NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/ba/internet/241

Internet Message Format | 1992-08-25 | 26.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!agate!ucbvax!Armory.Com!Ulmo
From: [e-mail] (Brad Allen)
Newsgroups: ba.internet
Subject: ba.internet Frequently Asked Questions Digest vDRAFT
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 26 Aug 92 01:10:22 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
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          ba.internet Frequently Asked Questions Digest vDRAFT

This posting is in Digest format.  (If this causes more problems than it
solves, then please inform me.)

This is a template of what will eventually be fleshed out into a full FAQ.
This draft is far from complete.  I publish it as a request for
comments, additions, etc.  If you find that you have saved this
document in your files, then please go to ba.internet right now and
retrieve the most recent version of this document since there is sure
to be a new much more complete one out by now.

If you have trouble accessing wiretap.spies.com, remember its IP number
is [130.43.3.3].  (There may be some difficulty over the next couple
of days while Spies is reorganizing its network.)

Brad Allen <[e-mail]>

00. Contents
01. Purpose of ba.internet
02. Purpose of FAQ
03. Where can I find good documentation?  Books & Online Files
04. FAQ FTP Archive @ WireTap.Spies.Com:/ba.internet
05. (FTP via Mail)
06. FAQ updates
07. List of Publically Dialable <IP Internet> Services
08. What is the Internet?  Defined
10. How do I connect to the Internet?  Service providers
11. What is USENET?  Defined
12. What resources are available on USENET?
13. What USENET programs are there?  USENET Software
14. Where can I read USENET from?  USENET Sites
15. How do I connect to USENET?  USENET Feeds
16. How do I send email to far away places?  Mail
17. How can I run IP over the phone?  SLIP
18. How can I search information?  WAIS (Wide Area Information Server)
19. What is Gopher?  Menu driven distributed information tree
20. How do I get USENET with TCP/IP? NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol)
21. What is SMTP?  Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
22. What is RFC?  Request for Comments
23. How can I get a file from the <IP Internet>?  FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
24. How do I find a file on the Internet?  Archie
25. What is UUCP and what can it do?  Unix to Unix Copy
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 01. Purpose of ba.internet

The newsgroup ba.internet is for networking discussion, questions,
answers, resources and announcements for the (Greater) San Francisco
Bay Area.  The focus tends to be on the Internet, mail, USENET, UUCP,
and related matters.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 02. Purpose of FAQ

This FAQ is meant to guide people to whatever networking goal they
wish to obtain.  It is meant to be complete, and as such I need
people to send me <[e-mail]> updates to this information as I
can not possibly find out everything on my own, and this FAQ
obviously will never be complete (therefore you must mail me).

Before posting to ba.internet, one should typically know everything
contained in this FAQ as well as most of the referenced archives.
People should avoid posting questions which are answered adequately
in this FAQ if at all possible.  However, discussion on ba.internet
may and probably should happen whenever someone wishes to discuss
things not congruent with this FAQ.  If people come up with
something new which should be added or changed in the FAQ and the
associated archives, someone please contact me to make sure I do so.

I plan on reading every ba.internet posting and reacting as necessary
to keep this FAQ as up-to-date as possible to answer all possible
range of questions.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 03. Where can I find good documentation?  Books & Online Files

FYI3 / RFC1175, titled ``FYI on Where to Start - A Bibliography of
Internetworking Information'', informs you where to start reading
about the Internet.  I have it in the ba.internet FTP archive as
"Documentation/where-to-start" (see Subject 04 for instructions
on how to access that.)

<IP Internet> technical? reference: ``Zen and the Art of Internet''
by Brenden Kehoe (Prentice Hall, 1992)

<Global Internet> Email reference: ``A Directory of Electronic Mail
!%@:: Addressing and Networks'', Frey and Adams (O'Reilly & Assoc.,
Sebastipol, CA) updated yearly and sometimes more often.  ISBN
0-937175-15-3 7.95

As a suggestion, Matrix is a good book.  If price is a problem for
you, then you can either look around in the available files (on the
ba.internet FTP archive) to find cheaper books, or you can retrieve
the on-line documentation and learn on-line.  This requires getting
over a few initial stumbling blocks on how to access FTP archives; I
hope this FAQ and the available documentation is sufficient for this
(please tell me if it isn't!  email <[e-mail]>)

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 04. FAQ FTP Archive @ WireTap.Spies.Com:/ba.internet

The ba.internet FTP archive contains various directories focusing on
different types of information.  In directory "Services" is
information about each Internet Service available to the Greater SF
Bay Area (summarized in Subject 10).  In directory
"Documentation" is general useful Internet documentation, very
useful for someone new to or coming up to date with the Internet at
large.  Most of this information is a sampling of files from various
other FTP archives; I have tried to include pointers to the sources
of all the information, so that you can track down the most
up-to-date and complete information yourself.

