INTERNET NEWS ACCESS TO THE INTERNET - PERFORMANCE SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL One of the big issues regarding Internet is access - who gets it and why. According to Performance Systems International (PSI), a Reston Virginia based networking firm, over 25,000 organizations use the Internet in 35 countries. Internet sports an e-mail universe now of 25 million individuals with over two million users access the network each day. About 25% of this use is by commercial companies while 75% is by Research and Education entities. Internet traffic is reported growing at a 20% per month rate. As best we can calculate, this indicates it will encompass all life in the known Universe within another 40 months or so. Clearly, it's no longer really a select club, yet gaining access can be a problem for individuals and small companies. The Internet, with a federally funded National Science Foundation backbone, is ostensibly closed to commercial traffic. But as a practical matter, Internet is increasingly offering the kind of connectivity attractive to companies and individuals for a variety of purposes connected to "research" by only the most strained definition. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is virtually swamping all other LAN interconnection schemes by virtue of its historical origins in Internet and the increasing number of networks adopting TCP/IP to connect to Internet. Internet has reached a critical mass in scope and participation that no other network can approach. IBM now offers TCP/IP on virtually every platform. Novell recently announced TCP/IP for Novell Netware. Microsoft just announced TCP/IP for LAN manager. Work groups all over the world are rapidly seeking to connect their local LANs to this burgeoning network of networks. The "critical mass" needed for connectivity on a global scale has been reached. One company charging directly into the horns of these issues is Performance Systems International, Inc. of Reston Virginia. To address the issue of commercial use of the NSF backbone, they've joined with two other entities, UUNET and CERFNet to form the Commercial Internet Exchange or CIX. CIX offers an alternative backbone network for commercial connections - in theory addressing the issue of commercial use of a publicly funded backbone by bypassing it. Since it still connects to the remainder of Internet that does use the backbone, this theory is dubious at best. The thing keeping it afloat is that no one seems to have any better ideas on how to address the issue - leading to a dearth of objection. As to commercialization in general, PSI basically IS commercially marketing access to the Internet. And with the exception of some marginally grandiose, or at the least, dubiously optimistic pricing issues, they're doing a pretty good job of it. The company has set up local telephone ports in 25 U.S. cities and plan on 40 cities by early next year. They market a variety of access level services from an ala carte menu. They are virtually the only entity we have found making a serious effort at providing Internet access to individuals on a national scale. The most recent offering is one of the most basic, and at the same time interesting. In October, the company announced PSILink. This is basically Internet access at it's most rudimentary - personal e-mail - at a price of $19 per month - a bit proud frankly for what it is, but still affordable for those who need Internet e-mail access and can't get it elsewhere. PSILink works quite well. The only drawback we could find was that the company assigns a logon name and password and there is no easy way to change either of them. Most people on Internet try to create a domain address that is marginally mnemonic - jrickard@boardwatch.com for example. With PSILink, you'll likely have something like Pl0102@mail.psi.net - not so easy to remember and you can't change it. The most interesting thing about PSILink is the software you must use to access it. Most Internet e-mail services operate from the Unix command line. The Unix programs used to create, read, and write mail are not intuitive to use and it takes some study for most people to learn the esoterica of Internet mail. PSI has released a $35 shareware program titled PSILink that automates the access to Internet e-mail. Rather than dialing into a host and using Unix mail programs to create, read, or reply to messages, you deal with mail on your own desktop machine using a windowed, mouse-driven interface that we have to admit is pretty capable. You can read messages, write messages, create a directory of e-mail addresses, and save messages to named "folders" for later review. Once you have "done your mail", you simply click on CONNECT and the system dials the PSI host, swaps mail, and disconnects. A complete list of all 25 hosts with telephone numbers is included and you can dial into ANY of them to do mail. As a result, you can often log into a PSI host locally - even while traveling. The program is shareware - but barely. Without the PSILink service, it doesn't do anything, and registration is required before you can use PSILink, but you can download it and get an idea of how it works. It is available for ftp on Internet at ftp.psi.COM in the psilink directory. We will also have