is ClariNews, an "electronic newspaper,"gathered live from the wire services of United Press International(UPI). ClariNews articles are distributed in 100 newsgroups based ontheir subject matter, and are keyworded for additional topics and thegeographical location of the story. ClariNews includes headlines,industry news, box scores, network TV schedules, and more. The mainproducts of ClariNews are:

ClariNews General, the general news"paper" with news,sports, and features, averaging about 400 stories per day.

TechWire, special groups for stories on science,technology, and industry stories around them.

ClariNews-Biz, business and financial stories.

Newsbytes, a daily computer industry newsmagazine.

Syndicated Columns, including Dave Barry (humor) and Mike
Royko (opinion).

Full information on ClariNet, including subscription information, isavailable from

Clarinet Communications Corp.124 King St. NorthWaterloo, Ontario N2J 2X8info@@clarinet.com(800) USE-NETS

or with anonymous FTP in the directory /Clarinet onftp.uu.net (Anonymous FTP).

"Needless to say, Aristotle did not envisage modern finance."
Frederick Copleston, S.J.
A History of Philosophy: Vol 1 Greece & Rome Part II, p95

————-
 Things You'll Hear About

There are certain things that you'll hear about shortly after youstart actively using the Internet. Most people assume that everyone'sfamiliar with them, and they require no additional explanation. Ifonly that were true!

This section addresses a few topics that are commonly encountered andasked about as a new user explores Cyberspace. Some of them aredirectly related to how the networks are run today; other points aresimply interesting to read about.

The Internet Worm

from a letter by Severo M. Ornstein, in ACM June 89 Vol32 No6and the appeal notice

On November 2, 1988, Robert Morris, Jr., a graduate student inComputer Science at Cornell, wrote an experimental, self-replicating,self-propagating program called a worm and injected it into theInternet. He chose to release it from MIT, to disguise the fact thatthe worm came from Cornell. Morris soon discovered that the programwas replicating and reinfecting machines at a much faster rate thanhe had anticipated—-there was a bug. Ultimately, many machines atlocations around the country either crashed or became "catatonic."When Morris realized what was happening, he contacted a friend atHarvard to discuss a solution. Eventually, they sent an anonymousmessage from Harvard over the network, instructing programmers how tokill the worm and prevent reinfection. However, because the networkroute was clogged, this message did not get through until it was toolate. Computers were affected at many sites, including universities,military sites, and medical research facilities. The estimated costof dealing with the worm at each installation ranged from $200 tomore than $53,000. { Derived in part from a letter by Severo M.Ornstein, in the Communications of the ACM, Vol 32 No 6, June 1989.}

The program took advantage of a hole in the debug mode of the Unixsendmail program, which runs on a system and waits for other systemsto connect to it and give it email, and a hole in the finger daemonfingerd, which serves finger requests (Finger). People at theUniversity of California at Berkeley and MIT had copies of theprogram and were actively disassembling it (returning the programback into its source form) to try to figure out how it worked.

Teams of programmers worked non-stop to come up with at least atemporary fix, to prevent the continued spread of the worm. Afterabout twelve hours, the team at Berkeley came up with steps thatwould help retard the spread of the virus. Another method was alsodiscovered at Purdue and widely published. The information didn'tget out as quickly as it could have, however, since so many sites hadcompletely disconnected themselves from the network.

After a few days, things slowly began to return to normalcy andeveryone wanted to know who had done it all. Morris was later namedin The New York Times as the author (though this hadn't yet beenofficially proven, there was a substantial body of evidence pointingto Morris).

Robert T. Morris was convicted of violating the computer Fraud andAbuse Act (Title 18), and sentenced to three years of probation, 400hours of community service, a fine of $10,050, and the costs of hissupervision. His appeal, filed in December, 1990, was rejected thefollowing March.

The Cuckoo's Egg

First in an article entitled "Stalking the Wily Hacker," and laterin the book The Cuckoo's Egg, Clifford Stoll detailed his experiencestrying to track down someone breaking into a system at LawrenceBerkeley Laboratory in California. { See the bibliography for fullcitations.}

A 75-cent discrepancy in the Lab's accounting records led Stoll on achase through California, Virginia, and Europe to end up in a smallapartment in Hannover, West Germany. Stoll dealt with many levels ofbureaucracy and red tape, and worked with the FBI, the CIA, and theGerman Bundespost trying to track his hacker down.

The experiences of Stoll, and particularly his message in speakingengagements, have all pointed out the dire need for communicationbetween parties on a network of networks. The only way everyone canpeacefully co-exist in Cyberspace is by ensuring rapid recognition ofany existing problems.

Organizations

The indomitable need for humans to congregate and share their commoninterests is also present in the computing world. User groupsexist around the world, where people share ideas and experiences.Similarly, there are organizations which are one step "above" usergroups; that is to say, they exist to encourage or promote an idea orset of ideas, rather than support a specific computer or applicationof computers.

The Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery (the ACM) was founded in1947, immediately after Eckert and Mauchly unveiled one of the firstelectronic computers, the ENIAC, in 1946. Since then, the ACM hasgrown by leaps and bounds, becoming one of the leading educationaland scientific societies in the computer industry.

The ACM's stated purposes are:

To advance the sciences and arts of information processing;

To promote the free interchange of information about the sciences andarts of information processing both among specialists and among thepublic;

To develop and maintain the integrity and competence of individualsengaged in the practices of the sciences and arts of informationprocessing.

