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Title: Zen and the Art of the Internet

Author: Brendan P. Kehoe

Release date: June 1, 1992 [eBook #34]
Most recently updated: December 17, 2011

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZEN AND THE
ART OF THE INTERNET ***

Part A

Zen and the Art of the Internet

Copyright (c) 1992 Brendan P. Kehoe

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
guide provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.

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

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this booklet
into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions,
except that this permission notice may be stated in 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 of what's
currently available over the Internet. Aimed at the novice user, it attempts to
remain operating system "neutral"—-little information herein is specific to
Unix, VMS, or any other environment. This booklet will, hopefully, be
usable by nearly anyone.

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

prompt> command The results are usually displayed here.

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

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

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

brendan@cs.widener.edu
Chester, PA

Acknowledgements

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

This guide would not be the same without the aid of many people on The
Net, and the providers of resources that are already out there. I'd like to
thank the folks who gave this a read-through and returned some excellent
comments, suggestions, and criticisms, and those who provided much-
needed information on the fly. Glee Willis deserves particular mention for
all of his work; this guide would have been considerably less polished
without his help.

Andy Blankenbiller <rablanke@crdec7.apgea.army.mil>
Andy Blankenbiller, Army at Aberdeen

bajan@cs.mcgill.ca Alan Emtage, McGill University Computer Science
Department

Brian Fitzgerald <fitz@mml0.meche.rpi.edu>
Brian Fitzgerald, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

John Goetsch <ccjg@hippo.ru.ac.za>
John Goetsch, Rhodes University, South Africa

composer@chem.bu.edu Jeff Kellem, Boston University's Chemistry
Department

kraussW@moravian.edu Bill Krauss, Moravian College

Steve Lodin <deaes!swlodin@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Steve Lodin, Delco Electronics

Mike Nesel <nesel@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov>
Mike Nesel, NASA

Bob <neveln@cs.widener.edu>
Bob Neveln, Widener University Computer Science Department

wamapi@dunkin.cc.mcgill.ca (Wanda Pierce) Wanda Pierce, McGill
University Computing Centre

Joshua.R.Poulson@cyber.widener.edu
Joshua Poulson, Widener University Computing Services

de5@ornl.gov Dave Sill, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

bsmart@bsmart.tti.com Bob Smart, CitiCorp/TTI

emv@msen.com Ed Vielmetti, Vice President of MSEN

Craig E. Ward <cew@venera.isi.edu>
Craig Ward, USC/Information Sciences Institute (ISI)

Glee Willis <willis@unssun.nevada.edu>
Glee Willis, University of Nevada, Reno

Charles Yamasaki <chip@oshcomm.osha.gov>
Chip Yamasaki, OSHA

Network Basics

We are truly in an information society. Now more than ever, moving vast
amounts of information quickly across great distances is one of our most
pressing needs. From small one-person entrepreneurial efforts, to the largest
of corporations, more and more professional people are discovering that the
only way to be successful in the '90s and beyond is to realize that
technology is advancing at a break-neck pace—-and they must somehow
keep up. Likewise, researchers from all corners of the earth are finding that
their work thrives in a networked environment. Immediate access to the
work of colleagues and a "virtual" library of millions of volumes and
thousands of papers affords them the ability to encorporate a body of
knowledge heretofore unthinkable. Work groups can now conduct
interactive conferences with each other, paying no heed to physical location
—-the possibilities are endless.

You have at your fingertips the ability to talk in "real-time" with someone
in Japan, send a 2,000-word short story to a group of people who will
critique it for the sheer pleasure of doing so, see if a Macintosh sitting in a
lab in Canada is turned on, and find out if someone 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 is grasping
all that's available. Even seasoned users find themselves surprised when
they discover a new service or feature that they'd never known even existed.
Once acquainted with the terminology and sufficiently comfortable with
making occasional mistakes, the learning process will drastically speed up.

Domains

Getting where you want to go can often be one of the more difficult
aspects of using networks. The variety of ways that places are named will
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 expect a
street, apartment, city, state, and zip code. That's all the information the post
office needs to deliver mail in a reasonably speedy fashion. Likewise,
computer addresses have a structure to them. The general form is:

a person's email address on a computer: user@somewhere.domain a
computer's name: somewhere.domain

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

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

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

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

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

net Gateways and other administrative hosts for a network (it does not
mean all of the hosts in a network). {The Matrix, 111. One such gateway 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, the us
domain includes each of the fifty states. Other countries represented with
domains include:

au Australia ca Canada fr France uk The United Kingdom. These also
have sub-domains of things like ac.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.domain
above) is its Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). It is usually selected
to give a clear indication of the site's organization or sponsoring agent. For
example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's FQDN is mit.edu;
similarly, Apple Computer's domain name is apple.com. While such
obvious names are usually the norm, there are the occasional exceptions
that are ambiguous enough to mislead—-like vt.edu, which on first impulse
one might surmise is an educational institution of some sort in Vermont; not
so. It's actually the domain name for Virginia Tech. In most cases it's
relatively easy to glean the meaning of a domain name—-such confusion is
far from the norm.

Internet Numbers

Every single machine on the Internet has a unique address, {At least one
address, possibly two or even three—-but we won't go into that.} called its
Internet number or IP Address. It's actually a 32-bit number, but is most
commonly represented as four numbers joined by periods (.), like
147.31.254.130. This is sometimes also called a dotted quad; there are
literally thousands of different possible dotted quads. The ARPAnet (the
mother to today's Internet) originally only had the capacity to have up to
256 systems on it because 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 host
numbers.

Each piece of an Internet address (like 192) is called an "octet,"
representing one of four sets of eight bits. The first two or three pieces (e.g.
192.55.239) represent the network that a system is on, called its subnet. For
example, all of the computers for Wesleyan University are in the subnet
129.133. They can have numbers like 129.133.10.10, 129.133.230.19, up to
65 thousand possible combinations (possible computers).

IP addresses and domain names aren't assigned arbitrarily—-that would
lead to unbelievable confusion. An application must be filed with the
Network Information Center (NIC), either electronically (to
hostmaster@nic.ddn.mil) 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 either method.
Since humans find it much more natural to deal with words than numbers in
most cases, the FQDN for each host is mapped to its Internet number. Each
domain is served by a computer within that domain, which provides all of
the necessary information to go from a domain name to an IP address, and
vice-versa. For example, when someone refers to foosun.bar.com, the
resolver knows that it should ask the system foovax.bar.com about systems
in bar.com. It asks what Internet address foosun.bar.com has; if the name
foosun.bar.com really 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 apparently obscure
number, simply because you've accessed the system frequently). However,
you will remember a substantial number of FQDNs. It will eventually reach
a point when you are able to make a reasonably accurate guess at what
domain name a certain college, university, or company might have, given
just their name.

The Networks

Internet The Internet is a large "network of networks." There is no one
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. All activity takes place in "real-time."

UUCP The UUCP network is a loose association of systems all
communicating with the UUCP protocol. (UUCP stands for `Unix-to-Unix
Copy Program'.) It's based on two systems connecting to each other at
specified intervals, called polling, and executing any work scheduled for

either of them. Historically most UUCP was done with Unix equipment,
although the software's since been implemented on other platforms (e.g.
VMS). For example, the system oregano polls the system basil once every
two hours. If there's any mail waiting for oregano, basil will send it at that
time; likewise, oregano will at that time send any jobs waiting for basil.

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

The Physical Connection

The actual connections between the various networks take a variety of
forms. 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). Also installed are T3 links,
acting as backbones between major locations to 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 from
1200 baud all the way up to as high as 38.4Kbps. As was mentioned in The
Networks, the connections are of the store-and-forward variety. Also in use
are Internet-based UUCP links (as if things weren't already confusing
enough!). The systems do their UUCP traffic over TCP/IP connections,
which give the UUCP-based network some blindingly fast "hops," resulting

in better connectivity for the network as a whole. UUCP connections first
became popular in the 1970's, and have remained in wide-spread use ever
since. Only with UUCP can Joe Smith correspond with someone across the
country or around the world, for the price of a local telephone call.

BITNET links mostly take the form of 9600bps modems connected from
site to 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 have
always wanted to correspond with each other in the fastest way possible,
short of normal conversation. Electronic mail (or email) is the most
prevalent application of this in computer networking. It allows people to
write back and forth without having to spend much time worrying about
how the message actually gets delivered. As technology grows closer and
closer to being a common part of daily life, the need to understand the many
ways it can be utilized and how it works, at least to some level, is vital. part
of daily life (as has been evidenced by the ISDN effort, the need to
understand the many ways it can be utilized and how it works, at least to
some level, is vital.

Email Addresses

Electronic mail is hinged around the concept of an address; the section on
Networking Basics made some reference to it while introducing domains.
Your email address provides all of the information required to get a

message to you from anywhere in the world. An address doesn't necessarily
have to go to a human being. It could be an archive server, {See Archive
Servers, for a description.} a list of people, or even someone's pocket pager.
These cases are the exception to the norm—-mail to most addresses is read
by human beings.