it available for download on the Boardwatch BBS at (303)973- 4222 for our online subscribers. The program is designed to install from floppy and oddly, we found you couldn't. After entering some basic information, we were supplied with the startling error message that we had a sharing violation on drive A: Since we weren't sharing anything to our knowledge, we must assume this was simply a humorous tip of the hat to the usual Unix strategy of emitting dozens of nonsensical error messages that almost never have any relationship to the real problem - if there is one. We simply copied all the files to our hard drive and ran INSTALL.EXE there without any further mishap. Interestingly, PSILink is already drawing support from other vendors. One of the problems with Internet access is that there has been very few commercial offerings of the service large enough to warrant support from anyone else. Anterior Technology of Menlo Park California is intent on providing two-way radio links for e-mail using PSILink as the first service. Basically, they will forward all your PSILink e-mail to your laptop via Motorola's ARDIS radio service. They will also receive your radio transmissions and gateway that back into PSILink. The service is titled RadioMail and should be ready in the first quarter of next year. By November 1 they will offer a one-way version that works with paging services. Internet inquiries to info@radiomail.net. Anterior Technology, PO Box 1206, Menlo Park CA 94026; (415)328-5615. Poqet Computers plays an initial role in this as well. They've received some attention over the last year with their tiny palm top PC. Roughly the size of a videocassette, the Poqet is one of the most portable PCs in existence and you can actually touch type on it - barely. Recent rumors indicate the company is releasing a new model with a built in cellular modem and packaging it with a Motorola ARDIS radio interface unit allowing two-way radio data communications in a very portable package. Future enhancements for PSILink include Usenet News Groups and ftp access. Usenet News Groups is a set of shared topical message conferences - as many as 2000 of them, on different topics. This is the Internet equivalent of "bulletin boards" with users from around the globe posting public messages on various topics. The ftp (file transfer protocol) access will allow you to download files from directories on various archive machines scattered over the Internet. According to Julie Sprinkel of PSI, the addition of these two functions will incur additional costs, but pricing had not been set yet. The company provides numerous other Internet access options from PSILink ($19 monthly) up through their turn-key Standard Connection Service (SCS) offering direct integration of your LAN into the Internet at 3.0 Mbps ($85,000 annually PLUS dedicated line costs). One level of access of considerable interest to BBS operators is their UUPSI service. This provides dial up access to systems using the normal Unix-to-Unix Copy Program (UUCP) mail session via high-speed 9600 bps connections. Simple UUCP e-mail is priced at a flat $25 monthly while e-mail and Usenet News Groups together go for $75 per month. There is an initial $75 setup fee, but PSI registers your system for its own unique domain name in the Internet. Your system can then be EXEC-PC.COM or whatever and your callers would be JOE.BLOW@EXEC-PC.COM for example. For many, connection to Internet means the ability to actually logon to databases, university libraries, and many bulletin board type systems interactively. This is normally done using the programs telnet or for Unix systems - rlogin. PSI has two services to provide such access: PSI Global Dialup Service (GDS) and PSI After Dark Service (ADS). The PSI GDS service is limited to 300-2400 bps connections but is available 24 hours daily. With any PC, modem, and terminal program, you dial a PSI host, logon giving your account information, and connect to anything on Internet allowing such connections by entering CONNECT {hostname}. PSI GDS requires a $39 setup fee and $39 monthly. PSI ADS service, by contrast, allows 9600 bps V.32 connections but is limited to the hours between 6:00 PM and 6:00 AM Eastern Standard time and 24-hours on weekends. It's priced at $35 per month with a $35 setup charge. Numerous regional entities are currently providing Internet access and many are doing so at much lower cost than PSI. Most however, have geographic restrictions on who they serve and many are tied to state or university agencies. Here in Colorado, Colorado SuperNet offers virtually unlimited access to Internet at $2 per hour - allowing e-mail, UUCP connections, ftp, telnet, and your own file space - but only to Colorado residents. Many universities across the nation provide Internet access by request at no charge. For basic Internet e-mail service, Heartland FreeNet in Peoria Illinois provides an Internet e-mail box at no cost at all other than the call to their service (309)674-1100. PSI is notable primarily because it IS commercial, available to anyone, and has terminal hosts in 25 cities nationwide. It's also notable that they are packaging access with software in PSILink to make access to Internet available to those who don't wish to take a course in UNIXology