THE INTERNET COMPANION A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking TRACY LAQUEY with Jeanne C. Ryer Foreword by Vice-President Al Gore AN EDITORIAL INC. BOOK Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Reading, Massachusetts o Menlo Park, California o New York Don Mills, Ontario o Wokingham, England o Amsterdam Bonn o Sydney o Singapore o Tokyo o Madrid o San Juan Paris o Seoul o Milan o Mexico City o Taipei Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Addison- Wesley was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters or all capital let- ters. The authors and publishers have taken care in preparation of this book, but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential dam- ages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data LaQuey, Tracy 1963- The Internet companion: a beginner's guide to global net- working/ Tracy LaQuey with Jeanne C. Ryer. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-201-62224-6 1. Internet (Computer network) I. Ryer, Jeanne C. II. Title. TK5105.875.I57L37 1992 384.3--dc20 92-31691 CIP Text copyright (C) 1993 by Tracy LaQuey and Jeanne C. Ryer. Artwork copyright (C) 1993 by Editorial Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy- ing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written per- mission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Published simultaneously in Canada. Sponsoring Editor: Keith Wollman Project Editor: Elizabeth Rogalin Cover and text design: Arisman Design Illustrations: Steven Ackerman Set in Meridien and Futura type by Editorial Inc. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 -MW- 9695949392 First printing, October 1992 Contents Foreword v Preface vii Acknowledgments x Chapter 1 Why You Should Know About the Internet 1 Instantaneous Information and Communication 1 From Whence It Came 3 Bigger, Faster, Better 6 The Network Community 9 Becoming Part of the Internet 14 The Future 19 Chapter 2 Internet: The Lowdown 21 A Network of Networks 21 How Computers Talk 22 Who Runs the Internet? 27 Acceptable Use 29 Internet Concepts 30 Chapter 3 Communicating with People 41 All (or Almost All) About Electronic Mail 42 Conferencing: Groupspeak 53 Interactive Discussions 66 Netiquette, Ethics, and Digital Tricks of the Trade 68 Chapter 4 Finding Information 75 Using Online Resources and Services 76 Accessing Interactive Services 80 Online Resources 82 Transferring Information 88 Finding Resources and Files 100 Chapter 5 Internet In-the-Know Guide 109 Legends on the Internet 110 Games 112 UNIX on the Internet 115 Security Issues 116 Internet Organizations 124 Finding Email Addresses: The Sequel 128 Help! Getting More Information 133 Chapter 6 Getting Connected 139 All You Need to Get Started 140 Types of Individual Connections 143 Choosing an Individual Access Provider 150 Connecting Your Business or Organization 156 Bibliography 165 Appendix: Resources 169 Index 191 vii Foreword Computer networks have been around for over twenty-five years, and in that time they have gone from being a labora- tory curiosity to a tool used by millions of people every day. The first network, ARPANET, was used primarily by a few thousand computer scientists to access computers, share com- puter files, and send electronic mail. Today, scientists, engineers, teachers, students, librarians, doctors, busi- nesspeople, and even a few members of Congress rely on the Internet and other networks to communicate with their col- leagues, receive electronic journals, access bulletin boards, log onto databases, and use remote computers and other equipment. In the last few years, we have witnessed the democrati- zation of the Internet. Today, the network connects not only the top research laboratories and universities but also small colleges, small businesses, libraries, and high schools throughout the country. The growth of commercial networks has enabled much broader access to the government- subsidized portions of the Internet. And that growth is accelerating because the telecommunications and computer industries have recognized the commercial potential of high- speed, packet-switched networking and have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing new switching technol- ogy and new applications for networks. Since I first became interested in high-speed network- ing almost fifteen years ago, there have been many major advances both in the technology and in public awareness. Articles on high-speed networks are commonplace in major newspapers and in news magazines. In contrast, when as a House member in the early 1980s I called for creation of a national network of ``information superhighways,'' the only people interested were the manufacturers of optical fiber. Back then, of course, high speed meant 56,000 bits per sec- ond. Today we are building the National Research and Educa- tion Network, which will carry billions of bits of data per second, serve thousands of users simultaneously, and trans- mit not only electronic mail and data files but voice and video as well. viii Unfortunately, it is not easy to keep track of all the new developments