The ba.internet FTP archive is at Wiretap.Spies.Com [130.43.3.3].
To access it from a Unix machine with unrestricted access to the
<IP Internet>, type:

  ftp wiretap.spies.com
   or
  ftp 130.43.3.3

When the system asks for login, answer with "anonymous", and when
it asks for password, answer with your email address.

If you don't have the ability to FTP to Wiretap.Spies.Com, then
you can use the ftpmail gateway described below (Subject 05).

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 05. (FTP via Mail)

To get files from the ba.internet FTP archive via email, compose an
email message addressed to [e-mail] with the contents of the
message patterned after a variation of the following:

   connect wiretap.spies.com
   chdir ba.internet
   ls
   get README
   ls Documentation
   get Documentation/where-to-start
   ls Services
   ls Services/Well
   get Services/Well/Brochure

It may take a while to run, as the DEC ftpmail system can get very
busy.  Please consider asking your local <IP Internet> site to set
this up for you (email [e-mail] for information on where to get
ftpmail sources from).

To get more information on how to use ftpmail, send a message to
[e-mail] with the contents of the message simply saying "help".
It should respond fairly quickly with help instructions.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 06. FAQ updates

Updates and additions to this FAQ and its associated archives should
be sent to Brad Allen <[e-mail]>.  I also monitor the
ba.internet USENET group, so things should naturally add themselves
(via me) with time.  In addition, you may add new directories and
files to the FAQ FTP archives yourself.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 07. List of Publically Dialable <IP Internet> Services

PDIAL (Public Dialup Internet Access List) is available from the
ba.internet FTP archive in the directory "Services/%LISTS/PDIAL".
It lists public access service providers offering outgoing FTP or telnet.
See Subject 04 for how to access the archive.
See also Subject 10 for the list of services described
within the ba.internet FTP archive in the "Services" directory.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 08. What is the Internet?  Defined

The Internet proper has two to three major scopes of meaning.
Context of the word usually can reveal which meaning is being used,
but those who can figure this out usually don't need to read what
they're reading (-:.  The definition of `Internet' can be considered
fuzzy, getting fuzzier all the time.

<Global Internet>: Most broadly, `Internet' or `internet' implies
all the data networks in the world which are interconnected (via
gateways) to the large global network, along with the connected
computing resources and all of its users.  The most supported
function of this global Internet is communication between people via
`electronic mail' or `email'.  In addition, many other derivations
are supported, including information databases, the associated need
for file transfer, etc.  This includes Internet DNS, BITNET, UUCP,
FREEnet, X.400, and much more.  Average point-to-point communication
times can be anywhere from instant to a few days, depending on the
setup.

<IP Internet>: Most narrowly, `The Internet' or `Internet' is the
set of computing hardware and software which run the protocols
derived from the ARPAnet, now known as the Internet protocols,
which currently revolve heavily around IP (Internet Protocol), TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol), UDP (Unreliable Datagram
Protocol), the DNS (Domain Naming System), and usually support
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), and FTP (File Transfer
Protocol).  This does not include hosts only running BITNET, UUCP,
X.400 or other networks running non-Internet protocols.  Average
point-to-point packet delivery times on this network can be
anywhere from a few nanoseconds to ten seconds during extremely
busy parts of the day, but usually is less than half a second for
most links.  Mail usually takes less than a minute per hop.

[DNS Internet]: Less narrowly, `The Internet' or `Internet' is all
the computers and mailable names with proper `Internet Domain
Names', for example ucbvax.Berkeley.Edu, NISC.SRI.COM,
AMES.ARC.NASA.Gov, Well.SF.CA.US, SCO.Com, IGC.Org, FUUG.FI,
Someplace.SU, and Armory.Com.  These names are stored within the
Internet Domain Naming System (DNS), and most names translate to
computers which can receive email for users on that host with a
simple address of the form "[e-mail]", e.g.
"[e-mail]".  Average point-to-point mail delivery times on
this network can be anywhere from a few seconds for quick IP
sections to a few days for the slowest of MX (Mail Exchanger
connected) hosts.

In general, <IP Internet> is a subset of <DNS Internet>, and
<DNS Internet> is a subset of <Global Internet>.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 10. How do I connect to the Internet?  Service providers

I once wrote the following message to USENET in answer to
someone's question about finding an Internet account:

    > I'm looking for an internet account [...]