%@!.: Symbolic Cacophony

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

To reach Jim Morrison on the system south.america.org, one would
address the mail as jm@south.america.org. But if Jim's account was on a
UUCP site named brazil, then his address would be brazil!jm. If it's possible
(and one exists), try to use the Internet form of an address; bang paths can
fail if an intermediate site in the path happens to be down. There is a
growing trend for UUCP sites to register Internet domain names, to help
alleviate the problem of path failures.

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

debbie%dream@south.america.org

The form is significant. This address says that the local system should
first send the mail to south.america.org. There the address debbie%dream

will turn into debbie@dream, which will hopefully be a valid address. Then
south.america.org will handle getting the mail to 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 nuts@ora.com for ordering information.

Sending and Receiving Mail

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

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

% mail brendan@cs.widener.edu Subject: 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 in his
mailbox as:

% mail "/usr/spool/mail/brendan": 1 messages 1 new 1 unread U 1
joeuser@foo.widene 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 the reply 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's
mailer. It'll save a lot of wasted aspirin for both you and your system
administrator.

Anatomy of a Mail Header

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

>From bush@hq.mil Sat May 25 17:06:01 1991
Received: from hq.mil by house.gov with SMTP id AA21901
(4.1/SMI for dan@house.gov); Sat, 25 May 91 17:05:56 -0400
Date: Sat, 25 May 91 17:05:56 -0400
From: The President <bush@hq.mil>
Message-Id: <9105252105.AA06631@hq.mil>
To: dan@senate.gov
Subject: Meeting

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

The first line, with From and the two lines for Received: are usually not
very interesting. They give the "real" address that the mail is coming from

(as opposed to the address you should reply to, which may look much
different), and what places the mail went through to get to you. Over the
Internet, there is always at least one Received: header and usually no more
than four or five. When a message is sent using UUCP, one Received:
header is added for each system that the mail passes through. This can often
result in more than a dozen Received: headers. While they help with
dissecting problems in mail delivery, odds are the average user will never
want to 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 was sent.
Likewise, the "good" address (as opposed to "real" address) is laid out in
the From: header. Sometimes it won't include the full name of the person (in
this case The President), and may look different, but it should always
contain an email address of some form.

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

To: lists the email address (or addresses) of the recipients of the message.
There may be a Cc: header, listing additional addresses. Finally, a brief
subject for the message goes in the Subject: 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 to proper
delivery.

Bounced Mail

When an email address is incorrect in some way (the system's name is
wrong, the domain doesn't exist, whatever), the mail system will bounce the

message back to the sender, much the same way that the Postal Service does
when you send a letter to a bad street address. The message will include the
reason for the bounce; a common error is addressing mail to an account
name that doesn't exist. For example, writing to Lisa Simpson at Widener
University's Computer Science department will fail, because she doesn't
have an account. {Though if she asked, we'd certainly give her one.}

From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON>
Date: Sat, 25 May 91 16:45:14 -0400
To: mg@gracie.com
Cc: Postmaster@cs.widener.edu
Subject: Returned mail: User unknown

——- Transcript of session follows ——- While talking to
cs.widener.edu: >>> RCPT To:<lsimpson@cs.widener.edu> <<< 550
<lsimpson@cs.widener.edu>… User unknown 550 lsimpson… User
unknown

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

The message also includes the text of the mail, so you don't have to
retype 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 <mg@gracie.com>
Message-Id: <9105252045.AA06528@gracie.com>
To: lsimpson@cs.widener.edu
Subject: Scripting your future episodes
Reply-To: writing-group@gracie.com

…. verbiage …

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

Mailing Lists

People that share common interests are inclined to discuss their hobby or
interest at every available opportunity. One modern way to aid in this
exchange of information is by using a mailing list—-usually an email
address that redistributes all mail sent to it back out to a list of addresses.
For example, the Sun Managers mailing list (of interest to people that
administer computers manufactured by Sun) has the address sun-
managers@eecs.nwu.edu. Any mail sent to that address will "explode" out
to each person named in a file maintained on a computer at Northwestern
University.

Administrative tasks (sometimes referred to as administrivia) are often
handled through other addresses, typically with the suffix -request. To
continue the above, a request to be added to or deleted from the Sun
Managers list should be sent to sun-managers-request@eecs.nwu.edu.

When in doubt, try to write to the -request version of a mailing list
address first; the other people on the list aren't interested in your desire to

be added or deleted, and can certainly do nothing to expedite your request.
Often if the administrator of a list is busy (remember, this is all peripheral
to real jobs and real work), many users find it necessary to ask again and
again, often with harsher and harsher language, to be removed from a list.
This does nothing more than waste traffic and bother everyone else
receiving the messages. If, after a reasonable amount of time, you still
haven't succeeded to be removed from a mailing list, write to the postmaster
at that site and see if they can help.

Exercise caution when replying to a message sent by a mailing list. If you
wish to respond to the author only, make sure that the only address you're
replying to is that person, and not the entire list. Often messages of the sort
"Yes, I agree with you completely!" will appear 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 indeed headed to the whole list and not a single
person.

A list of the currently available mailing lists is available in at least two
places; the first is in a file on ftp.nisc.sri.com called interest-groups under
the netinfo/ directory. It's updated fairly regularly, but is large (presently
around 700K), so only get it every once in a while. The other list is
maintained by Gene Spafford (spaf@cs.purdue.edu), and is posted in parts
to the newsgroup news.lists semi-regularly. (Usenet News, for info on how
to read that and other newsgroups.)

Listservs

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

Areas of interest are wide and varied—-ETHICS-L deals with ethics in
computing, while ADND-L has to do with a role-playing game. A full list of
the available BITNET lists can be obtained by writing to
LISTSERV@BITNIC.BITNET with a body containing the command

list global

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

The most fundamental command is subscribe. It will tell the listserv 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 to the
list, or that the request has been passed on to the system on which the list is
actually maintained.

The mate to subscribe is, naturally, unsubscribe. It will remove a given
address from a BITNET list. It, along with all other listserv commands, can
be abbreviated—-subscribe as sub, unsubscribe as unsub, etc. For a full list
of the available listserv commands, write to
LISTSERV@BITNIC.BITNET, giving it the command help.

As an aside, there have been implementations of the listserv system for
non-BITNET hosts (more specifically, Unix systems). One of the most
complete is available on cs.bu.edu in the directory 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 transferring files
over the Internet. On many systems, it's also the name of the program that
implements the protocol. Given proper permission, it's possible to copy a
file from a computer in South Africa to one in Los Angeles at very fast
speeds (on the order of 5—10K per second). This normally requires either a
user id on both systems or a special configuration set up by the system
administrator(s).

There is a good way around this restriction—-the anonymous FTP
service. It essentially will let anyone in the world have access to a certain
area of disk space in a non-threatening way. With this, people can make
files publicly available with little hassle. Some systems have dedicated
entire disks or even entire computers to maintaining extensive archives of
source code and information. They include gatekeeper.dec.com (Digital),
wuarchive.wustl.edu (Washington University in Saint Louis), and
archive.cis.ohio-state.edu (The Ohio State University).

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

Name (foo.site.com:you): anonymous
Password: jm@south.america.org

Custom and netiquette dictate that people respond to the Password: query
with an email address so that the sites can track the level of FTP usage, if
they desire. (Addresses for information on email addresses).

The speed of the transfer depends on the speed of the underlying link. A
site that has a 9600bps SLIP connection will not get the same throughput as
a system with a 56k leased line (The Physical Connection, for more on what
kinds of connections can exist in a network). Also, the traffic of all other
users on that link will affect performance. If there are thirty people all
FTPing from one site simultaneously, the load on the system (in addition to
the network connection) will degrade the overall throughput of the transfer.

FTP Etiquette

Lest we forget, the Internet is there for people to do work. People using
the network and the systems on it are doing so for a purpose, whether it be
research, development, whatever. Any heavy activity takes 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; the
general rule of thumb is that any extra traffic created detracts from the
ability of that site's users to perform their tasks. To help be considerate of
this, it's highly recommended that FTP sessions be held only after normal
business hours for that site, preferably late at night. The possible effects of a
large transfer will be less destructive at 2 a.m. than 2 p.m. Also, remember
that if it's past dinner time in Maine, it's still early afternoon in California
—-think in terms of the current time at the site that's being visited, not of
local time.

Basic Commands

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

Creating the Connection

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

There are two ways to connect to a system—-using its hostname or 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 hostnames for 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 the
connection's being made from). It will pause momentarily then respond
with 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, a
good response is your email address:

331 Guest login ok, send ident as password. Password:
jm@south.america.org 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply. ftp>

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

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

dir At the ftp> prompt, you can type a number of commands to perform
various functions. One example is dir—-it will list the files in the current
directory. Continuing the example from above:

ftp> dir

200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data
connection for /bin/ls. total 3116 drwxr-xr-x 2 7 21 512 Nov 21 1988
.forward -rw-rw-r— 1 7 11 0 Jun 23 1988 .hushlogin drwxrwxr-x 2 0 21
512 Jun 4 1990 Census drwxrwxr-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.Z drwxrwxr-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'll be using
it later. Just for general information, it happens to be a listing of all of the
files added to UUNET's archives during the past week.