Membership in the ACM has grown from seventy-eight in September, 1947,to over 77,000 today. There are local chapters around the world, andmany colleges and universities endorse student chapters. Lecturersfrequent these meetings, which tend to be one step above the normal"user group" gathering. A large variety of published material isalso available at discounted prices for members of the association.

The ACM has a number of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) thatconcentrate on a certain area of computing, ranging from graphics tothe Ada programming language to security. Each of the SIGs alsopublishes its own newsletter. There is a Usenet group, comp.org.acm,for the discussion of ACM topics. Usenet News for more informationon reading news.

For more information and a membership application, write to:

Assocation for Computing Machinery1515 BroadwayNew York City, NY [email protected](212) 869-7440

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibilityfrom their letter to prospective members

The CPSR is an alliance of computer professionals concentrating oncertain areas of the impact of computer technology on society. Ittraces its history to the fall of 1981, when several researchers inPalo Alto, California, organized a lunch meeting to discuss theirshared concerns about the connection between computing and thenuclear arms race. Out of that meeting and the discussions whichfollowed, CPSR was born, and has been active ever since. { Thissection is part of the CPSR's letter to prospective members.}

The national CPSR program focuses on the following project areas:

Reliability and Risk This area reflects on the concern thatoverreliance on computing technology can lead to unacceptable risksto society. It includes, but isn't limited to, work in analyzingmilitary systems such as SDI.

Civil Liberties and Privacy This project is concerned with suchtopics as the FBI National Crime Information Center, the growing useof databases by both government and private industry, the right ofaccess to public information, extension of First Amendment rights toelectronic communication, and establishing legal protections forprivacy of computerized information.

Computers in the Workplace The CPSR Workplace Project hasconcentrated its attention on the design of software for theworkplace, and particularly on the philosophy of "participatorydesign," in which software designers work together with users toensure that systems meet the actual needs of that workplace.

The 21st Century Project This is a coalition with otherprofessional organizations working towards redirecting nationalresearch priorities from concentrating on military issues toanticipating and dealing with future problems as science andtechnology enter the next century.

For more information on the CPSR, contact them at:

Computer Professionals for Social ResponsibilityP.O. Box 717Palo Alto, CA [email protected](415) 322—3778(415) 322—3798 (Fax)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was established to helpcivilize the "electronic frontier"—-the Cyberspacial mediumbecoming ever-present in today's society; to make it truly useful andbeneficial not just to a technical elite, but to everyone; and to dothis in a way which is in keeping with the society's highesttraditions of the free and open flow of information andcommunication. { This section was derived from eff.about, availablealong with other material via anonymous FTP from ftp.eff.org}

The mission of the EFF is to engage in and support educationalactivities which increase popular understanding of the opportunitiesand challenges posed by developments in computing andtelecommunications;

to develop among policy-makers a better understanding of theissues underlying free and open telecommunications, and support thecreation of legal and structural approaches which will ease theassimilation of these new technologies by society;

to raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising fromthe rapid advancement in the area of new computer-basedcommunications media and, where necessary, support litigation in thepublic interest to preserve, protect, and extend First Amendmentrights within the realm of computing and telecommunicationstechnology;

to encourage and support the development of new tools which willendow non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-basedtelecommunications;

The Usenet newsgroups comp.org.eff.talk and comp.org.eff.news arededicated to discussion concerning the EFF. They also have mailinglist counterparts for those that don't have access to Usenet,[email protected] and [email protected]. The first isan informal arena (aka a normal newsgroup) where anyone may voice hisor her opinions. The second, comp.org.eff.news, is a moderated areafor regular postings from the EFF in the form of EFFector Online. Tosubmit a posting for the EFFector Online, or to get generalinformation about the EFF, write to [email protected]. There is also awealth of information available via anonymous FTP on ftp.eff.org.

The EFF can be contacted at

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc.155 Second St. #1Cambridge, MA [email protected](617) 864-0665(617) 864-0866 (Fax)

The Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation was started by Richard Stallman (creatorof the popular GNU Emacs editor). It is dedicated to eliminatingrestrictions on copying, redistributing, and modifying software.

The word "free" in their name does not refer to price; it refers tofreedom. First, the freedom to copy a program and redistribute it toyour neighbors, so that they can use it as well as you. Second, thefreedom to change a program, so that you can control it instead of itcontrolling you; for this, the source code must be made available toyou.

The Foundation works to provide these freedoms by developing freecompatible replacements for proprietary software. Specifically, theyare putting together a complete, integrated software system called"GNU" that is upward-compatible with Unix. { As an aside, the editorof the GNU project, emacs, contains a built-in LISP interpreter and alarge part of its functionality is written in LISP. The name GNU isitself recursive (the mainstay of the LISP language); it stands for"Gnu's Not Unix."}

When it is released, everyone will be permitted to copy it anddistribute it to others. In addition, it will be distributed withsource code, so you will be able to learn about operating systems byreading it, to port it to your own machine, and to exchange thechanges with others.

For more information on the Free Software Foundation and the status ofthe GNU Project, or for a list of the current tasks that still need tobe done, write to [email protected].

The IEEE

Need IEEE…

The League for Programming Freedom

The League for Programming Freedom is a grass-roots organization ofprofessors, students, businessmen, programmers and users dedicated to"bringing back" the freedom to write programs, which they contendhas been lost over the past number years. The League is not opposedto the legal system that Congress intended—copyright on individualprograms. Their aim is to reverse the recent changes made by judges inresponse to special interests, often explicitly rejecting the publicinterest principles of the Constitution.