    What do you mean by `Internet'?  Does that include TCP/IP
    (i.e. FTP, TELNET, WAIS, etc.)?  Does it include USENET (NNTP,
    or UUCP?  Do you need all the `alt' or `clari' groups?)  Or
    does it just include mail (UUCP, MXs, and the like)?  Do you
    have your own computer?  Do you have lots of money?
    Obviously, there are a million variables.

    What it comes down to, I think, is the more money, time and
    knowledge you have, the more you can get; just about everyone,
    if they had all the money, time and knowledge possible to a
    human, would probably go for the really most spectacular thing
    down here.  As soon as you start to limit those things (time,
    money or knowledge), so many variables set in it's hard to
    really select the best one in a snap.  That's usually the
    case.  Unfortunately, in many cases it's hard to know what to
    ask for until you know what's available.

    I suggest you try to get the combination which offers you the
    absolute most, in terms of options.  After you have
    familiarized with what is available, you can then make a more
    refined choice of which systems to use.

    Use The Well, a2i, Netcom, or most good University systems
    for an introduction into what's available -- I personally
    think these would be good choices for novices trying to learn
    the most from scratch.  If you already have a home computer
    which you want to network at home, then there's even more to
    learn about (but the net product, if stable, would probably be
    much nicer and more convenient (especially if you have
    dedicated IP like hoptoad or something!))  Ask people -- what
    things are available for you to use?  Have someone demonstrate
    their use; some things may seem really useless until someone
    shows you a good use; then again, some things are fairly
    intuitive (although the programs may have steep learning
    curves).

There are quite a few ways to connect to the Internet, each
involving varying amounts of each of the above multiple
definitions of the word `Internet'.  Because of this ambiguity, I
will not attempt to separate service providers into different
sections; instead, I will list each one and indicate which services
they offer.  I will not list anything not part of the <Global
Internet> (e.g. Prodigy).

In addition, see the PDIAL list (Subject 07) which also gets
posted to ba.internet.

Legend:

  I = <DNS Internet> communications    i = <IP Internet> communications
  B = Connected to IP Backbone via IP    b = IP backbone (regional or bigger)
  C = Can reach CIX w/o NSF AUP        c = connected to CIX (member/agrmnt)
  S = SLIP IP                s = dedicated IP data pipes >=56kbps
  T = Method of inexpensive access    t = TELNET Out
  U = USENET reading & writing        u = USENET feeds (* = special service)
  E = Email reading & writing        e = email feeds (MX, UUCP, X.400, etc.)
  V = email within 5 minutes        v = email within 30 seconds
  D = Local discussions            d = High quality local discussions
  F = File transfer programs        f = FTP archives (~ = not by FTP)
  X = X.400 gateway supported        x = Runs some ISO/OSI j..stuff

Service Abbr.        Offerings        Contact or Automated Info
-----------------------    IiBbCcSsTtUuEeVvDdFfXx    -------------------------
a2i (Rahul)             IiB C   TtUuEeVv? Ff    [e-mail]
AlterNet (UUNET)        IiBbCcSs   u eV~  Ff x  [e-mail]
ANS                      iBbCc s             ?  [e-mail]
Anterior                IiB C S*TtUuEeVv  F ?   [e-mail]
ATTMail                 I   C   ?   Ee??    Xx  [e-mail]
BARRNet                  iBbC Ss                [e-mail]
BioNet                  IiB C   T  *            [e-mail]
CERF                    IiBbCcSsTt         f ?  [e-mail]
CIX                      iBbCc s             ?  [e-mail]
ClariNet                IiB C   T  *            [e-mail]
Club_Zen                I   C   T U E           [e-mail]
CompuServe              I   ?       E ??Dd ~    [e-mail]
CREN (BITNET)           I~~~~  s~~~~EeV DdF~ ?  [e-mail]
CSU                     IiBbC  s                [e-mail]
FidoNet                 I   ~   T UuEe  D~F~    see USENET comp.org.fidonet ?
GES                     IiBb?  s                [e-mail]
GNU                     IiB ?   TtU E Vv  Ff    [e-mail]
HoloNet                 IiB C SsTtUuEeVv  F     [e-mail]
IGC (PeaceNet/etc)      I B C   Tt? Ee??Dd?~?   [phone]
Infoserv                                        ?
MCIMail                 I   C   T   Ee~ D F Xx  phone 1+800-MCI-MAIL ?
Melvyl                  IiBbC  sT          ~
Netcom                  IiBb  SsTtUuEeVvD Ff    [e-mail]
NetConnect              not up yet              [e-mail]
NSF                     IiBb   s           f    [e-mail]
PSI                     IiBbCcSsTtUuEeV?        [e-mail]
SCruz.UCSC.Edu          I B     T  ~ eV ~~      [e-mail]
Spies                   IiB C   TtUuE?VvD F     <[e-mail]>
SprintLink               iBbCcSs   ?EeV??   ??  [e-mail]
Stanford                IiBbC   TtU E VvDdFf    [e-mail]
Tsoft                   I   C   T UuEe          modem 415-969-8238
UCB                     IiB C   TtU E VvD Ff    [e-mail]
UCSC                    IiB ?   TtUuE VvD~Ff    call UC Santa Cruz CATS office
UCSF                    IiBb?   TtUuE Vv??F?    call UC San Fran. computing
Well                    IiB C   TtUuE VvDdF~    [e-mail]
Wet                     I   C   T U E   DdF     [e-mail]
Zorch (SF-Bay.Org)      I   C   T UuEe          [e-mail]