in networking. According to some recent estimates, the amount of traffic on the Internet has been increasing 10 percent per month, and the number of new applications and services has been growing almost as quickly. You can now access thousands of different databases and bulletin boards on everything from medieval French lit- erature to global warming. Since the Internet is a network of networks, there is no one place to go for information on what's available and how to access it. Most users have had to rely on friends and colleagues for information on the Internet. That is why I welcome publication of The Internet Com- panion. It provides a valuable primer on the Internet, explains the ``rules of the road,'' and provides step-by- step instructions on accessing many of the information resources available through the Internet. It should help both new and experienced Internet users learn how to make the best use of the network. For too many people the Internet has been uncharted territory, and as a result they have hesitated to explore the vast potential of networking. I trust this book will change that. Vice-President Al Gore August 1992 ix Preface If you want to stay current in the nineties, and even into the next century, you need to learn about the Internet. Futurists predict that information and access to it will be the basis for personal, business, and political advancement in the next century. Whether you want to find the latest financial news, browse through library catalogs, trace your genealogy, exchange information with your colleagues, or join in lively political debate, the Internet is the tool that will take you beyond phones, faxes, and isolated com- puters to the real electronic information frontier. The Internet can shrink the world and bring knowledge, experi- ence, and information on nearly every subject imaginable straight to your computer. It can give you the power and speed of a supercomputer, even if you have only a microcom- puter and a modem. The Internet Companion is an introduction to this vast electronic wonderland. We will tell you why you need to know about the Internet and show you how people are already using it in their everyday activities. We'll explain how to vitalize your home or office workstation beyond the usual capacities of word processing, games, and spread-sheet applications. And we'll introduce you to basic Internet con- cepts and applications-showing how it's possible to travel electronic highways and reach destinations such as Australia or Switzerland in mere seconds. If you're not already con- nected to the Internet, we'll show you how you can get access with only a computer and a modem. Once you get hooked on the Internet and learn how you can communicate electroni- cally with people all over the world and access information from thousands of sources, you'll understand why the phrase exponential growth is mentioned in virtually every article about the Internet. Computers are becoming more powerful and less expensive. More importantly, they are rapidly being connected to allow people to communicate and share informa- tion. You've likely heard of-or even used-CompuServe or Prodigy, the commercial networks and information providers. On the Internet you can travel far beyond the electronic x malls of the commercial services and reach many more people, for it is much more powerful. It is not difficult to under- stand the Internet. Indeed, learning to use the Internet has been compared-as have many new skills-with learning to ride a bicycle. You have to make the effort to stay upright on a two-wheeler-or else resign yourself to riding a tricycle. So, too, learning the Internet requires some commitment, but the results are well worthwhile. Until the last few years, the Internet was the sole province of researchers and com- puterphiles who had neither the interest, the need, nor the time to make a friendly user interface. Fortunately, this is beginning to change, and a concern for user-friendliness is dominating many planning efforts. Internet access and interfaces vary tremendously, but you don't have to be a computer expert to use the applica- tions or understand the concepts. The Internet Companion will serve as your guide, helping you find the path toward information you need and telling you everything you need to know to get started. It also will show you how to get more information, with a thorough bibliography and an appendix of sources and resources full of free online books, hypercard stacks, and guides. The Internet Companion is full of examples and sample commands to try. In general, computer names and email addresses by themselves appear in italics. New terms are introduced in boldface. Some of the example commands are a mixture of bold and italics; in those cases, you should type anything in bold exactly as it appears. The italics repre- sent variable input that only you can supply, such as your email address, or your login name. Keep in mind that the guidance offered in this book is general by necessity-we can't offer step-by-step directions that will fit every case. Furthermore, the Internet is