The League works to abolish the new monopolies by publishing articles,talking with public officials, boycotting egregious offenders, and inthe future may intervene in court cases. On May 24, 1989, the Leaguepicketed Lotus headquarters because of their lawsuits, and thenagain on August 2, 1990. These marches stimulated widespread mediacoverage for the issue. They welcome suggestions for otheractivities, as well as help in carrying them out.

For information on the League and how to join, write to

League for Programming Freedom1 Kendall Square #143P.O. Box 9171Cambridge, MA [email protected]

Networking Initiatives

Research and development are two buzz words often heard whendiscussing the networking field—-everything needs to go faster, overlonger distances, for a lower cost. To "keep current," one shouldread the various trade magazines and newspapers, or frequent thenetworking-oriented newsgroups of Usenet. If possible, attend tradeshows and symposia like Usenix, Interop, et. al.

ISDN

NREN

The National Research and Education Network (NREN) is a five-yearproject approved by Congress in the Fall of 1991. It's intended tocreate a national electronic "super-highway." The NREN will be 50times faster than the fastest available networks (at the time of thiswriting). Proponents of the NREN claim it will be possible totransfer the equivalent of the entire text of the EncyclopediaBritannica in one second. Further information, including theoriginal text of the bill presented by Senator Al Gore (D—TN), isavailable through anonymous FTP to nis.nsf.net, in the directorynsfnet. In addition, Vint Cerf wrote on the then-proposed NREN inRFC-1167, Thoughts on the National Research and Education Network.RFCs for information on obtaining RFCs.

A mailing list, [email protected], is available fordiscussion of the NREN; write [email protected] to be added.

"To talk in publick, to think in solitude,to read and to hear, to inquire,and to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar."Samuel JohnsonChapter VIIIThe History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

——- Finding Out More

Internet Resource Guide

The NSF Network Service Center (NNSC) compiles and makes available anInternet Resource Guide (IRG). The goal of the guide is to increase thevisibility of various Internet resources that may help users do theirwork better. While not yet an exhaustive list, the guide is a usefulcompendium of many resources and can be a helpful reference for a newuser.

Resources listed are grouped by types into sections. Current sectionsinclude descriptions of online library catalogs, data archives, onlinewhite pages directory services, networks, network information centers,and computational resources, such as supercomputers. Each entrydescribes the resource, identifies who can use the resource, explainshow to reach the local network via the Internet, and lists contactsfor more information. The list is distributed electronically by theNNSC. To receive a guide, or to get on a mailing list that alerts youto when it is updated, send a message [email protected].

The current edition of the IRG is available via anonymous FTP fromnnsc.nsf.net, in the directory /resource-guide.

Requests for Comments

The internal workings of the Internet are defined by a set ofdocuments called RFCs (Request for Comments). The general processfor creating an RFC is for someone wanting something formalized towrite a document describing the issue and mailing it to Jon Postel([email protected]). He acts as a referee for the proposal. It is thencommented upon by all those wishing to take part in the discussion(electronically, of course). It may go through multiple revisions.Should it be generally accepted as a good idea, it will be assigned anumber and filed with the RFCs.

The RFCs can be divided into five groups: required, suggested,directional, informational and obsolete. Required RFCs (e.g.,RFC-791, The Internet Protocol) must be implemented on any hostconnected to the Internet.

Suggested RFCs are generally implemented by network hosts. Lack ofthem does not preclude access to the Internet, but may impact itsusability. RFC-793, Transmission Control Protocol, is a must forthose implementing TCP.

Directional RFCs were discussed and agreed to, but their applicationhas never come into wide use. This may be due to the lack of wideneed for the specific application (RFC-937, The Post Office Protocol) orthat, although technically superior, ran against other pervasiveapproaches (RFC-891, Hello). It is suggested that, should the facilitybe required by a particular site, an implementation be done inaccordance with the RFC. This ensures that, should the idea be onewhose time has come, the implementation will be in accordance withsome standard and will be generally usable.

Informational RFCs contain factual information about the Internet andits operation (RFC-990, Assigned Numbers).

There is also a subset of RFCs called FYIs (For Your Information).They are written in a language much more informal than that used inthe other, standard RFCs. Topics range from answers to commonquestions for new and experienced users to a suggested bibliography.

Finally, as the Internet has grown and technology has changed, someRFCs become unnecessary. These obsolete RFCs cannot be ignored,however. Frequently when a change is made to some RFC that causes anew one to obsolete others, the new RFC only contains explanations andmotivations for the change. Understanding the model on which thewhole facility is based may involve reading the original andsubsequent RFCs on the topic.

RFCs and FYIs are available via FTP from many sources, including:

The nic.ddn.mil archive, as /rfc/rfc-xxxx.txt, wherexxxx is the number of the RFC.

from ftp.uu.net, in the directory /RFC.

They're also available through mail by writing [email protected], with a Subject: line of send RFC-xxxx.TXT, againwith xxxx being the RFC number.

"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or weknow where we can find information upon it."Samuel JohnsonLetter to Lord ChesterfieldFebruary, 1755a book of quotes said April 18, 1775 .. the book of Johnson's workssaid it's 1755; I'll go with the latter.

———-Conclusion

This guide is far from complete—-the Internet changes on a daily (ifnot hourly) basis. However, this booklet should provide enoughinformation to make the incredible breadth and complexity of theInternet a mite less imposing. Coupled with some exploration andexperimentation, every user has the potential to be a competent netcitizen, using the facilities that are available to their fullest.