The directory shown is on a machine running the Unix operating system
—-the dir command will produce different results on other operating
systems (e.g. TOPS, VMS, et al.). Learning to recognize different formats
will take some time. After a few weeks of traversing the Internet, it proves
easier to see, for example, how large a file is on an operating system you're
otherwise not acquainted with.

With many FTP implementations, it's also possible to take the output of
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 FTP
connection; this is particularly useful for systems with very long directories
(like ftp.uu.net). The above example would put the names of every file that
begins with an n into the local file outfilename.

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). To change the current
directory, one uses the cd command. To change to the 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) worked
properly. Moving "up" a directory is more system-specific—-in Unix use
the command cd .., and in VMS, cd [-].

get and put

The actual transfer is performed with the get and put commands. To get a
file from the remote computer to the local system, the command takes the
form:

ftp> get filename

where filename is the file on the remote system. Again using ftp.uu.net as
an example, the file newthisweek.Z can be retrieved with

ftp> get newthisweek.Z 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening
ASCII mode data connection for newthisweek.Z (42390 bytes). 226
Transfer complete. local: newthisweek.Z remote: newthisweek.Z 42553
bytes received in 6.9 seconds (6 Kbytes/s) ftp>

The section below on using binary mode instead of ASCII will describe
why this particular choice will result in a corrupt and subsequently unusable
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 only have one dot
in the name), you can specify what the local filename should be by
providing get with an additional argument

ftp> get newthisweek.Z uunet-new

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

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

ftp> put filename

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

ASCII vs Binary

In the example above, the file newthisweek.Z was transferred, but
supposedly not correctly. The reason is this: in a normal ASCII transfer (the
default), certain characters are translated between systems, to help make
text files more readable. However, when binary files (those containing non-
ASCII characters) are transferred, this translation should not take place.
One example is a binary program—-a few changed characters can render it
completely useless.

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

ftp> ascii 200 Type set to A. (Note the A, which signifies ASCII mode.)

ftp> binary 200 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 the
user types binary, all transfers in that session are done in binary mode (that
is, unless ascii is typed later).

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

ftp> binary 200 Type set to I. ftp> get newthisweek.Z 200 PORT
command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for
newthisweek.Z (42390 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. local: newthisweek.Z
remote: newthisweek.Z 42390 bytes received in 7.2 seconds (5.8 Kbytes/s)

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

mget and mput

The commands mget and mput allow for multiple file transfers using
wildcards to get several files, or a whole set of files at once, rather than
having to do it manually one by one. For example, to get all files that begin
with the letter f, one would 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 a
mget or mput operation. You'll often need to get a whole set of files and not

have each of them confirmed—-you know they're all right. In that case, use
the prompt command to turn the queries off.

ftp> prompt Interactive mode off.

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

Joe Granrose's List
Monthly, Joe Granrose (odin@pilot.njin.net) 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 odin@pilot.njin.net with a Subject: line of listserv-request and a
message body of send help. Please don't bother Joe with your requests—-
the server will provide you with the list.

The archie Server archie is always in lowercase

A group of people at McGill University in Canada got together and
created a query system called archie. It was originally formed to be a quick
and easy way to scan the offerings of the many anonymous FTP sites 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 telnet session,
email queries, and command-line and X-window clients. The email
responses can be used along with FTPmail servers for those not on the
Internet. (FTP-by-Mail Servers, for info on using FTPmail servers.)

Using archie Today

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

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

To access archie interactively, telnet to one of the existing servers. {See
Telnet, for notes on using the telnet program.} They include

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 ongoing work in the
archie project; the user will be left at a archie> prompt, at which he may
enter commands. Using help will yield instructions on using the prog
command to make queries, set to control various aspects of the server's
operation, et al. Type quit at the prompt to leave archie. Typing the query
prog vine.tar.Z will yield a list of the systems that offer the source to the X-
windows program 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 (naturally enough)
archie, the other xarchie (for X-Windows). They query the archie databases
and yield a list of systems that have the requested file(s) available for
anonymous FTP, without requiring an interactive session to the server. For
example, to find the same information you tried 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 archie
clients yet; the source is available on each of the archie servers, in the

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 the networked
desktop.

Mailing archie

Users limited to email connectivity to the Internet should send a message
to the address archie@archie.mcgill.ca with the single word help in the
body of the message. An email message will be returned explaining how to
use the email archie server, along with the details of using FTPmail. Most
of the commands offered by the telnet interface can be used with the mail
server.

The whatis database

In addition to offering access to anonymous FTP listings, archie also
permits access to the whatis description database. It includes the names and
brief synopses for over 3,500 public domain software packages, datasets
and informational documents located on the Internet.

Additional whatis databases are scheduled to be added in the future.
Planned offerings include listings for the names and locations of online
library catalog programs, the names of publicly accessible electronic
mailing lists, compilations of Frequently Asked Questions lists, and archive
sites for the most popular Usenet newsgroups. Suggestions for additional
descriptions or locations databases are welcomed and should be sent to the
archie developers at archie-l@cs.mcgill.ca.

"Was f@"ur pl@"undern!"
("What a place to plunder!")

Gebhard Leberecht Bl@"ucher

———
Usenet News

Original from: chip@count.tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
[Most recent change: 19 May 1991 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene
Spafford)]

The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely
misunderstood. Every day on Usenet the "blind men and the elephant"
phenomenon appears, in spades. In the opinion of the author, more flame
wars (rabid arguments) arise because of a lack of understanding of the
nature of Usenet than from any other source. And consider that such flame
wars arise, of necessity, among people who are on Usenet. Imagine, then,
how poorly understood Usenet must be by those outside!

No essay on the nature of Usenet can ignore the erroneous impressions
held by many Usenet users. Therefore, this section will treat falsehoods
first. Keep reading for truth. (Beauty, alas, is not relevant to Usenet.)

What Usenet Is

Usenet is the set of machines that exchange articles tagged with one or
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 any non-trivial way.

Usenet encompasses government agencies, large universities, high schools,
businesses of all sizes, home computers of all descriptions, etc.

Every administrator controls his own site. No one has any real control
over any site but his own. The administrator gets his power from the owner
of the system he administers. As long as the owner is happy with the job the
administrator is doing, he can do whatever he pleases, up to and including
cutting off Usenet entirely. C'est la 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 to the direction of high-volume news flow. It follows
that, to the extent that "upstream" sites decide what traffic they will carry
for their "downstream" neighbors, that "upstream" sites have some
influence on their neighbors. But such influence is usually easy to
circumvent, and heavy-handed manipulation typically results in a backlash
of resentment.

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

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

Usenet is not fair. After all, who shall decide what's fair? For that matter,
if someone is 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 say what they wish in whatever way they wish, and the
owners of said computers have no right to stop them.

Those people are wrong. Freedom of speech also means freedom not to
speak; if I choose not to use my computer to aid your speech, that is my
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 of keeping commercial traffic to a
minimum. If such commercial traffic is generally considered worth
carrying, then it may be grudgingly tolerated. Even so, it is usually
separated somehow from non-commercial traffic; see comp.newprod.

Usenet is not the Internet. The Internet is a wide-ranging network, parts
of which are subsidized by various governments. The Internet carries many
kinds of traffic; Usenet is only one of them. And the Internet is only one of
the various 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. There are
Vaxen running VMS, IBM mainframes, Amigas, and MS-DOS PCs reading

and 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 to transport and read Usenet articles. So no one program or
package can be called "the Usenet software."

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

Usenet is not a UUCP network.

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

Well, enough negativity.

Propagation of News

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

But things have changed. Nowadays, even the smallest Internet site has
connectivity the likes of which the backbone admin of yesteryear could
only dream. In addition, in the U.S., the advent of cheaper long-distance

calls and high-speed modems has made long-distance Usenet feeds
thinkable for smaller companies. There is only one pre-eminent UUCP
transport site today in the U.S., namely UUNET. But UUNET isn't a player
in the propagation wars, because it never refuses any traffic—-it gets paid
by the minute, after all; to refuse based on content would jeopardize its
legal status as an enhanced service provider.

All of the above applies to the U.S. In Europe, different cost structures
favored the creation of strictly controlled hierarchical organizations with
central registries. This is all very unlike the traditional mode of U.S. sites
(pick a name, get the software, get a feed, you're on). Europe's "benign
monopolies", long uncontested, now face competition from looser
organizations patterned after the U.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) a proposed newsgroup.
Newsgroup Creation, for detailed instructions and guidelines on the process
involved in making a newsgroup.

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

inexorably 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.groups
newsgroup for a while (six months, at least) to find out how things work. If
you're too impatient to wait six months, then you really need to learn; read
news.groups for a year instead. If you just can't wait, find a Usenet old hand
to run the vote for you.

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

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

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

No matter what, appealing to "Usenet" won't help. Even if those who
read such an appeal regarding system administration are sympathetic to

your cause, they will almost certainly have even less influence at your site
than you do.