For further information, see Subject 04, where there is a
file for each one of the above entities.  This is a quicker way to
get a review of the organizations than calling each one
individually, although it may be a slight bit less reliable & up
to date.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 11. What is USENET?  Defined

Section to be written

The name is derived from the concept that it's a network that gets
used.  Indeed, the name is quite appropriate.  Since its inception,
users have been using USENET in ever increasing numbers.  Today,
there are thousands of separate "newsgroups" with discussion ranging
on almost the majority of topics most minds can think to talk about.

USENET is almost worldwide.

There is an intrinsic difficulty with USENET, however, in that
most of the articles do not last more than a couple of weeks,
depending on which host you read articles from.  Because of this,
lots of useful information gets lost very quickly, and many discussions
never proceed after a point of about ten responses.  This results in
some very repetitive discussion topics, and some newsgroups lack
the resident readers to keep the topic from being too narrow in their
viewpoints.  On the other hand, some newsgroups are archived, and some
indeed have many educated users who are active enough in the discussions
to actually make the newsgroups wonderful and not so narrow minded.

Many questions are very simply answered by posting a message asking
the question to a newsgroup, since many people from all over the place
with lots of different backgrounds and a large cumulative amount of
experience will see the question; the likelyhood of getting an answer
is very, very high.  Contribute your unique useful experience, and
you're generally welcome on any newsgroup (depending on that newsgroup's
purposes, of course).

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 12. What resources are available on USENET?

Section to be written

Read news.* for useful information about USENET.

Also FTP PIT-MANAGER.MIT.EDU in directory "pub/usenet" for
archive of periodic postings.


------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 13. What USENET programs are there?  USENET Software

Section to be written

user agents: notes, trn, nn, gnus, gnews, tin, xrn, fnr,
 fido echos (many bbss), [vnews, readnews, rn],

transport: nntp, uucp, mail; cnews, tmnn, [bnews], ufgate (fido echos),

[Hint:  for now use "archie" (see Subject 24) for finding these]

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 14. Where can I read USENET from?  USENET Sites

Section to be written

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 15. How do I connect to USENET?  USENET Feeds

Section to be written

Commercial:  UUNET, PSI, Netcom, a2i, etc.

Friendly: Read the "Path:" lines in USENET postings in newsgroups
you want to see which hosts receive the newsgroups you want.  You
can ask these hosts if they're willing to exchange news with you
(the answer will usually be no, unless you can offer something back
to them that they want, say, more USENET messages, or some service,
or a wink of the eye, or a kind personality).

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 16. How do I send email to far away places?  Mail

Section to be written

[There are many many many factors to mailing.  This section
should be a pointer to all the relevant documents pertaining to
this topic.]

For sending mail to Nicaragua, Russia (CIS), Uruguay, Brazil
and Ecuador (as well as Australia, Canada, England, Germany,
Sweden, USA, Italy and the rest of the Internet) especially for
personal, peaceful or environmental reasons, contact IGC
(Institute for Global Communications) listed in the ba.internet
FTP archive (see Subject 04).

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 17. How can I run IP over the phone?  SLIP

SLIP (Serial Line Interface Protocol) allows one to run <IP Internet>
via any dedicated serial interface, and many changing serial interfaces,
such as telephone modems.  Linking into the <IP Internet> this way is
relatively inexpensive, provided your phone connection is a non-toll
call.