You, the reader, are strongly encouraged to suggest improvements toany part of this booklet. If something was unclear, left you withdoubts, or wasn't addressed, it should be fixed. If you find anyproblems, inaccuracies, spelling errors, etc., please report them to:

Brendan Kehoe
Department of Computer Science
Widener University
Chester, PA 19013

Internet: [email protected]
UUCP: …!widener!guide-bugs

If you are interested in future updates to this guide (aside fromnormal new editions), discussion about information to be included orremoved, etc., write to [email protected] to be placed ona mailing list for such things.

@dots is actually `. . . .'"I've seed de first an de last @dots I seed de beginnin,en now I sees de endin."William FaulknerThe Sound & The FuryApril 8, 1928

————

Getting to Other Networks

Inter-connectivity has been and always will be one of the biggestgoals in computer networking. The ultimate desire is to make it soone person can contact anyone else no matter where they are. A numberof "gateways" between networks have been set up. They include:

AppleLinkQuantum Services sells access to AppleLink, which is similar toQuantumLink for Commodore computers and PCLink for IBM PCs andcompatibles. It also provides email access through the [email protected].

ATTMailAT&T sells a commercial email service called ATTMail. Its userscan be reached by writing to [email protected].

BIXUsers on BIX (the Byte Information eXchange) can be reachedthrough the DAS gateway at [email protected].

CompuServe (CI$)To reach a user on the commercial service CompuServe, you mustaddress the mail as [email protected], withxxxxx.xxx being their CompuServe user ID. Normally CompuServeids are represented as being separated by a comma (like71999,141); since most mailers don't react well to havingcommas in addresses, it was changed to a period. For the aboveaddress, mail would be sent to [email protected].

EasyNetDigital sells a service called EasyNet; users that subscribe to it canbe reached with the addresses [email protected] oruser%[email protected].

FidoNetThe FidoNet computer network can be reached by using a specialaddressing method. If John Smith is on the node 1:2/3.4 onFidoNet, his or her email address would [email protected](notice how the numbers fall in place?).

MCI MailMCI also sells email accounts (similar to ATTMail). Users can bereached with [email protected].

PeaceNetUsers on the PeaceNet network can be reached by writing [email protected].

The WellUsers on the service The Well can be reached by writing [email protected]. The Well is directly connected to the Internet.

This table is far from complete. In addition to sites not beinglisted, some services are not (nor do they plan to be) accessiblefrom the "outside" (like Prodigy); others, like GEnie, are activelyinvestigating the possibility of creating a gateway into theirsystem. For the latest information, consult a list called theInter-Network Mail Guide. It's available from a number of FTP sites,including UUNET; Anonymous FTP, for more information on getting acopy of it using anonymous FTP.

Retrieving Files via Email

For those who have a connection to the Internet, but cannot FTP, theredo exist a few alternatives to get those files you so desperatelyneed. When requesting files, it's imperative that you keep in mindthe size of your request—-odds are the other people who may be usingyour link won't be too receptive to sudden bursts of really heavytraffic on their normally sedate connection.

Archive Servers

An alternative to the currently well over-used FTPmail system istaking advantage of the many archive servers that are presentlybeing maintained. These are programs that receive email messages thatcontain commands, and act on them. For example, sending an archiveserver the command help will usually yield, in the form of apiece of email, information on how to use the various commands thatthe server has available.

One such archive server is [email protected]. Maintained bythe Network Information Center (NIC) in Chantilly, VA, the server isset up to make all of the information at the NIC available for peoplewho don't have access to FTP. This also includes the WHOIS service(Whois). Some sample Subject: lines for queries to theNIC server are:

Subject: help Describes available commands.
Subject: rfc 822 Sends a copy of RFC-822.
Subject: rfc index Sends an index of the available RFCs.
Subject: netinfo domain-template.txt Sends a domain application.
Subject: whois widener Sends WHOIS information on `widener'.

More information on using their archive server can be obtained bywriting to their server address [email protected] with aSubject: of help.

There are different "brands" of archive server, each with its ownset of commands and services. Among them there often exists a commonset of commands and services (e.g. index, help, etc).Be that as it may, one should always consult the individual help for aspecific server before assuming the syntax—-100K surprises can behard on a system.

FTP-by-Mail ServersSome systems offer people the ability to receive files through amock-FTP interface via email. Anonymous FTP for a general overview ofhow to FTP. The effects of providing such a service varies, althougha rule of thumb is that it will probably use a substantial amount ofthe available resources on a system.

The "original" FTP-by-Mail service, BITFTP, is available to BITNETusers from the Princeton node PUCC. It was once accessible toanyone, but had to be closed out to non-BITNET users because of theheavy load on the system.

In response to this closure, Paul Vixie designed and installed asystem called FTPmail on one of Digital's gateway computers,decwrl.dec.com. Write to [email protected] with help in thebody of the letter for instructions on its use. The software isundergoing constant development; once it reaches a stable state,other sites will be encouraged to adopt it and provide the servicealso.

Newsgroup Creation

Everyone has the opportunity to make a Call For Votes on theUsenet and attempt to create a newsgroup that he/she feels would be ofbenefit to the general readership. The rules governing newsgroupcreation have evolved over the years into a generally accepted method.They only govern the "world" groups; they aren't applicable toregional or other alternative hierarchies.