con- stantly growing and changing, and new services are being made available on a daily basis. It's exciting, but diffi- cult to document. The resource information included was up- to- date when the book went to press, but it is possible that some of it will have changed by the time you read it. Just remember always to read any instructions that are given when connecting to an online database, and if you have prob- lems, consult your provider's helpdesk or consulting ser- vices. So take a walk on the digital frontier! Get ready for the next installment of the Information Age! Despite the fact that the authors have never met face-to-face and live almost 2000 miles apart, we were able to write this book in less than eight weeks by exchanging ideas and drafts through the Internet. If we can do that, just think about what you can accomplish! If you have comments about the book, or if you have an interesting tale to tell about how the Internet xi has changed your life, send an email message to internet- companion@world.std.com. Tracy LaQuey, Austin, Texas Jeanne C. Ryer, North Sandwich, New Hampshire xii Acknowledgments We thank our husbands, Patrick Parker and Philip Wilcox, and our families for their support and encouragement. Laura Fillmore, our agent and provocateur, gave us the necessary motivation to keep going, Tim Evans assisted when deadlines drew near, and Gene Bailey was always available to offer much needed and appreciated advice. The staff at Editorial, Inc. guided us professionally through the editorial and pro- duction process. Our editors at Addison-Wesley, Keith Woll- man and Elizabeth Rogalin, provided direction and sensitive criticism. We'd like to thank Vice-President Al Gore for his thoughtful foreword and Michael Nelson of Al Gore's staff for his assistance. William C. Bard and Tracy LaQuey's col- leagues at the University of Texas System Office of Telecom- munication Services helped provide her time for the project, and Connie Stout of the Texas Education Network provided encouragement. Guy L. Steele Jr., L. Stuart Vance, and Philip Doty reviewed the manuscript and provided valuable input. The following people also provided valuable advice, information, and assistance: Billy Barron, Kurt Baumann, Duncan Briggs, Steve Campbell, Vinton G. Cerf, Susan Estrada, William Green, Geoff Huston, Ole Jacobsen, Brian Kahin, Brewster Kahle, Peter Kaminski, Sarah F. Lester, Jean Armour Polly, Anthony M. Rutkowski, Derek Saunders, and Willem Scholten. We also want to thank all of the people who gave us stories about how they use the Internet. The Authors Chapter 1 WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE INTERNET The Internet is a loose amalgam of thousands of computer networks reaching millions of people all over the world. Although its original purpose was to provide researchers with access to expensive hardware resources, the Internet has demonstrated such speed and effectiveness as a communi- cations medium that it has transcended the original mission. Today it's being used by all sorts of people-educators, librarians, hobbyists, and businesspeople-for a variety of purposes, from communicating with each other, to accessing valuable information and resources. To appreciate what the Internet has to offer, imagine discovering a whole system of highways and high-speed connectors that cut hours off your commuting time. Or a library you could use any time of the night or day, with acres of books and resources and unlim- ited browsing. Or an all-night, nonstop block party with a corner table of kindred souls who welcome your presence at any time. Well, that's the Internet, and this chapter will tell you why you should know about it. INSTANTANEOUS INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION The information age has been ushered in by new and powerful methods of communication. Gutenberg's invention of the printing press took books out of the ecclesiastical libraries and put them into the hands of the people. Then, the telephone system emerged to allow people instantaneous communication with one another. Now the Internet merges both these technologies, bringing people and information together without the middleman (publisher) necessitated by books or the primarily one-to-one synchronous limitations of the telephone system. This is a new dimension-an electronic, virtual world where time and space have almost no meaning. People in geographically distant lands communicate across time zones without ever seeing each other, and information is available 24 hours a day from thousands of places. The implications of this new global communication and informa- tion system are staggering. Instantaneous broadcast of information has been avail- able through television for decades. Much of what we watch, 2 however, is carefully selected and edited according to the discretion and whims of major networks and advertisers. The dawn of a new era in television began in 1991, when much of the world witnessed the bombing of Baghdad as Cable News Network (CNN) provided on-the-ground, uncensored coverage of an historic military event. Throughout the Gulf