to be able to send a simple e-mail message. They are among the first of what we see as a coming wave of groups aggressively marketing Internet access to the masses. Performance Systems International, Inc., 11800 Sunrise Valley Drive, Ste. 1100, Reston, VA 22091; 800-827-7482 voice; (703)620-4586 fax; e-mail: info@psi.com. PSILink Local Access Numbers 213.623.3677 CA Los Angeles 415.967.6561 CA Mt. View 415.777.0252 CA San Francisco 408.986.1151 CA Santa Clara 203.278.8110 CT Hartford 202.408.5297 DC Washington 404.659.6634 GA Atlanta 312.408.0675 IL Chicago 617.262.0688 MA Boston 201.645.1644 NJ Newark 609.890.6640 NJ Trenton 518.283.5090 NY Albany 716.883.6743 NY Buffalo 516.588.1170 NY Islip 607.277.8094 NY Ithaca 212.608.7800 NY New York 716.262.5670 NY Rochester 315.478.3191 NY Syracuse 315.797.1403 NY Utica 914.686.0075 NY White Plains 503.228.5660 OR Portland 215.563.1069 PA Philadelphia 214.744.2416 TX Dallas 713.652.9624 TX Houston 703.620.8971 VA Reston LIST OF FTP SITES AVAILABLE. Probably the most popular use of electronic bulletin boards is downloading shareware or public domain software programs. The Internet too has a corresponding function - also quite popular - known as ftp. The File Transfer Program (ftp) is used to download a program from an archive host to your machine. To use the program, simply enter ftp {host name}. The ftp program will connect to the service and you will be asked for your user name and password on that host system. Typically, a number of systems on the Internet allow what is termed ANONYMOUS FTP. This is a method where anyone can logon to a system where they don't have an account, by using the generic account ANONYMOUS. In response to the user prompt, simply enter the word ANONYMOUS. It will then ask you for a password and it is customary to enter your user ID from the system you are on as your password. Once logged on, you can change and list directories using the CD and DIR commands. Once you find a file you want to download, enter the command GET {file name}. The transfer usually takes just a few seconds and the file is copied from the archive host to your local Internet host directory. You can then download it to your PC using ZMODEM or KERMIT protocols. There are literally thousands of systems on the Internet and a modest fraction of them allow anonymous ftp. This still winds up being several hundred popular library systems. Generally, it is considered good form to only use anonymous ftp during non-prime hours. Jon Granrose actually maintains a list of ftp sites where you can download files. The list itself is available at pilot.njin.net (128.6.7.38) in the directory /pub/ftp-list. The file name is ftp.list and it contains hundreds of systems where you can download files. To get the list then using the ftp program: ftp pilot.njin.net logon name: anonymous password: jrickard cd /pub/ftp-list get ftp.list The list is then copied to your home directory on your Internet host. Subsequently, you can use the ZMODEM file transfer protocol to download the file to your desktop by entering sz ftp-list. DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION One of the factors causing Internet to be an overnight success story - twenty years after it started - was adoption of the domain name system of electronic mail addressing. Previously, to send e-mail, you were required to describe the path the e-mail must take to actually travel to a particular network and individual - including all intermediary systems in the path. With the advent of domain name registration and smart mailers, this was reduced to simply specifying a user name and destination host (domain) name in most cases such as jrickard@boardwatch.com where jrickard is the user name and boardwatch.com is the domain name. The question comes up, where do domain names come from? Actually, there is a registration process where you apply for a domain name and on approval, your domain name is added to the map files used by the smart mailers to route mail to your destination. This registration process is handled by the Network Information Center (NIC). Until October 1 of this year, this domain registration was handled by a company titled SRI International of Menlo Park California who acted as the NIC for Internet. They maintained a host on the network that not only handled domain registration issues, but provided a full array of help files, information files, and RFC (Request For Comment - the closest thing to documentation of the Internet that exists). As of October 1, 1991, the NIC was moved to Chantilly Virginia and is now administered by: Government Systems, Inc. Attn: Network Information Center 14200 Park Meadow Drive, Suite 200 Chantilly, VA 22021 Help Desk Telephone Numbers: 800-365-3642 703-802-4535 Fax Number:703-802-8376 Network Address: 192.112.36.5 (NIC.DDN.MIL) Root Domain Server: 192.112.36.4 (NS.NIC.DDN.MIL) FSUUCP - UNIX MAIL FOR DOS SYSTEMS Most of the discussion of the future of online services seems to revolve around bigger systems, more services, and more callers - what does the system offer as an attractant to get callers ON to it. But the real future of online services - and particularly electronic mail - revolve around how to get them back OFF again. The ultimate paradigm is true desktop-to-desktop