Discussion

A discussion must first take place to address issues like the namingof the group, where in the group tree it should go (e.g.rec.sports.koosh vs rec.games.koosh?), and whether or not it shouldbe created in the first place. The formal Request For Discussion(RFD) should be posted to news.announce.newgroups, along with anyother groups or mailing lists at all related to the proposed topic.news.announce.newgroups is moderated. You should place it first inthe Newsgroups: header, so that it will get mailed to the moderatoronly. The article won't be immediately posted to the othernewsgroups listed; rather, it will give you the opportunity to havethe moderator correct any inconsistencies or mistakes in your RFD.He or she will take care of posting it to the newsgroups youindicated. Also the Followup-To: header will be set so that theactual discussion takes place only in news.groups. If a user hasdifficulty posting to a moderated group, he or she may mailsubmissions intended for news.announce.newgroups to the [email protected].

The final name and charter of the group, and whether it will bemoderated or unmoderated, will be determined during the discussionperiod. If it's to be moderated, the discussion will also decide whothe moderator will be. If there's no general agreement on thesepoints among those in favor of a new group at the end of 30 days,the discussion will be taken into mail rather than continued postingto news.groups; that way, the proponents of the group can iron outtheir differences and come back with a proper proposal, and makea new Request For Discussion.

VotingAfter the discussion period (which is mandatory), if it's beendetermined that a new group really is desired, a name and charter areagreed upon, and it's been determined whether the group will bemoderated (and by whom), a Call For Votes (CFV) should be postedto news.announce.newgroups, along with any other groups thatthe original Request For Discussion was posted to. The CFV should beposted (or mailed to the news.announce.newgroups moderator) assoon as possible after the discussion ends (to keep it fresh ineveryone's mind).

The Call for Votes should include clear instructions on how to cast avote. It's important that it be clearly explained how to both votefor and against a group (and be of equivalent difficulty orease). If it's easier for you or your administrator, two separateaddresses can be used to mail yes and no votes to, providing thatthey're on the same machine. Regardless of the method, everyonemust have a very specific idea of how to get his/her vote counted.

The voting period can last between 21 and 31 days, no matter what thepreliminary results of the vote are. A vote can't be called offsimply because 400 "no" votes have come in and only two "yes"votes. The Call for Votes should include the exact date that thevoting period will end—-only those votes arriving on the vote-taker'smachine before this date can be counted.

To keep awareness high, the CFV can be repeated during the vote,provided that it gives the same clear, unbiased instructions forcasting a vote as the original; it also has to be the same proposal aswas first posted. The charter can't change in mid-vote. Also, votesthat're posted don't count—-only those that were mailed to thevote-taker can be tallied.

Partial results should never be included; only a statement ofthe specific proposal, that a vote is in progress on it, and how tocast a vote. A mass acknowledgement ("Mass ACK" or "Vote ACK") ispermitted; however, it must be presented in a way that gives noindication of which way a person voted. One way to avoid this is tocreate one large list of everyone who's voted, and sort it inalphabetical order. It should not be two sorted lists (of the yes andno votes, respectively).

Every vote is autonomous. The votes for or against one group can't betransferred to another, similar proposal. A vote can only count forthe exact proposal that it was a response to. In particular, a votefor or against a newsgroup under one name can't be counted as a votefor or against another group with a different name or charter, adifferent moderated/unmoderated status, or, if it's moderated, adifferent moderator or set of moderators. Whew!

Finally, the vote has to be explicit; they should be of the form Ivote for the group foo.bar as proposed or I vote against the groupfoo.bar as proposed. The wording doesn't have to be exact, yourintention just has to be clear.

The Result of a Vote

At the end of the voting period, the vote-taker has to post (tonews.announce.newgroups) the tally and email addresses of the votesreceived. Again, it can also be posted to any of the groups listed inthe original CFV. The tally should make clear which way a personvoted, so the results can be verified if it proves necessary to do so.

After the vote result is posted to news.announce.newgroups,there is a mandatory five-day waiting period. This affords everyonethe opportunity to correct any errors or inconsistencies in the voterlist or the voting procedure.

Creation of the Group

If, after the waiting period, there are no serious objections thatmight invalidate the vote, the vote is put to the "water test." Ifthere were 100 more valid YES/create votes than NO/don't createvotes, and at least two-thirds of the total number of votes are infavor of creation, then a newgroup control message can be sent out(often by the moderator of news.announce.newgroups). If the 100-votemargin or the two-thirds percentage isn't met, the group has failedand can't be created.

If the proposal failed, all is not lost—-after a six-month waitingperiod (a "cooling down"), a new Request For Discussion can be postedto news.groups, and the whole process can start over again. If aftera couple of tries it becomes obvious that the group is notwanted or needed, the vote-taker should humbly step back and acceptthe opinion of the majority. (As life goes, so goes Usenet.)

————

Glossary

This glossary is only a tiny subset of all of the various terms andother things that people regularly use on The Net. For a morecomplete (and very entertaining) reference, it's suggested you get acopy of The New Hacker's Dictionary, which is based on a VERY largetext file called the Jargon File. Edited by Eric Raymond([email protected]), it is available from the MIT Press,Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02142; its ISBN number is 0-262-68069-6.Also see RFC-1208, A Glossary of Networking Terms.

:-)This odd symbol is one of the ways a person can portray "mood" inthe very flat medium of computers—-by using "smilies." This is`metacommunication', and there are literally hundreds of them, fromthe obvious to the obscure. This particular example expresses"happiness." Don't see it? Tilt your head to the left 90 degrees.Smilies are also used to denote sarcasm.

Network addresses are usually of two types:

the physical or hardware address of a network interface card; forethernet this 48-bit address might be 0260.8C00.7666. The hardwareaddress is used to forward packets within a physical network.Fortunately, network users do not have to be concerned about hardwareaddresses since they are automatically handled by the networkingsoftware.