By the same token, if you don't like what some user at another site is
doing, only the administrator and/or owner of that site have any authority to
do anything about it. Persuade them that the user in question is a problem
for them, and they might do something (if they feel like it). If the user in
question is the administrator or owner of the site from which he or she
posts, forget it; you can't win. Arrange for your newsreading software to
ignore articles from him or her 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. Then
came Usenet in 1979, shortly after the release of V7 Unix with UUCP; and
it was better. Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina, Tom
Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to exchange
information with the Unix community. Steve Bellovin, a grad student at the
University of North Carolina, put together the first version of the news
software using shell scripts and installed it on the first two sites: unc and
duke. At the beginning of 1980 the network consisted of those two sites and
phs (another machine at Duke), and was described at the January 1980
Usenix conference in Boulder, CO. {The Usenix conferences are semi-
annual meetings where members of the Usenix Association, a group of
Unix enthusiasts, meet and trade notes.} Steve Bellovin later rewrote the
scripts into C programs, but they were never released beyond unc and duke.
Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did another implementation in the C
programming language for public distribution. Tom Truscott made further
modifications, and this became the "A" news release.

In 1981 at the University of California at Berkeley, grad student Mark
Horton and high school student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software

to add functionality and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news—-
"A" news was intended for only a few articles per group per day. This
rewrite was the "B" news version. The first public release was version 2.1
in 1982; all versions before 2.1 were considered in beta test. As The Net
grew, the news software was expanded and modified. The last version
maintained and released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1.

Rick Adams, then at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over
coordination of the maintenance and enhancement of the news software
with the 2.10.2 release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of news
was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was
added to the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspired by ARPA
mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems. In late 1986,
version 2.11 of news was released, including a number of changes to
support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced batching and
compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and other features.
The current release of news is 2.11, patchlevel 19.

A new version of news, becoming known as "C" news, has been
developed at the University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry
Spencer. This version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase
article processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve
the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. The package
was released to The Net in the autumn of 1987. For more information, see
the paper News Need Not Be Slow, published in the Winter 1987 Usenix
Technical Conference proceedings.

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

Hierarchies Newsgroups are organized according to their specific areas
of concentration. Since the groups are in a tree structure, the various areas

are called hierarchies. There are seven major categories:

comp Topics of interest to both computer professionals and hobbyists,
including topics in computer science, software sources, and information 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.

sci Discussions marked by special knowledge relating to research in or
application of the established sciences.

soc Groups primarily addressing social issues and socializing. Included
are discussions related to many different world cultures.

talk Groups largely debate-oriented and tending to feature long
discussions without resolution and without appreciable amounts of
generally 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 entire
Usenet—-this implies world-wide distribution. Not all groups actually
enjoy such wide distribution, however. The European Usenet and Eunet
sites take only a selected subset of the more "technical" groups, and

controversial "noise" groups are often not carried by many sites in the U.S.
and Canada (these groups are primarily under the talk and soc
classifications). Many sites do not carry some or all of the comp.binaries
groups because of the typically large size of the posts in them (being actual
executable programs).

Also available are a number of "alternative" hierarchies:

alt True 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 and on-target;
to serve this need, moderated groups came to be. All articles posted to a
moderated group get mailed to the group's moderator. 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 or two. This is how many mailing list gateways work (for
example, the Risks Digest).

news.groups & news.announce.newgroups

Being a good net.citizen includes being involved in the continuing
growth and evolution of the Usenet system. One part of this involvement
includes following the discussion in the groups news.groups and the notes
in news.announce.newgroups. It is there that discussion goes on about the
creation of new groups and destruction of inactive ones. Every person on
Usenet is allowed and encouraged to vote on the creation of a newsgroup.

How Usenet Works

The transmission of Usenet news is entirely cooperative. Feeds are
generally provided out of good will and the desire to distribute news
everywhere. 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 is
mainly modem-based and involves the normal charges for telephone calls.
The second, NNTP, is the primary method for distributing news over the
Internet.

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

NNTP, on the other hand, offers a little more latitude with how news is
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 constant connections with their news
neighbors, sending news nearly instantaneously, and can handle dozens of
simultaneous feeds, both incoming and outgoing.

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

Further information on how Usenet works with relation to the various
transports is available in the documentation for the Cnews and NNTP
packages, as well as in RFC-1036, the Standard for Interchange of
USENET Messages and RFC-977, Network News Transfer Protocol: A
Proposed Standard for the Stream-Based Transmission of News. The RFCs
do tend to be rather dry reading, particularly to the new user.

Mail Gateways

A natural progression is for Usenet news and electronic mailing lists to
somehow become merged—-which they have, in the form of news
gateways. Many mailing lists are set up to "reflect" messages not only to the
readership of the list, but also into a newsgroup. Likewise, posts to a
newsgroup can be sent to the moderator of the mailing list, or to the entire
mailing list. Some examples of this in action are comp.risks (the Risks
Digest) and comp.dcom.telecom (the Telecom Digest).

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

from "Dear Emily Postnews" by Brad Templeton Usenet "Netiquette"

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

Signatures

At the end of most articles is a small blurb called a person's signature. In
Unix this file is named .signature in the person's login directory—-it will
vary for other operating systems. It exists to provide information about how
to get in touch with the person posting the article, including their email
address, phone number, address, or where they're located. Even so,
signatures have become 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 often than not get you
flamed until you take it out.)

Four lines will suffice—-more is just extra garbage for Usenet sites to
carry along with your article, which is supposed to be the intended focus of
the reader. Netiquette dictates limiting oneself to this "quota" of four—-
some people make signatures that are ten lines or even more, including
elaborate ASCII drawings of their hand-written signature or faces or even
the space shuttle. This is not cute, and will bother people to no end.

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

Posting Personal Messages

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

Posting Mail

In the interests of privacy, it's considered extremely bad taste to post any
email that someone may have sent, unless they explicitly give you
permission to redistribute it. While the legal issues can be heavily debated,
most everyone agrees that email should be treated as anything one would
receive via normal snailmail, {The slang for the normal land and air postal
service.} , with all of the assumed rights that are carried with it.

Test Messages

Many people, particularly new users, want to try out posting before
actually taking part in discussions. Often the mechanics of getting messages
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 is considered a major netiquette faux pas in the
Usenet world. There are a number of groups available, called test groups,
that exist solely for the purpose of trying out a news system, reader, or even
new signature. They include

alt.test gnu.gnusenet.test misc.test

some of which will generate auto-magic replies to your posts to let you
know they made it through. There are certain denizens of Usenet that
frequent the test groups to help new users out. They respond to the posts,
often including the article so the poster can see how it got to the person's
site. Also, many regional hierarchies have 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 accessible through
"The Net"; or, even more entertaining, an article is forged to appear to be
coming from that celebrity. One example is Stephen Spielberg—-the
rec.arts.movies readership was in an uproar for two 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 with Usenet and
computers in general—-but the overwhelming majority are just normal
people. One should act with skepticism whenever a notable personality is
"seen" in a newsgroup.

Summaries

Authors of articles occasionally say that readers should reply by mail and
they'll summarize. Accordingly, readers should do just that—-reply via
mail. Responding with a followup article to such an article defeats the
intention of the author. She, in a few days, will post one article containing
the highlights of the responses she received. By following up to the whole
group, the author may not read what you have to say.

When creating a summary of the replies to a post, try to make it as
reader-friendly as possible. Avoid just putting all of the messages received
into one big file. Rather, take some time and edit the messages into a form
that contains the essential information that other 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 the information's
not proprietary, but at the same time want to protect themselves from
political backlash). Summaries should honor this request accordingly by
listing the From: address as anonymous or (Address withheld by request).

Quoting

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

In article <1232@foo.bar.com>, sharon@foo.bar.com 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), but proves a
point. When you quote another person, edit out whatever isn't directly
applicable to your reply. {But not changing their words, of course. } This
gives the reader of the new article a better idea of what points you were
addressing. By including the entire article, you'll only annoy those reading
it. Also, signatures in the original aren't necessary; the readers already know
who wrote it (by the attribution).

Avoid being tedious with responses—-rather than pick apart an article,
address it in parts or as a whole. Addressing practically each and every

word in an article only proves that the person responding has absolutely
nothing better to do with his time.

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

Crossposting

The Newsgroups: line isn't limited to just one group—-an article 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 and comp.simulation. It's
usually safe to crosspost to up to three or four groups. To list more than that
is considered "excessive noise."

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

Followup-To: sci.space

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

Followup-To: poster

Certain newsreaders will use this to sense that a reply should never be
posted back onto The Net. This is often used with questions that will yield a
summary of information later, a vote, or an advertisement.

Recent News

One should avoid posting "recent" events—-sports scores, a plane crash,
or whatever people will see on the evening news or read in the morning
paper. By the time the article has propagated across all of Usenet, 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 in a 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. If you
have terrible spelling, keep a dictionary near by. If you have trouble with
grammar and punctuation, try to get a book on English grammar and
composition (found in many bookstores and at garage sales). By all means
pay attention to what you say—-it makes you who you are on The Net.