communications - where I draft a message on MY machine and it shows up on YOURS or versa vice with as much transparency of process through the intermediary networks and online services as is possible. There has been some progress - most of it NOT from the online services themselves. Users of large commercial services such as CompuServe and GEnie have developed shareware programs such as TAPCIS and ALLADIN to allow them to deal with mail OFFLINE - minimizing their connect charges. In the BBS world, we're seeing an enormous surge in popularity in offline mail readers such as QMail Deluxe, EZ-Reader, XRS, and Silly Little Mail Reader - programs generally developed to minimize long distance toll charges. Basically, you pull the trigger and they go get your mail - both personal e- mail and any new messages from conference areas that you may be monitoring. You can then read and respond offline. For systems that charge flat-rate pricing - increasingly the model for online economics - these offline mail readers are also a boon. They dramatically reduce the load on the system. Internet has grown to the point where it offers a reach and scope for e-mail no other entity can match. The Soviet Union, Japan, Asia, and the Middle East as well as the majority of commercial e-mail services are just a few minutes, or at most an hour or so, away. This will most probably have a snowball effect. The more people connected to Internet, the more attractive the connection becomes to anyone who isn't. Most of the host systems on Internet that offer public access use the UNIX operating system. UNIX comes with a suite of programs to deal with electronic mail and specifically to port mail in an automated fashion to other UNIX systems. The Unix-to-Unix Copy Program (UUCP) is actually a suite of communications programs used to pass mail between UNIX systems - often by modem. So, if you happen to run the UNIX operating system, it is quite possible to use UUCP to connect to another UNIX system that is connected to the Internet. The problem with this is, of course, that most of us do NOT use UNIX. UNIX has been the operating system of the future for over two decades and God willing and the creek don't rise it will remain the operating system of the future for at least another decade or two - with an option for extension. Most of us use personal computers based on IBM's PC-DOS or Microsoft's MS- DOS - nearly enough the same for the purposes of this discussion. But UUCP remains the most effective commonly available dialup port to UNIX hosts on the Internet. There are some better methods involving the Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) and the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) that we'll be dealing with in future issues of Boardwatch, but they are not yet commonly offered at this time. So the obvious "way in" to deal with Internet e-mail from an offline platform is through the UUCP port. Chris Ambler, a student at CalPoly University, has done something that would have previously been considered bizarre - he's duplicated the esoteric UNIX UUCP and mail programs on a DOS machine. He calls the resulting product FSUUCP and is marketing it as shareware at a $35 registration price. It allows you to setup UNIX communications on a laptop computer and "fetch" your mail at your convenience to read and respond to offline - the Internet version of QMail Deluxe or EZ-READER. And if anything, he's done too good a job of it. It uses precisely the same suite of little programs, blindingly complicated directory structures, and the programs even issue many of the same grossly misinformative error messages if you have a problem. Perhaps it's our own unfamiliarity with UNIX, but every UNIX error message we've ever seen was always the result of a problem that had no possible connection to anything you would think the error message was referring to. When you get an error message from a UNIX system, you only know one thing - you have a problem - maybe. In any event, FSUUCP not only allows you to gate your personal e-mail from your laptop or desktop system to your Unix host, but it also allows you to download Usenet News Groups. Usenet News Groups are like BBS message areas, FidoNet echomail conferences, etc. And just like QMail Deluxe, EZ-Reader, and SLMR, FSUUCP allows you to participate in precisely the message areas you select. The difference is that News Groups are global, have a much wider readership, and there are more of them. FSUUCP consists of a series of programs that handle mail, including: ACTMAKE BATCHER EXPIRE FIXACTIV MAIL POSTNEWS READNEWS RMAIL RNEWS UUCICO UULOG UUQ UUSNAP UUXQT The most notable of these are MAIL, which allows you to read and write e- mail messages, UUCICO (Unix-Unix Copy In Copy Out) which actually handles the mail swapping session with the host, and READNEWS and POSTNEWS, which allow you to read and write to the Usenet News Groups. Installation of FSUUCP is not trivial. This is actually a flaw shared by almost all offline mail programs we've looked at. The installation of most offline mail programs for commercial services or electronic bulletin boards is just too techie and this is about the ONLY reason everybody isn't using these programs. But FSUUCP installation is truly miserable - partly because of