The logical or Internet address is used to facilitate moving databetween physical networks. The 32-bit Internet address is made up of anetwork number, a subnetwork number, and a host number. Each hostcomputer on the Internet, has a unique address. For example, allInternet addresses at Colorado State have a network number of 129.82, asubnet number in the range of 1-254, and a host number in the range of1-254. All Internet hosts have a numeric address and an English-stylename. For example, the Internet address for UCC's CYBER 840 is129.82.103.96; its Internet name is csugreen.UCC.ColoState.EDU.

 address resolution
Conversion of an Internet address to the corresponding physical address.
On an ethernet, resolution requires broadcasting on the local area network.

administriviaAdministrative tasks, most often related to the maintenance of mailinglists, digests, news gateways, etc.

anonymous FTPAlso known as "anon FTP"; a service provided to make files availableto the general Internet community—-Anonymous FTP.

ANSIThe American National Standards Institute disseminates basic standardslike ASCII, and acts as the United States' delegate to the ISO.Standards can be ordered from ANSI by writing to the ANSI Sales Department,1430 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, or by telephoning (212) 354-3300.

archieA service which provides lookups for packages in a database of theofferings of countless of anonymous FTP sites. archie for afull description.

archive serverAn email-based file transfer facility offered by some systems.

ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency)Former name of DARPA, the government agency that funded ARPAnet andlater the DARPA Internet.

ARPAnetA pioneering long haul network funded by ARPA. Itserved as the basis for early networking research as well as acentral backbone during the development of the Internet. TheARPAnet consisted of individual packet switching computersinterconnected by leased lines. The ARPAnet no longer exists as asingular entity.

asynchronousTransmission by individual bytes, not related to specific timing on thetransmitting end.

auto-magicSomething which happens pseudo-automatically, and is usually toocomplex to go into any further than to say it happens "auto-magically."

backboneA high-speed connection within a network that connects shorter,usually slower circuits. Also used in reference to a system that actsas a "hub" for activity (although those are becoming much lessprevalent now than they were ten years ago).

bandwidthThe capacity of a medium to transmit a signal. More informally, themythical "size" of The Net, and its ability to carry the files andmessages of those that use it. Some view certain kinds of traffic(FTPing hundreds of graphics images, for example) as a "waste ofbandwidth" and look down upon them.

 BITNET (Because It's Time Network)
An NJE-based international educational network.

 bounce
The return of a piece of mail because of an error in its delivery.

 btw
An abbreviation for "by the way."

CFV (Call For Votes)Initiates the voting period for a Usenet newsgroup. At least one(occasionally two or more) email address is customarily included as arepository for the votes. See Newsgroup Creationfor a full description of the Usenet voting process.

 ClariNews
The fee-based Usenet newsfeed available from ClariNet Communications.

clientThe user of a network service; also used to describe a computer thatrelies upon another for some or all of its resources.

 Cyberspace
A term coined by William Gibson in his fantasy novel
Neuromancer to describe the "world" of computers, and the
society that gathers around them.

datagramThe basic unit of information passed across the Internet. It containsa source and destination address along with data. Large messages arebroken down into a sequence of IP datagrams.

 disassembling
Converting a binary program into human-readable machine language code.

 DNS (Domain Name System)
The method used to convert Internet names to their corresponding
Internet numbers.

domainA part of the naming hierarchy. Syntactically, a domain name consistsof a sequence of names or other words separated by dots.

dotted quadA set of four numbers connected with periods that make up an Internetaddress; for example, 147.31.254.130.

emailThe vernacular abbreviation for electronic mail.

email addressThe UUCP or domain-based address that a user is referred to with. Forexample, the author's address is [email protected].

ethernetA 10-million bit per second networking scheme originally developed byXerox Corporation. Ethernet is widely used for LANs because it cannetwork a wide variety of computers, it is not proprietary, andcomponents are widely available from many commercial sources.

FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface)An emerging standard for network technology based on fiber optics thathas been established by ANSI. FDDI specifies a 100-million bit persecond data rate. The access control mechanism uses token ringtechnology.

flameA piece of mail or a Usenet posting which is violently argumentative.

FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name)The FQDN is the full site name of a system, rather than just itshostname. For example, the system lisa at Widener Universityhas a FQDN of lisa.cs.widener.edu.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)The Internet standard high-level protocol for transferring files fromone computer to another.

FYIAn abbreviation for the phrase "for your information." There isalso a series of RFCs put out by the Network Information Center calledFYIs; they address common questions of new users and many other usefulthings. RFCs for instructions on retrieving FYIs.

gatewayA special-purpose dedicated computer that attaches to two or morenetworks and routes packets from one network to the other. Inparticular, an Internet gateway routes IP datagrams among the networksit connects. Gateways route packets to other gateways until they can bedelivered to the final destination directly across one physical network.

headerThe portion of a packet, preceding the actual data, containing sourceand destination addresses and error-checking fields. Also part of amessage or news article.

hostnameThe name given to a machine. (See also FQDN.)

IMHO (In My Humble Opinion)This usually accompanies a statement that may bring about personaloffense or strong disagreement.

InternetA concatenation of many individual TCP/IP campus, state, regional, andnational networks (such as NSFnet, ARPAnet, and Milnet) into onesingle logical network all sharing a common addressing scheme.

Internet numberThe dotted-quad address used to specify a certain system. TheInternet number for the site cs.widener.edu is 147.31.254.130. Aresolver is used to translate between hostnames and Internetaddresses.

interoperateThe ability of multi-vendor computers to work together using a commonset of protocols. With interoperability, PCs, Macs, Suns, Dec VAXen,CDC Cybers, etc, all work together allowing one host computer tocommunicate with and take advantage of the resources of another.