Likewise, try to be clear in what you ask. Ambiguous or vague questions
often lead to no response at all, leaving the poster discouraged. Give as
much essential information as you feel is necessary to let people help you,
but keep it within limits. For instance, you should probably include the
operating system of your computer in the post if it's needed, but don't tell
everybody what peripherals you have hanging off of it.

Useful Subjects

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

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 !!!

Bad Subject: I'm desperately in search of the honorable Mr. Waldo in the
state of…

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

Tone of Voice

Since common computers can't portray the inflection or tone in a person's
voice, how articles are worded can directly affect the response 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 that rationally 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're trying
to speak—-netiquette dictates that if you USE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS,
people will think you're "shouting." Write as you would in a 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 always the
best and most efficient of them all. Posting articles asking questions like
What computer should I buy? An Atari ST or an Amiga? will lead only to
fervent arguments over the merits and drawbacks of each brand. Don't even
ask The Net—-go to a local user group, or do some research of your own
like reading some magazine reviews. Trying to say one computer is
somehow better than another is a 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 raised time
and time again in a newsgroup. They're intended to help cut down on the
redundant traffic in a group. For example, in the newsgroup alt.tv.simpsons,
one recurring question is Did you notice that there's a different blackboard
opening at the beginning of every Simpsons 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 are set
to expire one month later (when, supposedly, the next FAQ will be

published). 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 the
archiving and storage of the various periodic postings that are peppered
throughout the various Usenet groups. To access them, FTP to the 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 connection with a
remote machine. It gives the user the opportunity to be on one computer
system and do work on another, which may be across the street or
thousands of miles away. Where modems are limited, in the majority, by the
quality of telephone lines and a single connection, telnet provides a
connection that's error-free and nearly always faster than the latest
conventional modems.

Using Telnet

As with FTP (Anonymous FTP), the actual command for negotiating a
telnet connection varies from system to system. The most common is telnet
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 try to 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, the command
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 the character that
will let you go back to the local system to close the connection, suspend it,
etc. To close this connection, the user would type ^], and respond to the
telnet> prompt with the command close. Local documentation should be
checked for information on specific commands, functions, and escape
character that can be used.

Telnet Ports

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

telnet somewhere.domain port

will connect the user to the given port on the system somewhere.domain.
Many libraries use this port method to offer their facilities to the general
Internet community; other services are also available. 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 the same usage.

Publicly Accessible Libraries

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

Many, many institutions of higher learning have made their library
catalogs available for searching by anyone on the Internet. They include
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 be far too
long for this document, it would soon be out of date. Instead, several lists
are being maintained and are available either by mail or via FTP. Also, the
Internet Resource Guide (IRG) also describes a few libraries that are
accessible—-IRG for further information.

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

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

For announcements of new libraries being available and discussion on
related topics, consult the Usenet newsgroup comp.internet.library (Usenet
News to learn how to read news).

Bulletin Board Systems

The Cleveland Freenet

Freenets are open-access, free, community computer systems. One such
system is the Cleveland Freenet, sponsored by CWRU (Case Western
Reserve University). Anyone and everyone is welcome to join and take part

in the exciting project—-that of a National Telecomputing Public Network,
where everyone benefits. There's no charge for the registration process and
no charge to use the system.

To register, telnet to any one of

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

After you're connected, choose the entry on the menu that signifies you're
a guest user. Another menu will follow; select Apply for an 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 the Postal
Service—-your login id and password will be created in a few days. At that
point you're free to use the system as you wish. They provide multi-user
chat, email, Usenet news, and a variety of other things to keep you occupied
for hours on end.

Directories

There are a few systems that are maintained to provide the Internet
community with access to lists of information—-users, organizations, etc.
They range from fully dedicated computers with access to papers and
research results, to a system to find out about the faculty members of a
university.

Knowbot

Knowbot is a "master directory" that contains email address information
from the NIC WHOIS database (Whois), the PSI White Pages Pilot Project,
the NYSERNET X.500 database and MCI Mail. Most of these services are
email registries themselves, but Knowbot provides 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 will list the
person's name, organization, and email address if it is given. Telnet to
wp.psi.net and log in as fred. The White Pages Project also includes an
interface to use Xwindows remotely.

Faculty and Staff Listings

Many universities offer access to information on current faculty and staff.
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 the people
directly responsible for them. Their areas of concentration and the software
used to implement them are widely disparate, and are probably beyond the
author's expertise. Also, don't forget to check with your local library—-the
reference librarian there can provide information on conventional resources,

and possibly even those available over the Internet (they are becoming more
common).

Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL)

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL), in association
with CARL Systems Inc., operates a public access catalog of services.
Offered are a number of library databases, including searches for
government periodicals, book reviews, indices for current articles, and
access to to other library databases around the country. Other services are
available to CARL members including an online encyclopedia. Telnet to
pac.carl.org, or write to help@carl.org for more details.

PENpages

PENpages is an agriculturally-oriented database administered by
Pennsylvania State University. Information entered into PENpages is
provided by numerous sources including the Pennsylvania Dept. of
Agriculture, Rutgers University, and Penn State. Easy-to-use menus guide
users to information ranging from cattle and agricultural prices to current
weather information, from health information to agricultural news from
around the nation. A keyword search option also allows users to search the
database for related information and articles. The database is updated daily,
and a listing of most recent additions is displayed after login. Telnet to
psupen.psu.edu and log in as the user PNOTPA.

Clemson Univ. Forestry & Agricultural Network

Clemson maintains a database similar to PENpages in content, but the
information provided tends to be localized to the Southeastern United
States. A menu-driven database offers queries involving the weather, food,
family, and human resources. Telnet to eureka.clemson.edu and log in as

PUBLIC. You need to be on a good VT100 emulator (or a real VT
terminal).

University of Maryland Info Database

The Computer Science department of the University of Maryland
maintains 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 use it. Telnet to
info.umd.edu and log in as info. The information contained in the database
is accessible through a screen-oriented interface, 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 interface the
system provides, and other related topics. Send mail to
listserv@umdd.umd.edu 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 related information for
the United States and Canada. Available are current weather conditions and
forecasts for cities in the U.S., a national weather summary, ski conditions,
earthquake and hurricane updates, and a listing of severe weather
conditions. Telnet to madlab.sprl.umich.edu on port 3000 to use the system.

Geographic Name Server

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

0 Chester 1 42045 Delaware 2 PA Pennsylvania 3 US United States F 45
Populated place L 39 50 58 N 75 21 22 W P 45794 E 22 Z 19013 Z 19014 Z
19015 Z 19016 ..

To use the server, telnet to martini.eecs.umich.edu on port 3000. The
command help will yield further instructions, along with an explanation for
each of the fields in a reponse.

FEDIX—-Minority Scholarship Information

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

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

Daily information updates are made on federal education and research
programs, scholarships, fellowships, and grants, available used research
equipment, and general information about FEDIX itself. To access the
database, telnet to fedix.fie.com and log in as fedix.

Science & Technology Information System

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

STIS, Office of Information Systems, Room 401 National Science
Foundation 1800 G. Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20550 stis-
request@nsf.gov (202) 357-7492 (202) 357-7663 (Fax)

Ocean Network Information Center

The University of Delaware College of Marine Studies offers access to
an interactive database of research information covering all aspects of
marine studies, nicknamed OCEANIC. This includes the World Oceanic
Circulation Experiment (WOCE) information and program information,
research ship schedules and information, and a Who's Who of email and
mailing addresses for oceanic studies. Data from a variety of academic
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 objects
available over computer networks. NED is an object-oriented database
which contains extensive information for nearly 132,000 extragalactic
objects taken from about major catalogs of galaxies, quasars, infrared and
radio sources. NED provides positions, names, and other basic data (e.g.
magnitude types, sizes and redshifts as well as bibliographic references and
abstracts). Searches can be done by name, around a name, and on an

astronomical position. NED contains a tutorial which guides the user
through the retrieval process. Telnet to 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., this
automated data service provides database access to information ranging
from current navigational satellite positioning, astronomical data, and
software utilities. A wide variety of databases can be searched and
instructions for file transfer are given. Telnet to tycho.usno.navy.mil and log
in as ads.

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

————————- Various Tools

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

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

Finger

On many systems there exists the finger command, which yield
information about each user that's currently logged in. This command also
has extensions for use over the Internet, as well. Under normal
circumstances, the command is simply finger for a summary of who's
logged into the local system, or finger username for specific information
about a user. It's also possible to go one step further and 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
Where brendan Brendan Kehoe p0 Fri 02:14 tattoo.cs.widene sven 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 bart@cs.widener.edu
[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 need to
restrict the information about their systems and users available to the
outside world. To that end, they often block finger requests from outside
sites—-so don't be surprised if fingering a computer or a 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 is
currently "up" and running. The general form of the command is ping
system. {The usage will, again, vary.} For example,

ping cs.widener.edu

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

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

% ping -s cs.swarthmore.edu PING cs.swarthmore.edu: 56 data bytes 64
bytes from 130.58.68.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=251 time=66 ms 64 bytes from
130.58.68.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=251 time=45 ms 64 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 loss round-trip
min/avg/max = 45/52/66 ms

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

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

Talk

Sometimes email is clumsy and difficult to manage when one really
needs to have an interactive conversation. The Internet provides for that as
well, in the form of talk. Two users can literally see each 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 displayed on
Bart's terminal:

Message from Talk_Daemon@cs.widener.edu at 21:45 … talk:
connection requested by joe@ee.someplace.edu talk: respond with: talk
joe@ee.someplace.edu

Bart would, presumably, respond by typing talk joe@ee.someplace.edu.
They could then chat about whatever they wished, with instantaneous
response time, rather than the write-and-wait style of email. To leave talk,
on many systems one would type Ctrl-C (hold down the Control key and
press C). Check local documentation to be sure.