the complex directory structure exacerbated by the blindly idiotic error messages that give no hint as to why you're really having a problem. It's also partly due to abysmal documentation - another UNIX tradition. We can say this is improving. In the most recent release we looked at, Version 1.2 Release 3, an INSTALL.EXE does attempt to set up your directories for you. And we are assured that release 4 will be even better. One of the problems Ambler faces is that he lives in a UNIX world and most of his friends and beta testers are likewise comfortable with UNIX. It makes sense to them. It won't to anyone else. The first step in installation is actually to contact your Host system administrator to get a UUCP account set up. You will need some basic items of information from them. Your SYSTEM NAME Your UUCP LOGON Your PASSWORD System Telephone Number The HOST system name. A sample logon script. In our case, we applied for a domain name of BOARDWATCH.COM. This involved filling out a simple form and paying a registration fee of $20 to register the name with the Network Information Center. This becomes our system name. Our logon name is the first eight characters of our system name - boardwat. Our password is confidential. Our host is Colorado SuperNet - known as CSN. After you have this information and your Host system administrator has setup your UUCP account, install FSUUCP using the provided install program. When it's completed, you'll have to alter two basic files - FSUUCP.CFG and SYSTEM. FSUUCP.CFG contains your system name, logon name, host name, your user name (i.e. JRICKARD), along with the usual modem initialization strings. The SYSTEM file, which is buried a convenient half dozen directory levels down, actually contains the logon script for your host system. These are like no scripts you've ever seen before. All script functions are basically stored on a single line and look something like: rjgumby Any Hayes 2400 ATDT5413958 "" ogin: fsuucp ssword: lumberjack This is the script for the rjgumby system. It dials the telephone, swaps some carriage returns, at the Unix login: prompt it replies with fsuucp and at the password: prompt replies with lumberjack. This is the initial logon process the UUCICO program uses to dial and logon to your host system. All processes required thereafter to swap mail are performed by UUCICO quite automagically. Your host system administrator can usually provide a sample logon script string to use. Some of this installation agony is probably necessary given that you are installing software meant to interact with someone else's software. But we'd like to see FSUUCP get a little more aggressive in allowing you to enter some of this information in response to simple questions where possible. In use, Unix aficionados are going to love this program. The individual programs work much as they would on a Unix system. The result for DOS users is a program that may appear a little daunting to use as well. Ambler is very much a fan of a Nutshell book titled Managing UUCP and the Usenet, available from O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 103 Morris Street, Sebastapol, CA 95472; 800-338-6887 voice. We would like to see a better effort at documentation within FSUUCP itself. MAIL works much like MAIL on any UNIX system. MAIL JRICKARD@BOARDWATCH.COM would create a message for me on the Boardwatch domain. A full-screen editor is called to actually create the message and the editor in FSUUCP is quite adequate. You can specify another editor if you would prefer. Product support will likely be a big issue with FSUUCP. Ambler actually has a mailing list devoted to FSUUCP. You can join the list by sending a request to fsuucp-request@zeus.calpoly.edu. Mail to fsuucp@zeus.calpoly.edu goes to the entire list. FSUUCP occupies a little over 1.1 MB on your hard drive. In fairness, most of our criticisms of FSUUCP come directly from its UNIX heritage, and that is actually the point of the program. The philosophy was to duplicate the UNIX utilities on a DOS platform and Ambler has done a pretty sound job. We were actually VERY excited when we first learned of this program and it is very much still in development. Rather than logon to CSN and camp there to read and reply to e-mail, we now enter a single command at the DOS command line and our computer calls their computer and does an electronic e-mail lunch. We can then read and respond to our e-mail at our leisure and pull the trigger again later to send out the replies. It's actually made life around here much easier with the computer doing a bit more work and the little fat editor doing a bit less. It also reduces the load on CSN. FSUUCP is currently available in the file FSUU12R3.ZIP. It's available for ftp from polyslo.calpoly.edu in the /pub directory. Alternatively, Boardwatch BBS subscribers can download it from our system at (303)973-4222. The program carries a $35 registration fee. Ambler is also working on a BBS software program incorporating Internet access with a December 1991 release date. A commercial version of FSUUCP with a slicker interface will be released in early 1992 under the name UUPlus. Christopher J. Ambler, Fubar Systems, 1742 Lima Drive, San Luis Obispo, CA 93405; (805)543-8491 voice; Internet: chris@zeus.calpoly.edu.