 ISO (International Organization for Standardization)
Coordinator of the main networking standards that are put into use today.

kernelThe level of an operating system or networking system that contains thesystem-level commands or all of the functions hidden from the user. Ina Unix system, the kernel is a program that contains the device drivers,the memory management routines, the scheduler, and system calls. Thisprogram is always running while the system is operating.

LAN (Local Area Network)Any physical network technology that operates at high speed over shortdistances (up to a few thousand meters).

mail gatewayA machine that connects to two or more electronic mail systems(especially dissimilar mail systems on two different networks) andtransfers mail messages among them.

mailing listA possibly moderated discussion group, distributed via email from acentral computer maintaining the list of people involved in thediscussion.

mail pathA series of machine names used to direct electronic mail from one userto another.

mediumThe material used to support the transmission of data. This can becopper wire, coaxial cable, optical fiber, or electromagnetic wave (as inmicrowave).

multiplexThe division of a single transmission medium into multiple logicalchannels supporting many simultaneous sessions. For example, onenetwork may have simultaneous FTP, telnet, rlogin, and SMTPconnections, all going at the same time.

net.citizenAn inhabitant of Cyberspace. One usually tries to be a goodnet.citizen, lest one be flamed.

netiquetteA pun on "etiquette"; proper behavior on The Net. Usenet Netiquette.

networkA group of machines connected together so they can transmit informationto one another. There are two kinds of networks: local networks andremote networks.

NFS (Network File System)A method developed by Sun Microsystems to allow computers to sharefiles across a network in a way that makes them appear as if they're"local" to the system.

 NIC
The Network Information Center.

 node
A computer that is attached to a network; also called a host.

NSFnetThe national backbone network, funded by the National Science Foundationand operated by the Merit Corporation, used to interconnect regional(mid-level) networks such as WestNet to one another.

packetThe unit of data sent across a packet switching network. The term isused loosely. While some Internet literature uses it to referspecifically to data sent across a physical network, other literatureviews the Internet as a packet switching network and describes IPdatagrams as packets.

pollingConnecting to another system to check for things like mail or news.

postmasterThe person responsible for taking care of mail problems, answeringqueries about users, and other related work at a site.

protocolsA formal description of message formats and the rules two computers mustfollow to exchange those messages. Protocols can describe low-leveldetails of machine-to-machine interfaces (e.g., the order in which bitsand bytes are sent across a wire) or high-level exchanges betweenallocation programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a fileacross the Internet).

recursionThe facility of a programming language to be able to call functionsfrom within themselves.

resolveTranslate an Internet name into its equivalent IP address or other DNSinformation.

RFD (Request For Discussion)Usually a two- to three-week period in which the particulars ofnewsgroup creation are battled out.

routeThe path that network traffic takes from its source to its destination.

routerA dedicated computer (or other device) that sends packets from oneplace to another, paying attention to the current state of the network.

RTFM (Read The Fantastic Manual).This anacronym is often used when someone asks a simple or commonquestion. The word `Fantastic' is usually replaced with one much morevulgar.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)The Internet standard protocol for transferring electronic mail messagesfrom one computer to another. SMTP specifies how two mail systemsinteract and the format of control messages they exchange to transfermail.

 server
A computer that shares its resources, such as printers and files, with
other computers on the network. An example of this is a Network File
System (NFS) server which shares its disk space with other computers.

signal-to-noise ratioWhen used in reference to Usenet activity, signal-to-noiseratio describes the relation between amount of actual information ina discussion, compared to their quantity. More often than not,there's substantial activity in a newsgroup, but a very small numberof those articles actually contain anything useful.

signatureThe small, usually four-line message at the bottom of a piece of emailor a Usenet article. In Unix, it's added by creating a file..signature in the user's home directory. Large signatures area no-no.

summarizeTo encapsulate a number of responses into one coherent, usablemessage. Often done on controlled mailing lists or active newsgroups,to help reduce bandwidth.

synchronousData communications in which transmissions are sent at a fixed rate,with the sending and receiving devices synchronized.

 TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
A set of protocols, resulting from ARPA efforts, used by the Internet to
support services such as remote login (telnet), file transfer
(FTP) and mail (SMTP).

telnetThe Internet standard protocol for remote terminal connection service.Telnet allows a user at one site to interact with a remote timesharingsystem at another site as if the user's terminal were connected directlyto the remote computer.

terminal serverA small, specialized, networked computer that connects many terminals toa LAN through one network connection. Any user on the network can thenconnect to various network hosts.

 TeX
A free typesetting system by Donald Knuth.

twisted pairCable made up of a pair of insulated copper wires wrapped around eachother to cancel the effects of electrical noise.

UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Program)A store-and-forward system, primarily for Unix systems but currentlysupported on other platforms (e.g. VMS and personal computers).

 WAN (Wide-Area Network)
A network spanning hundreds or thousands of miles.

 workstation
A networked personal computing device with more power than a standard
IBM PC or Macintosh. Typically, a workstation has an operating system
such as unix that is capable of running several tasks at the same time.
It has several megabytes of memory and a large, high-resolution display.
Examples are Sun workstations and Digital DECstations.

wormA computer program which replicates itself. The Internet worm(The Internet Worm) was perhaps the most famous; itsuccessfully (and accidentally) duplicated itself on systems acrossthe Internet.

 wrt
With respect to.