There are two different versions of talk in common use today. The first,
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 to talk with another user, it responds with
an error about protocol families, odds are the incompatibilities between
versions of talk is the culprit. It's up to the system administrators of sites
which use the 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 every
registered domain (e.g. mit.edu) and of registered users. It's primarily used
by system postmasters or listowners to find the Points of Contact for a site,
to let them know of a problem or contact them for one reason or another.
You can also find out their postal address. 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 the second.

% 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) JIS@MIT.EDU (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 with a
star ('*') before the name; or, use '%' to show JUST the registered users.

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

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

% whois brendan
Kehoe, Brendan (BK59) brendan@cs.widener.edu
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 letters
and numbers), information on how to contact him, and the last time the
record was modified in any way.

Anyone can register with the whois database. People who are
administrative or technical contacts for domains are registered
automatically when their domain applications are processed. For normal
users, one must simply fill out a form from the NIC. FTP to nic.ddn.mil and
get the file netinfo/user-template.txt. The completed form should be mailed
to registrar@nic.ddn.mil.

Other Uses of WHOIS

Also, many educational sites run WHOIS servers of their own, to offer
information about people who may be currently on the staff or attending the
institution. To specify a WHOIS server, many implementations include
some sort of option or qualifier—-in VMS under MultiNet, it's /HOST, in
Unix -h. To receive information 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 by
Matt Power of MIT (mhpower@stan.mit.edu). It is available via
anonymous FTP from sipb.mit.edu, in the directory pub/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 time progresses
and more outlets for commercial activity appear, once-restricted traffic (by
the NSFnet Acceptable Use Policy) may now flow freely. Now that there
are other networks for that information to travel on, businesses are making
their move.

Internet Service Providers

Providers (AlterNet, PSI, etc)…

Supercomputers The Internet Resource Guide (IRG) contains a chapter
on computer time that's available for a fee. Rather than reproduce it here,
which would fast become out-of-date as well as triple the size of this guide,
it's suggested that the reader consult the IRG if such services are of interest.

Electronic Journals

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) publishes a hard-copy
directory of electronic journals, newsletters, and scholarly discussion 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 reference source. Each entry includes
instructions on how to access the referenced publication or list.

The documents are available electronically by sending the commands

get ejournl1 directry get ejournl2 directry

to the server at LISTSERV@OTTAWA.BITNET. Listservs for further
instructions on using a listserv.

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

Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing Association of Research
Libraries 1527 New Hampshire Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036
ARLHQ@UMDC.BITNET (202) 232—2466 (202) 462—7849 (Fax)

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

Commercial Databases

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

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

Clarinet News

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

Clarinet lets you read an "electronic newspaper" right on the local
system; you can get timely industry news, technology related wirestories,
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, including NNTP.

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 on their subject matter, and
are keyworded for additional topics and the geographical location of the
story. ClariNews includes headlines, industry news, box scores, network TV
schedules, and more. The main products 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, is
available from

Clarinet Communications Corp. 124 King St. North Waterloo, Ontario
N2J 2X8 info@@clarinet.com (800) USE-NETS

or with anonymous FTP in the directory /Clarinet on ftp.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 you start
actively using the Internet. Most people assume that everyone's familiar
with them, and they require no additional explanation. If only that were
true!

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

The Internet Worm

from a letter by Severo M. Ornstein, in ACM June 89 Vol32 No6 and the
appeal notice

On November 2, 1988, Robert Morris, Jr., a graduate student in
Computer Science at Cornell, wrote an experimental, self-replicating, self-
propagating program called a worm and injected it into the Internet. He
chose to release it from MIT, to disguise the fact that the worm came from
Cornell. Morris soon discovered that the program was replicating and

reinfecting machines at a much faster rate than he had anticipated—-there
was a bug. Ultimately, many machines at locations around the country
either crashed or became "catatonic." When Morris realized what was
happening, he contacted a friend at Harvard to discuss a solution.
Eventually, they sent an anonymous message from Harvard over the
network, instructing programmers how to kill the worm and prevent
reinfection. However, because the network route was clogged, this message
did not get through until it was too late. Computers were affected at many
sites, including universities, military sites, and medical research facilities.
The estimated cost of dealing with the worm at each installation ranged
from $200 to more 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 Unix
sendmail program, which runs on a system and waits for other systems to
connect to it and give it email, and a hole in the finger daemon fingerd,
which serves finger requests (Finger). People at the University of California
at Berkeley and MIT had copies of the program and were actively
disassembling it (returning the program back into its source form) to try to
figure out how it worked.

Teams of programmers worked non-stop to come up with at least a
temporary fix, to prevent the continued spread of the worm. After about
twelve hours, the team at Berkeley came up with steps that would help
retard the spread of the virus. Another method was also discovered at
Purdue and widely published. The information didn't get out as quickly as it
could have, however, since so many sites had completely disconnected
themselves from the network.

After a few days, things slowly began to return to normalcy and everyone
wanted to know who had done it all. Morris was later named in The New

York Times as the author (though this hadn't yet been officially proven,
there was a substantial body of evidence pointing to Morris).

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

The Cuckoo's Egg

First in an article entitled "Stalking the Wily Hacker," and later in the
book The Cuckoo's Egg, Clifford Stoll detailed his experiences trying to
track down someone breaking into a system at Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory in California. {See the bibliography for full citations.}

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

The experiences of Stoll, and particularly his message in speaking
engagements, have all pointed out the dire need for communication between
parties on a network of networks. The only way everyone can peacefully
co-exist in Cyberspace is by ensuring rapid recognition of any existing
problems.

Organizations

The indomitable need for humans to congregate and share their common
interests is also present in the computing world. User groups exist around
the world, where people share ideas and experiences. Similarly, there are

organizations which are one step "above" user groups; that is to say, they
exist to encourage or promote an idea or set of ideas, rather than support a
specific computer or application of computers.

The Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery (the ACM) was founded in
1947, immediately after Eckert and Mauchly unveiled one of the first
electronic computers, the ENIAC, in 1946. Since then, the ACM has grown
by leaps and bounds, becoming one of the leading educational and 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 and
arts of information processing both among specialists and among the
public;

To develop and maintain the integrity and competence of individuals
engaged in the practices of the sciences and arts of information processing.

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

The ACM has a number of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that
concentrate on a certain area of computing, ranging from graphics to the
Ada programming language to security. Each of the SIGs also publishes its

own newsletter. There is a Usenet group, comp.org.acm, for the discussion
of ACM topics. Usenet News for more information on reading news.

For more information and a membership application, write to:

Assocation for Computing Machinery 1515 Broadway New York City,
NY 10036 ACMHELP@ACMVM.BITNET (212) 869-7440

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility from their letter to
prospective members

The CPSR is an alliance of computer professionals concentrating on
certain areas of the impact of computer technology on society. It traces its
history to the fall of 1981, when several researchers in Palo Alto, California,
organized a lunch meeting to discuss their shared concerns about the
connection between computing and the nuclear arms race. Out of that
meeting and the discussions which followed, CPSR was born, and has been
active ever since. {This section 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 that overreliance on
computing technology can lead to unacceptable risks to society. It includes,
but isn't limited to, work in analyzing military systems such as SDI.

Civil Liberties and Privacy This project is concerned with such topics as
the FBI National Crime Information Center, the growing use of databases
by both government and private industry, the right of access to public
information, extension of First Amendment rights to electronic
communication, and establishing legal protections for privacy of
computerized information.

Computers in the Workplace The CPSR Workplace Project has
concentrated its attention on the design of software for the workplace, and
particularly on the philosophy of "participatory design," in which software
designers work together with users to ensure that systems meet the actual
needs of that workplace.

The 21st Century Project This is a coalition with other professional
organizations working towards redirecting national research priorities from
concentrating on military issues to anticipating and dealing with future
problems as science and technology enter the next century.