War, CNN continued to broadcast live from the war zone. Heads of state and generals got their information at the same time as the rest of the world. Consider that this kind of instanta- neous, around-the-globe communication was already taking place on the Internet (and other worldwide networks) and, in fact, had been widely used for more than a decade. Although a bit less glamorous-without the video and the heroic flak- jacketed reporters-the Internet hummed with live bulletins during the Gulf War, as it also did during the Tiananmen Square confrontation, the Soviet coup attempt, the civic uprising in Thailand, the riots in Los Angeles, and the civil war in what used to be Yugoslavia. But there is a difference between television and the Internet. In the Gulf War news coverage, we were the watch- ers, dependent on a few men and women with cameras and a company with the technology to bring those images home to us. On the Internet, we are the reporters, the viewers, and the production team, as well as people just using the net- works to talk to colleagues and customers and to get our jobs done. The phrase ``democratization of information'' often comes up in discussions about the Internet, which is, indeed, a truly democratic forum. The network doesn't care if you're president of a Fortune 500 company or a warehouse clerk, a potato farmer, or a molecular biologist. Your com- munications are handled the same way, and it's the worth and wit of what you have to say that determines who's willing to listen-not your title. In most cases, you're free to say what you want, when you want. The Internet is an open and sharing environment that's remarkably free of censorship, a tribute to its roots in the academic and research communi- ties. FROM WHENCE IT CAME The Internet was not, of course, born full-blown in its pre- sent worldwide form of thousands of networks and connec- tions. It had a humble-but exciting-beginning as one network called the ARPANET, the ``Mother of the Internet.'' The ARPANET began as a U.S. government experiment in packet- switched networking back in 1969. ARPA, the Department of Defense (DOD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (which later became DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), initially linked researchers with remote computer centers, allowing them to share hardware and software resources such as computer disk space, databases, and com- puters. Other experimental networks using packet radio and 3 _______________________________________________________________ | | | A Coup on the Internet | | | | During the coup attempt that spelled the end of the So- | |viet Union in August of 1991, a small email company with an | |Internet connection found itself one of the only available | |communications medium left. The KGB had jammed the radio | |stations and banned all newspapers. Soviet TV programmed old | |movies and opera. The Western media were cut off. | | | | The only email carrier in the Soviet Union (that | |charged in rubles) to offer domestic service and interna- | |tional connections at that time, Relcom (RELiable COMmunica- | |tions) was a small network by Western standards, supplying | |just under 400 organizations email access mainly by dialups | |over the telephone lines. Subscribers typically connected to | |Relcom using personal computers and their own modems, which | |gave them Internet email access by way of EUnet in Helsinki. | | | | With Gorbachev and glasnost under arrest, Relcom's team | |of entrepreneurs and technicians keyboarded and posted re- | |leases in both English and Russian from the banned newspa- | |pers and news agencies, Boris Yeltsin's defiant decrees | |(hand-delivered from his headquarters), and man-in-the- | |street reports from their subscribers. Major Western news | |_____________________________________________________________| satellite were connected with the ARPANET by using an inter- network technology sponsored by DARPA. The original ARPANET itself split into two networks in the early 1980s, the ARPANET and Milnet (an unclassified military network), but connections made between the networks allowed communication to continue. At first this inter-connection of experimental and production networks was called the DARPA Internet, but later the name was shortened to just ``the Internet.'' Access to the ARPANET in the early years was limited to the military, defense contractors, and universities doing defense research. Cooperative, decentralized networks such as UUCP, a worldwide UNIX communications network, and USENET (User's Network) came into being in the late 1970s, ini- tially serving the university community and later on commer- cial organizations. In the early 1980s more coordinated net- works, such as the Computer+Science Network (CSNET) and BIT- NET, began providing nationwide networking to the academic and research communities. These networks were not part of the Internet, but later special connections were made to allow the exchange of information between the various commu- nities. The next big moment in Internet history was the birth