For information on how to install SLIP on most Unix computers, see
"Methods/SLIP" in the FTP archive.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 18. How can I search information?  WAIS (Wide Area Information Server)

WAIS (Wide Area Information Server), available from the <IP Internet>,
allows a common access point for doing index searches and data
retrieval for a heterogeneous set of databases.  [I find this program
difficult to use and rather slow from the TELNET client on
Quake.Think.Com, but that may be just the poor interface.]  Many
people claim it is useful.  [When I can find that hard-to-find
discussion about a certain study on topic XYZ that I'm particuarily
interested in, then I'll agree.  Anyone have a couple extra gig I can
put some mailing list archives on with WAIS servers?]  This service
looks like it will soon be indespensible in many ways.  Available from
many hosts on the <IP Internet> via a `client program' and/or
`telnet quake.think.com' login wais.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 19. What is Gopher?  Menu driven distributed information tree

Gopher is a menu-based distributed information system with
participating sites around the world.  One way to access it is
via TELNET to consultant.micro.umn.edu, with a login of "gopher".

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 20. How do I get USENET with TCP/IP? NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol)

RFC977 describes NNTP, a protocol for transferring USENET
articles over the <IP Internet> using the TCP/IP protocols.
With this protocol, any two hosts which run USENET software
may exchange new USENET messages.  This is the main way USENET
messages get distributed within the Internet.  See also UUCP/rnews.

See Subject 22 on how to retrieve RFCs.

Section to be written

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 21. What is SMTP?  Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

Date:    Wed, 19 Aug 1992 00:04:59 -0700
From:    Shiraz Kanga <[e-mail]>

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and it is the mail transfer
method in use on the Internet. (It is defined in RFC821 [see Subject 22]).
SMTP addresses are of the form:

                      userid@domain-name

where userid is usually the name of the users mailbox on the mail host
machine that is named in the domain-name. The domain name generally
consists of 2 to 4 short words which are separated by dots (periods)

For example:          [e-mail]

SMTP addresses are subject to the following rules:

The domain name is always case insensitive (ie. BIG.univ.edu, Big.Univ.Edu
and BiG.uNiV.eDu are all the same domain)

All messages must be in seven bit ASCII format

All headers start at the beginning of the message and end with the first
blank line and the consist of a keywork, a colon, a spacxe and a string of text.

For example:          Subject: This is a test

The rest of the message is the body of the text.

Note:
The term 'domain' sometimes has different connotations when used in different
contexts. In the current context we are talking about a DNS domain where DNS
is the Domain Name System which is widely used on the Internet and some other
networks as well.
--
Shiraz Kanga ([e-mail]) Tel: [phone]

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 22. What is RFC?  Request for Comments

[section to be written]

RFCs are <DNS/IP Internet> documents which fully describe the
standards and instructions for programming and operating the
<DNS/IP Internet> and its associated protocols.  Recently, many
introductory documents have been added to the RFC archives.  The
only problem with the RFCs is that there are so many of them and
much of the information is not needed by everyone.  If you have
time to read fifty thousand pages of information, then these are
the best way to learn about the Internet Proper.  You would
still need to go elsewhere for much necessary non-<DNS/IP Internet>
information though, if you wanted a complete picture of the
<Global Internet>.

RFCs are very frequently referenced by other documents and people,
so it is important you know how to retrieve them.  You should
familiarize yourself with the methods used to access the RFCs.
RFCs may be retrieved with anonymous FTP from the following locations:

   FTP.NISC.SRI.COM in directory "rfc", filenames like "rfc822.txt"
   NIC.DDN.MIL      in directory "rfc", filenames like "rfc822.txt"

Retrieve file "rfc-index.txt" and "fyi-index.txt" for an index into
the RFCs.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 23. How can I get a file from the <IP Internet>?  FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - a whole lot of files available across
the internet, many hosts with login `anonymous' password
[e-mail].  Available from many hosts connected to the
<IP Internet> with the FTP protocol, and from all hosts on the <Global
Internet> with FTP->Mail gateways (see Subject 05).

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 24. How do I find a file on the Internet?  Archie

With archie you can search for filenames which match string patterns
for many FTP archives around the world.  To use, mail a message to
[e-mail] with "help" in the mail to get an explanation
of how to use the mail server.  Or, you can "telnet archie.sura.net"
and login "archie" to do interactive searches.  In addition, there is
an "archie" client program which your host may have implemented.

------------------------------

From: Brad Allen <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ 25. What is UUCP and what can it do?  Unix to Unix Copy

UUCP (Unix-to-Unix-Copy-Protocol): Perhaps the most common and oldest
transport protocol for sending files between machines on a Unix
network [plagiarized from <[e-mail]>].  Used mostly for USENET
transport (rnews), email transport (rmail), and file transfer (uucp).

------------------------------

End of ba.internet FAQ Digest vDRAFT.
*************************************