For more information on the CPSR, contact them at:

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility P.O. Box 717 Palo
Alto, CA 94302 cpsr@csli.stanford.edu (415) 322—3778 (415) 322—3798
(Fax)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was established to help civilize
the "electronic frontier"—-the Cyberspacial medium becoming ever-present
in today's society; to make it truly useful and beneficial not just to a
technical elite, but to everyone; and to do this in a way which is in keeping
with the society's highest traditions of the free and open flow of information
and communication. {This section was derived from eff.about, available
along with other material via anonymous FTP from ftp.eff.org}

The mission of the EFF is to engage in and support educational activities
which increase popular understanding of the opportunities and challenges
posed by developments in computing and telecommunications;

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

to raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising from the
rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based communications
media and, where necessary, support litigation in the public interest to
preserve, protect, and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of
computing and telecommunications technology;

to encourage and support the development of new tools which will
endow non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based
telecommunications;

The Usenet newsgroups comp.org.eff.talk and comp.org.eff.news are
dedicated to discussion concerning the EFF. They also have mailing list
counterparts for those that don't have access to Usenet, eff-talk-
request@eff.org and eff-news-request@eff.org. The first is an informal
arena (aka a normal newsgroup) where anyone may voice his or her
opinions. The second, comp.org.eff.news, is a moderated area for regular
postings from the EFF in the form of EFFector Online. To submit a posting
for the EFFector Online, or to get general information about the EFF, write
to eff@eff.org. There is also a wealth of information available via
anonymous FTP on ftp.eff.org.

The EFF can be contacted at

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc. 155 Second St. #1 Cambridge,
MA 02141 eff@eff.org (617) 864-0665 (617) 864-0866 (Fax)

The Free Software Foundation

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

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

The Foundation works to provide these freedoms by developing free
compatible replacements for proprietary software. Specifically, they are
putting together a complete, integrated software system called "GNU" that
is upward-compatible with Unix. {As an aside, the editor of the GNU
project, emacs, contains a built-in LISP interpreter and a large part of its
functionality is written in LISP. The name GNU is itself 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 and distribute it
to others. In addition, it will be distributed with source code, so you will be
able to learn about operating systems by reading it, to port it to your own
machine, and to exchange the changes with others.

For more information on the Free Software Foundation and the status of
the GNU Project, or for a list of the current tasks that still need to be done,
write to gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu.

The IEEE

Need IEEE…

The League for Programming Freedom

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

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

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

League for Programming Freedom 1 Kendall Square #143 P.O. Box 9171
Cambridge, MA 02139 league@prep.ai.mit.edu

Networking Initiatives

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

ISDN

NREN

The National Research and Education Network (NREN) is a five-year
project approved by Congress in the Fall of 1991. It's intended to create a
national electronic "super-highway." The NREN will be 50 times faster than
the fastest available networks (at the time of this writing). Proponents of the
NREN claim it will be possible to transfer the equivalent of the entire text
of the Encyclopedia Britannica in one second. Further information,
including the original text of the bill presented by Senator Al Gore (D—
TN), is available through anonymous FTP to nis.nsf.net, in the directory
nsfnet. In addition, Vint Cerf wrote on the then-proposed NREN in RFC-
1167, Thoughts on the National Research and Education Network. RFCs for
information on obtaining RFCs.

A mailing list, nren-discuss@uu.psi.com, is available for discussion of
the NREN; write to nren-discuss-request@uu.psi.com 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 Johnson
Chapter VIII The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

——- Finding Out More

Internet Resource Guide

The NSF Network Service Center (NNSC) compiles and makes available
an Internet Resource Guide (IRG). The goal of the guide is to increase the
visibility of various Internet resources that may help users do their work
better. While not yet an exhaustive list, the guide is a useful compendium of
many resources and can be a helpful reference for a new user.

Resources listed are grouped by types into sections. Current sections
include descriptions of online library catalogs, data archives, online white

pages directory services, networks, network information centers, and
computational resources, such as supercomputers. Each entry describes the
resource, identifies who can use the resource, explains how to reach the
local network via the Internet, and lists contacts for more information. The
list is distributed electronically by the NNSC. To receive a guide, or to get
on a mailing list that alerts you to when it is updated, send a message to
resource-guide-request@nnsc.nsf.net.

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

Requests for Comments

The internal workings of the Internet are defined by a set of documents
called RFCs (Request for Comments). The general process for creating an
RFC is for someone wanting something formalized to write a document
describing the issue and mailing it to Jon Postel (postel@isi.edu). He acts as
a referee for the proposal. It is then commented 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 a number 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 host connected to the
Internet.

Suggested RFCs are generally implemented by network hosts. Lack of
them does not preclude access to the Internet, but may impact its usability.
RFC-793, Transmission Control Protocol, is a must for those implementing
TCP.

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

Informational RFCs contain factual information about the Internet and its
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 in the other,
standard RFCs. Topics range from answers to common questions for new
and experienced users to a suggested bibliography.

Finally, as the Internet has grown and technology has changed, some
RFCs become unnecessary. These obsolete RFCs cannot be ignored,
however. Frequently when a change is made to some RFC that causes a new
one to obsolete others, the new RFC only contains explanations and
motivations for the change. Understanding the model on which the whole
facility is based may involve reading the original and subsequent 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, where xxxx is the number of
the RFC.

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

They're also available through mail by writing to service@nic.ddn.mil,
with a Subject: line of send RFC-xxxx.TXT, again with xxxx being the RFC
number.

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

———- Conclusion

This guide is far from complete—-the Internet changes on a daily (if not
hourly) basis. However, this booklet should provide enough information to
make the incredible breadth and complexity of the Internet a mite less
imposing. Coupled with some exploration and experimentation, every user
has the potential to be a competent net citizen, using the facilities that are
available to their fullest.

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

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

Internet: guide-bugs@cs.widener.edu
UUCP: …!widener!guide-bugs

If you are interested in future updates to this guide (aside from normal
new editions), discussion about information to be included or removed, etc.,
write to guide-request@cs.widener.edu to be placed on a 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 Faulkner The Sound & The
Fury April 8, 1928

————

Getting to Other Networks

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

AppleLink Quantum Services sells access to AppleLink, which is similar
to QuantumLink for Commodore computers and PCLink for IBM PCs and
compatibles. It also provides email access through the address
user@applelink.apple.com.

ATTMail AT&T sells a commercial email service called ATTMail. Its
users can be reached by writing to user@attmail.com.

BIX Users on BIX (the Byte Information eXchange) can be reached
through the DAS gateway at user@cibix.das.net.

CompuServe (CI$) To reach a user on the commercial service
CompuServe, you must address the mail as xxxxx.xxx@compuserve.com,
with xxxxx.xxx being their CompuServe user ID. Normally CompuServe
ids are represented as being separated by a comma (like 71999,141); since

most mailers don't react well to having commas in addresses, it was
changed to a period. For the above address, mail would be sent to
71999.141@compuserve.com.

EasyNet Digital sells a service called EasyNet; users that subscribe to it
can be reached with the addresses user@host.enet.dec.com or
user%host.enet@decwrl.dec.com.

FidoNet The FidoNet computer network can be reached by using a
special addressing method. If John Smith is on the node 1:2/3.4 on FidoNet,
his or her email address would be john.smith@p4.f3.n2.z1.fidonet.org
(notice how the numbers fall in place?).

MCI Mail MCI also sells email accounts (similar to ATTMail). Users can
be reached with user@mcimail.com.

PeaceNet Users on the PeaceNet network can be reached by writing to
user@igc.org.

The Well Users on the service The Well can be reached by writing to
user@well.sf.ca.us. The Well is directly connected to the Internet.

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

Retrieving Files via Email

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

Archive Servers

An alternative to the currently well over-used FTPmail system is taking
advantage of the many archive servers that are presently being maintained.
These are programs that receive email messages that contain commands,
and act on them. For example, sending an archive server the command help
will usually yield, in the form of a piece of email, information on how to
use the various commands that the server has available.

One such archive server is service@nic.ddn.mil. Maintained by the
Network Information Center (NIC) in Chantilly, VA, the server is set up to
make all of the information at the NIC available for people who don't have
access to FTP. This also includes the WHOIS service (Whois). Some
sample Subject: lines for queries to the NIC 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 by
writing to their server address service@nic.ddn.mil with a Subject: of help.

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

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

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

In response to this closure, Paul Vixie designed and installed a system
called FTPmail on one of Digital's gateway computers, decwrl.dec.com.
Write to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com with help in the body of the letter for
instructions on its use. The software is undergoing constant development;
once it reaches a stable state, other sites will be encouraged to adopt it and
provide the service also.

Newsgroup Creation

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

Discussion

A discussion must first take place to address issues like the naming of the
group, where in the group tree it should go (e.g. rec.sports.koosh vs
rec.games.koosh?), and whether or not it should be created in the first place.
The formal Request For Discussion (RFD) should be posted to
news.announce.newgroups, along with any other groups or mailing lists at
all related to the proposed topic. news.announce.newgroups is moderated.
You should place it first in the Newsgroups: header, so that it will get
mailed to the moderator only. The article won't be immediately posted to
the other newsgroups listed; rather, it will give you the opportunity to have
the moderator correct any inconsistencies or mistakes in your RFD. He or
she will take care of posting it to the newsgroups you indicated. Also the
Followup-To: header will be set so that the actual discussion takes place
only in news.groups. If a user has difficulty posting to a moderated group,
he or she may mail submissions intended for news.announce.newgroups to
the address announce-newgroups@rpi.edu.