"I hate definitions."
Benjamin Disraeli
Vivian Grey, bk i chap ii

———
 Bibliography

What follows is a compendium of sources that have information thatwill be of use to anyone reading this guide. Most of them were usedin the writing of the booklet, while others are simply noted becausethey are a must for any good net.citizen's bookshelf.

Books

Comer, Douglas E.
     Internetworking With TCP/IP, 2nd ed., 2v
     Prentice Hall
     Englewood Cliffs, NJ
     1991

Davidson, John
     An Introduction to TCP/IP
     Springer-Verlag
     Berlin
     1988

Frey, Donnalyn, and Adams, Rick
     !@%:: A Directory of Electronic Mail Addressing and Networks
     O'Reilly and Associates
     Newton, MA
     1989

Gibson, William
     Neuromancer
     Ace
     New York, NY
     1984

LaQuey, Tracy
     Users' Directory of Computer Networks
     Digital Press
     Bedford, MA
     1990

Levy, Stephen
     Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
     Anchor Press/Doubleday
     Garden City, NY
     1984

Partridge, Craig
     Innovations in Internetworking
     ARTECH House
     Norwood, MA
     1988

Quarterman, John S.
     The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide
     Digital Press
     Bedford, MA
     1989

Raymond, Eric (ed)
     The New Hacker's Dictionary
     MIT Press
     Cambridge, MA
     1991

Stoll, Clifford
     The Cuckoo's Egg
     Doubleday
     New York
     1989

Tanenbaum, Andrew S.
     Computer Networks, 2d ed
     Prentice-Hall
     Englewood Cliffs, NJ
     1988

Todinao, Grace
     Using UUCP and USENET: A Nutshell Handbook
     O'Reilly and Associates
     Newton, MA
     1986

The Waite Group
     Unix Communications, 2nd ed.
     Howard W. Sams & Company
     Indianapolis
     1991

Periodicals & Papers
magazine: Barlow, J
     Coming Into The Country
     Communications of the ACM 34:3
     2
     March 1991
      Addresses "Cyberspace"—-John Barlow was a co-founder of the EFF.

proceedings: Collyer, G., and Spencer, H
     News Need Not Be Slow
     Proceedings of the 1987 Winter USENIX Conference
     181—90
     USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA
     January 1987

magazine: Denning, P
     The Internet Worm
     American Scientist
     126—128
     March—April 1989

magazine: The Science of Computing: Computer Networks
     American Scientist
     127—129
     March—April 1985

magazine: Frey, D., and Adams, R
     USENET: Death by Success?
     UNIX REVIEW
     55—60
     August 1987

magazine: Gifford, W. S
     ISDN User-Network Interfaces
     IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
     343—348
     May 1986

magazine: Ginsberg, K
     Getting from Here to There
     UNIX REVIEW
     45
     January 1986

magazine: Hiltz, S. R
     The Human Element in Computerized Conferencing Systems
     Computer Networks
     421—428
     December 1978

proceedings: Horton, M
     What is a Domain?
     Proceedings of the Summer 1984 USENIX Conference
     368—372
     USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA
     June 1984

magazine: Jacobsen, Ole J
     Information on TCP/IP
     ConneXions—-The Interoperability Report
     14—15
     July 1988

magazine: Jennings, D., et al
     Computer Networking for Scientists
     Science
     943—950
     28 February 1986

paper: Markoff, J
     "Author of computer `virus' is son of U.S. electronic security expert."
     New York Times
     Nov. 5, 1988
     A1

paper: "Computer snarl: A `back door' ajar."
     New York Times
     Nov. 7, 1988
     B10

magazine: McQuillan, J. M., and Walden, D. C
     The ARPA Network Design Decisions
     Computer Networks
     243—289
     1977

magazine: Ornstein, S. M
     A letter concerning the Internet worm
     Communications of the ACM 32:6
     June 1989

proceedings: Partridge, C
     Mail Routing Using Domain Names: An Informal Tour
     Proceedings of the 1986 Summer USENIX Conference
     366—76
     USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA
     June 1986

magazine: Quarterman, J
     Etiquette and Ethics
     ConneXions—-The Interoperability Report
     12—16
     March 1989

magazine: Notable Computer Networks
     Communications of the ACM 29:10
     October 1986
      This was the predecessor to The Matrix.

magazine: Raeder, A. W., and Andrews, K. L
     Searching Library Catalogs on the Internet: A Survey
     Database Searcher 6
     16—31
     September 1990

proceedings: Seeley, D
     A tour of the worm
     Proceedings of the 1989 Winter USENIX Conference
     287—304
     USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA
     February 1989

magazine: Shulman, G
     Legal Research on USENET Liability Issues
     ;login: The USENIX Association Newsletter
     11—17
     December 1984

magazine: Smith, K
     E-Mail to Anywhere
     PC World
     220—223
     March 1988

magazine: Stoll, C
     Stalking the Wily Hacker
     Communications of the ACM 31:5
     14
     May 1988
     This article grew into the book The Cuckoo's Egg.

proceedings: Taylor, D
     The Postman Always Rings Twice: Electronic Mail in a Highly Distributed
     Environment
     Proceedings of the 1988 Winter USENIX Conference
     145—153
     USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA
     December 1988

magazine: U.S.Gen'l Accounting Ofc
     Computer Security: Virus Highlights Need for Improved Internet Management
     GAO/IMTEC-89-57,
     1989
     Addresses the Internet worm.

"And all else is literature."
Paul Verlaine
The Sun, New York
While he was city editor in 1873—1890.

—Bill Walther, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

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