of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) in 1986, which linked researchers across the country with five super- computer centers. Soon expanded to connect the mid-level and 4 _______________________________________________________________ |At the same time, Relcom's Internet connection became the | |only source of news on the coup for the Soviet people. Rel- | |com staffers asked for and got massive amounts of email from | |outside the country, including news from CNN. As one of its | |subscribers wrote later, ``When the dark night fell upon | |Moscow, Relcom was one source of light for us. Thanks to | |these brave people we could get information and hope.'' | | | | There were days of intense danger at first. Relcom's | |computer was only a mile from KGB headquarters. ``Don't wor- | |ry, we're OK,'' wrote one of Relcom's staffers, ``though an- | |gry and frightened. Moscow is full of tanks and military | |machines-I hate them. . . of our life.'' | | | | What got Relcom through to the outside world? Sheer | |courage was part of it. There was also what one of Relcom's | |hackers called ``a subliminal professional kernel''; the | |staff soon set up a diffused network with reserve nodes and | |secret locations, and the authorities never caught up with | |them. And beyond that, of course, there was the great, big | |illuminating cloud of the Internet itself. | | | |A condensation of a paper by Larry Press, Professor of Com- | |puter Information Systems at California State University, | |Dominguez Hills. Published in full in the proceedings of iN- | |et '92 in Kobe, Japan (June 15-18, 1992). | |_____________________________________________________________| statewide academic networks that connected universities and research consortiums, the NSFNET began to replace the ARPANET for research networking. The ARPANET was honorably discharged (and dismantled) in March 1990. CSNET soon found that many of its early members (computer science depart- ments) were connected via the NSFNET, so it too ceased to exist in 1991. BIGGER, FASTER, BETTER Around the time NSFNET was built, the Internet began growing by leaps and bounds, showing exponential gains in number of networks, human participants, and computers. Similar inter- national networks sprung up rapidly all over the world and connected to the U.S. nets. For example, there are now Internet connections to networks in Australia, the Nordic countries, the U.K., France, Germany, Canada, and Japan. Networks in South America are beginning to connect to the Internet, but as yet there isn't a significant Internet presence in Africa. Internet fever continues, growing almost unabated, as more and more organizations scramble to get their networks connected. The current Internet (that's today, as we write this book) consists of more than 5000 networks literally 5 _______________________________________________________________ | | | EXPONENTIAL GROWTH IN NUMBER OF COMPUTERS | | | | | |In 1981, 213 computers were registered on the Internet; by | |1989 there were 80,000. In October 1990, there were 313,000; | |only three months later, in January 1991, there were | |376,000. And in January 1992, there were 727,000 Internet | |registered computers. If this trend continues, there should | |be almost 1.5 million by the time this book is in your | |hands. And these figures are considered to be conservative | |estimates! | | | |Source: Lottor, Mark, ``Internet Growth (1981-1991); Network | |Working Group Request for Comments, RFC 1296, Network Infor- | |mation Systems Center, SRI International, Menlo Park, | |_____________________________________________________________| spanning the globe. It extends to 45 countries on all seven continents. (Yes, there's even an Internet connection to Antarctica!) One estimate, cited by Senator Al Gore in a recent issue of Scientific American, has the amount of traf- fic on the Internet growing by 10 per cent each month. It's been estimated that between 5 and 10 million people use the Internet itself, and upwards of 15 million people that can exchange online messages between the Internet and all of the other interconnecting networks. (See Chapter 2 for an expla- nation of these connections.) Overall, the Internet is the fastest global network around. Speed is often referred to as throughput-how fast information can be propelled through the network. As we'll see in the next chapter, the Internet isn't just one speed, because it can accommodate both slow networks and the latest technology. The NSFNET in the United States currently has the fastest overall speeds, capable of transmitting 45 megabits per second (about 1,400 typed pages). Gigabit-per- second network speeds currently being tested will allow even more advanced applications and services, such as complex weather prediction models produced by supercomputers and transmitted to weather centers. While exponential growth and high speed certainly con- tribute to the Internet's reputation as a notable network, another reason is its success in achieving interoperability. Interoperability is the capacity of many diverse systems to work together to enable