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

Voting After the discussion period (which is mandatory), if it's been
determined that a new group really is desired, a name and charter are agreed
upon, and it's been determined whether the group will be moderated (and by
whom), a Call For Votes (CFV) should be posted to

news.announce.newgroups, along with any other groups that the original
Request For Discussion was posted to. The CFV should be posted (or
mailed to the news.announce.newgroups moderator) as soon as possible
after the discussion ends (to keep it fresh in everyone's mind).

The Call for Votes should include clear instructions on how to cast a vote.
It's important that it be clearly explained how to both vote for and against a
group (and be of equivalent difficulty or ease). If it's easier for you or your
administrator, two separate addresses can be used to mail yes and no votes
to, providing that they're on the same machine. Regardless of the method,
everyone must 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 the
preliminary results of the vote are. A vote can't be called off simply because
400 "no" votes have come in and only two "yes" votes. The Call for Votes
should include the exact date that the voting period will end—-only those
votes arriving on the vote-taker's machine 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 for casting a vote
as the original; it also has to be the same proposal as was first posted. The
charter can't change in mid-vote. Also, votes that're posted don't count—-
only those that were mailed to the vote-taker can be tallied.

Partial results should never be included; only a statement of the specific
proposal, that a vote is in progress on it, and how to cast a vote. A mass
acknowledgement ("Mass ACK" or "Vote ACK") is permitted; however, it
must be presented in a way that gives no indication of which way a person
voted. One way to avoid this is to create one large list of everyone who's
voted, and sort it in alphabetical order. It should not be two sorted lists (of
the yes and no votes, respectively).

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

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

The Result of a Vote

At the end of the voting period, the vote-taker has to post (to
news.announce.newgroups) the tally and email addresses of the votes
received. Again, it can also be posted to any of the groups listed in the
original CFV. The tally should make clear which way a person voted, 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 everyone the opportunity
to correct any errors or inconsistencies in the voter list or the voting
procedure.

Creation of the Group

If, after the waiting period, there are no serious objections that might
invalidate the vote, the vote is put to the "water test." If there were 100
more valid YES/create votes than NO/don't create votes, and at least two-
thirds of the total number of votes are in favor of creation, then a newgroup

control message can be sent out (often by the moderator of
news.announce.newgroups). If the 100-vote margin or the two-thirds
percentage isn't met, the group has failed and can't be created.

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

————

Glossary

This glossary is only a tiny subset of all of the various terms and other
things that people regularly use on The Net. For a more complete (and very
entertaining) reference, it's suggested you get a copy of The New Hacker's
Dictionary, which is based on a VERY large text file called the Jargon File.
Edited by Eric Raymond (eric@snark.thyrsus.com), 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" in
the very flat medium of computers—-by using "smilies." This is
`metacommunication', and there are literally hundreds of them, from the
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; for ethernet
this 48-bit address might be 0260.8C00.7666. The hardware address is used
to forward packets within a physical network. Fortunately, network users do
not have to be concerned about hardware addresses since they are
automatically handled by the networking software.

The logical or Internet address is used to facilitate moving data between
physical networks. The 32-bit Internet address is made up of a network
number, a subnetwork number, and a host number. Each host computer on
the Internet, has a unique address. For example, all Internet addresses at
Colorado State have a network number of 129.82, a subnet number in the
range of 1-254, and a host number in the range of 1-254. All Internet hosts
have a numeric address and an English-style name. For example, the
Internet address for UCC's CYBER 840 is 129.82.103.96; 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.

administrivia Administrative tasks, most often related to the maintenance
of mailing lists, digests, news gateways, etc.

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

ANSI The American National Standards Institute disseminates basic
standards like 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.

archie A service which provides lookups for packages in a database of the
offerings of countless of anonymous FTP sites. archie for a full description.

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

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

ARPAnet A pioneering long haul network funded by ARPA. It served as
the basis for early networking research as well as a central backbone during
the development of the Internet. The ARPAnet consisted of individual
packet switching computers interconnected by leased lines. The ARPAnet
no longer exists as a singular entity.

asynchronous Transmission by individual bytes, not related to specific
timing on the transmitting end.

auto-magic Something which happens pseudo-automatically, and is
usually too complex to go into any further than to say it happens "auto-
magically."

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

bandwidth The capacity of a medium to transmit a signal. More
informally, the mythical "size" of The Net, and its ability to carry the files
and messages of those that use it. Some view certain kinds of traffic
(FTPing hundreds of graphics images, for example) as a "waste of
bandwidth" 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 a repository for the votes. See Newsgroup Creation for a full
description of the Usenet voting process.

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

client The user of a network service; also used to describe a computer
that relies 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.

datagram The basic unit of information passed across the Internet. It
contains a source and destination address along with data. Large messages
are broken 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.

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

dotted quad A set of four numbers connected with periods that make up
an Internet address; for example, 147.31.254.130.

email The vernacular abbreviation for electronic mail.

email address The UUCP or domain-based address that a user is referred
to with. For example, the author's address is brendan@cs.widener.edu.

ethernet A 10-million bit per second networking scheme originally
developed by Xerox Corporation. Ethernet is widely used for LANs
because it can network a wide variety of computers, it is not proprietary,
and components are widely available from many commercial sources.

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

flame A 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 its hostname. For example, the system lisa at
Widener University has a FQDN of lisa.cs.widener.edu.

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

FYI An abbreviation for the phrase "for your information." There is also
a series of RFCs put out by the Network Information Center called FYIs;
they address common questions of new users and many other useful things.
RFCs for instructions on retrieving FYIs.

gateway A special-purpose dedicated computer that attaches to two or
more networks and routes packets from one network to the other. In
particular, an Internet gateway routes IP datagrams among the networks it
connects. Gateways route packets to other gateways until they can be
delivered to the final destination directly across one physical network.

header The portion of a packet, preceding the actual data, containing
source and destination addresses and error-checking fields. Also part of a
message or news article.

hostname The name given to a machine. (See also FQDN.)

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

Internet A concatenation of many individual TCP/IP campus, state,
regional, and national networks (such as NSFnet, ARPAnet, and Milnet)
into one single logical network all sharing a common addressing scheme.

Internet number The dotted-quad address used to specify a certain
system. The Internet number for the site cs.widener.edu is 147.31.254.130.
A resolver is used to translate between hostnames and Internet addresses.

interoperate The ability of multi-vendor computers to work together
using a common set of protocols. With interoperability, PCs, Macs, Suns,

Dec VAXen, CDC Cybers, etc, all work together allowing one host
computer to communicate 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.

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

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

mail gateway A machine that connects to two or more electronic mail
systems (especially dissimilar mail systems on two different networks) and
transfers mail messages among them.

mailing list A possibly moderated discussion group, distributed via email
from a central computer maintaining the list of people involved in the
discussion.

mail path A series of machine names used to direct electronic mail from
one user to another.

medium The material used to support the transmission of data. This can
be copper wire, coaxial cable, optical fiber, or electromagnetic wave (as in
microwave).

multiplex The division of a single transmission medium into multiple
logical channels supporting many simultaneous sessions. For example, one

network may have simultaneous FTP, telnet, rlogin, and SMTP connections,
all going at the same time.

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

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

network A group of machines connected together so they can transmit
information to one another. There are two kinds of networks: local networks
and remote networks.

NFS (Network File System) A method developed by Sun Microsystems
to allow computers to share files 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.

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

packet The unit of data sent across a packet switching network. The term
is used loosely. While some Internet literature uses it to refer specifically to
data sent across a physical network, other literature views the Internet as a
packet switching network and describes IP datagrams as packets.

polling Connecting to another system to check for things like mail or
news.

postmaster The person responsible for taking care of mail problems,
answering queries about users, and other related work at a site.

protocols A formal description of message formats and the rules two
computers must follow to exchange those messages. Protocols can describe
low-level details of machine-to-machine interfaces (e.g., the order in which
bits and bytes are sent across a wire) or high-level exchanges between
allocation programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a file
across the Internet).

recursion The facility of a programming language to be able to call
functions from within themselves.

resolve Translate an Internet name into its equivalent IP address or other
DNS information.

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

route The path that network traffic takes from its source to its
destination.

router A dedicated computer (or other device) that sends packets from
one place 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 common question. The word `Fantastic' is usually
replaced with one much more vulgar.

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

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

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

summarize To encapsulate a number of responses into one coherent,
usable message. Often done on controlled mailing lists or active
newsgroups, to help reduce bandwidth.

synchronous Data 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).

telnet The Internet standard protocol for remote terminal connection
service. Telnet allows a user at one site to interact with a remote
timesharing system at another site as if the user's terminal were connected
directly to the remote computer.

terminal server A small, specialized, networked computer that connects
many terminals to a LAN through one network connection. Any user on the
network can then connect to various network hosts.

TeX
A free typesetting system by Donald Knuth.

twisted pair Cable made up of a pair of insulated copper wires wrapped
around each other to cancel the effects of electrical noise.

UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Program) A store-and-forward system,
primarily for Unix systems but currently supported 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.

worm A computer program which replicates itself. The Internet worm
(The Internet Worm) was perhaps the most famous; it successfully (and
accidentally) duplicated itself on systems across the 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 that will
be of use to anyone reading this guide. Most of them were used in the
writing of the booklet, while others are simply noted because they 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.

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