communication. It can occur only if the computers and the network hardware adhere to certain standards. Although you may not think about it often, standards play a big part in your everyday life. Camera film always fits in your camera, and looseleaf paper bought at the drug- store fits in your binder. Libraries catalog books according 6 to a standard system, so that once you learn it, you can walk into any library and find the books you need. Things that don't conform to standards, on the contrary, can make your life miserable. Standards are just as important in the computer and networking world. Without standards, only simi- lar computers could talk to each other, creating an elec- tronic Tower of Babel. The standards, or protocols,that the Internet uses are considered ``open,'' meaning that they're publicly available, and they enable disparate computers from many vendors to talk to each other. Chapter 2 will explain this concept further, as well as how the protocols and the networks fit together to make the Internet work. THE NETWORK COMMUNITY The Internet community is expanding not only in numbers but in breadth of application. The Internet has always been, and will always be, a key part of the research and development community, but the increase in access and the network's potential for becoming the basis for worldwide communication between people in all walks of life cannot be ignored by the rest of us. A network that was once the sole province of researchers-and, well, geeks-is now home to third-graders, political activists, farmers, and librarians, as well. Journalists use the Internet to cover topics from the computer business to current events, and some even conduct interviews electronically. Medical researchers share infor- mation on diseases such as AIDS. Doctors transmit x-ray or CAT-scan images to a medical center for further analysis. There are bulletin boards for artists and online archives for agriculture. Elementary and high school students travel the Internet in geography and language arts lessons, learn- ing about other cultures. Librarians love the Internet for its advanced document searching tools and the almost instant access to the catalogs and archives of major libraries all over the world. Business people contact clients and accept orders over the network, and many are beginning to print email addresses on their business cards. In short, the Internet gives you access to more people and more information faster than you can imagine, including online catalogs from most major U.S. academic and research libraries and from more and more foreign libraries. All told there are at least 400 libraries' catalogs, and more are being added almost daily. In addition to research resources, the Internet is also beginning to resemble the commercial information/database providers like CompuServe and Prodigy in offering up-to-date weather, travel information, restaurant reviews, recipe archives, and access to UPI newsfeeds and valuable commer- cial legal and business information databases for a fee. The 7 _______________________________________________________________ | | | | | A Marriage Made on the Internet | | | | | | Rodrigo and I met in Guatemala about 7 years ago, when | |we were both studying computer science, and became casual | |friends, nothing more. In 1990 we both left Guatemala to | |pursue grad studies at different universities in the U.S. | | | | In January of 1991 we exchanged email addresses and | |started corresponding. We discussed everything from our | |studies, to gossip from back home, to the latest news on the | |soc.culture.latin-america newsgroup. | | | | By mid-February he was already ending his messages by | |sending me ``a hug.'' Internet email was what really allowed | |us to share our interests, our coursework, and our ideas and | |to get to know each other in the same way that lovers used | |to do through letter writing. Since he insinuated that he | |would like to see me, I packed my bags and, to his surprise, | |flew to New York that summer . . . and everything went very | |well! | | | | From then on our email usage increased, plus we started | |``talking'' interactively on the Internet for hours at a | |time, every other night. Rodrigo finished his coursework | |and went back to Guatemala. Our country does not have reli- | |able postal services, and with the extremely high phone | |rates, it would have been very difficult for us to stay in | |touch without email. The Central American region does not | |yet have Internet nodes, but there is one UUCP node in Costa | |Rica, ``huracan,'' of which Rodrigo has become an avid user. | | | | So for the last six months we have communicated through | |that node. Since we're getting married in August, now we're | |talking wedding arrangements. And yes, we are sending out an | |electronic invitation to all our ``electronic acquain- | |tances.'' | | | | | |Source: Grete Pasch | |_____________________________________________________________| free resources still outnumber the commercial ones, however, which makes exploring the Internet fun. We'll tell you how to tap into this worldwide community of people and informa- tion in Chapters 3 and 4. The Politicians The potential political impact of the Internet hasn't gone unnoticed on either the national or global political scene. 8 The Tiananmen Square bloodshed, the Yugoslavian civil war, the fall of communism, the Los Angeles riots-all were described by people who witnessed the action and transmitted live reports across the Internet. The Internet has, indeed, played a large part in disseminating information while events were unfolding. Political candidates are starting to realize the bene- fits of instantaneous broadcast of information to large groups of people. In this presidential election year, most of the candidates had email addresses that could be reached from the Internet. The election in general and political platforms in particular were discussed in great detail in certain electronic forums. In the future, electronic town meetings will be the norm. 9 _______________________________________________________________ | | | The Internet, the Environment, | | and the Law | | | | Operating under the premise that information is like | |water in a desert, a group of environmental lawyers are us- | |ing the Internet to provide access to scientific and legal | |information to environmental action groups in the developing | |world. | | | | Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW) was formed | |by public interest lawyers in Peru, Ecuador, Australia, | |Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the | |U.S. E-LAW uses email and conferencing, starting with the | |EcoNet/PeaceNet system in the U.S. and is distributed | |throughout the world on the Internet, BITNET, and UUCP. | |Their success in networking to remote sites and undeveloped | |regions has been inspiring to other international groups. | | | | Does it work? According to John Bonine, a professor of | |Law at the University of Oregon, ``Ecuadorian public inter- | |est lawyers have been fighting to prevent oil drilling in a | |National Park in the Amazon considered to be the most bio- | |logically diverse on the planet. They uncovered information | |on improper influences in the Ecuadorian judicial system by | |certain foreign oil companies, drew up a complaint to the | |U.S. government, and publicized the complaint worldwide on | |the computer networks.'' This effort, combined with others, | |may have persuaded a major North American oil company to | |drop the project. | | | | E-LAW's position is that speedy access to information, | |whether scientific studies or other legal actions, helps | |level the playing field between the people trying to protect | |fragile resources in remote areas of the world and the big | |multinational companies who have worldwide access to infor- | |mation and the resources to press their points of view. | | | | | |From an article by John E. Bonine in Internet Society News, | |vol. 1, no. 1 (Winter 1992), p. 26. Published by the Inter- | |net Society in Reston, Va. | |_____________________________________________________________| 10 _______________________________________________________________ | | | SatelLife | | | | Physicians in Africa are practicing medicine and deal- | |ing with some of this century's most serious medical chal- | |lenges in the midst of staggering ``information poverty.'' | |In the mid-80s, the problem caught the attention of Dr. | |Bernard Lown, founder of International Physicians for the | |Prevention of Nuclear War (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize | |in 1985), who felt the high frontier of space should be used | |for humanitarian rather than military purposes. He started | |SatelLife, a non-profit organization committed to pro- mot- | |ing health in the developing world by providing improved | |communication and exchange of information. SatelLife's | |HealthNet is a computer network linking medical centers in | |the Southern Hemisphere. Using a microsatellite, HealthNet | |enables physicians and healthcare workers in remote areas to | |upload and download information to each other and to medical | |_____________________________________________________________| The Activists Activists were among the first to realize the Internet's potential for cheap, fast, global communication. The Inter- net is a perfect tool for alerting and assembling large num- bers of people electronically. Amnesty International, for example, has been using its Urgent Action Network on PeaceNet to mobilize its members to pressure government officials to release political prisoners. It may come as no surprise that dictators and tyrants don't appreciate their actions being made public through this democratic tool. 11 _______________________________________________________________ | | | For example, a physician treating an AIDS patient in | |Zambia, Africa, where the HIV-positive rate approaches 25 | |percent, could better treat his patient by communicating | |with physicians and researchers in other African countries | |as well as with colleagues in other parts of the world. | |Through HealthNet, he can get a free electronic copy of the | |New England Journal of Medicine, with the latest research | |results, rather than waiting six months to receive a copy | |that might cost half his monthly salary. Using the HealthNet | |system, this physician can query researchers about new de- | |velopments, such as the possible connection between polio | |vaccines and AIDS in Africa, or about new drugs developed | |for AIDS treatment. | | | | Staffed by people in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Satel- | |Life received a major contribution for their first satellite | |from NEC Corp. SatelLife's second satellite is slated to be | |launched in 1993. With ground stations in Africa (and soon | |in Brazil), SatelLife stations connect to the Internet | |through a gateway in Newfoundland. Ultimately, SatelLife | |hopes to use the Internet, and electronic communication in | |general, to create partnerships for better health. | | | | | |Based on an interview with Charles Clements, M.D., Executive | |Director of SatelLife. | |_____________________________________________________________| PeaceNet is part of the Institute for Global Communica- tions (IGC) network, probably the best-known and most effi- ciently coordinated computer effort for peace and protection of the environment. Through its connection to the Internet, IGC encourages people to ``dial locally, act globally'' to collaborate on peace issues. Another IGC network, EcoNet, focuses on the many environmental issues affecting our planet and has forums and information on global warming, destruction of the rain forests, legislation affecting envi- ronmental programs, toxic chemicals entering the water sup- ply, and education of the general public on environmental issues. The Internet explosion has had an interesting environ- mental side-effect, effectively allowing more and more peo- ple to telecommute to their jobs. As pressure to reduce air pollution from automobiles continues to mount, increasing access to the Internet for ordinary people will allow more to work at home and leave cars in the garage. Telecommuni- cating will also give handicapped users the freedom to travel electronically and give families more time together at home. 12 BECOMING PART OF THE INTERNET Whether you have a PC or a Cray YMP supercomputer, a high- speed network or a regular telephone line, you can get con- nected to the Internet. There are two basic methods of access available for individuals: through an organization's network, or through a computer, modem, and telephone line. The basic costs are explained below, but Chapter 6 discusses some of the available options in more detail and also tells you the general steps to take if you wish to connect your organization's network. Costs For many people, the Internet is an all-around good deal. People who have access to the Internet through an organiza- tion, such as a university or a large company, don't have to worry about how much they use the Internet. Their communica- tion with people from all over the world and access to most information resources is not going to show up itemized on a long-distance bill, because the leased lines or network links are already paid for. For those users, it's like hav- ing a WATS line with no limit. Individual users without the benefit of organization apron string links, in contrast, must get their access from commercial Internet providers, or public access Internet sites, or a digital rich uncle giving away access through public accounts. Access for those with a computer and a modem is usually through a local telephone call to a server or computer. The costs can vary, but many commercial providers charge a flat rate monthly fee that isn't bad com- pared with the potential gain of instant worldwide communi- cation. Some providers charge as little as $20/month for unlimited electronic mail. But, just as the telephone system still doesn't quite reach everyone worldwide, Internet access is not always easily available or reasonable. Many people in remote areas or foreign countries must make expen- sive long-distance calls to send and receive electronic mail or to access resources. Often isolated and desiring human contact and access to information, they find the extra cost worth it-if they can afford it. The U.S. National Research and Education Network Although the Internet is spreading quickly around the world and more and more organizations are connecting to it, not all U.S. academic and research institutions are connected. Recognizing the importance of having the United States main- tain technological superiority, Senator Al Gore sponsored a bill, ``High-Performance Computing Act of 1991,'' which was signed into law in December 1991. This authorizing 13 legislation promotes technical leadership by providing all researchers with access to powerful supercomputer resources and valuable information resources. The bill also calls for coordinating and combining several federal agencies' indi- vidual networking efforts into one high-capacity, high-speed network that will connect all academic and research institu- tions and federal agencies. Known as the National Research and Education Network (NREN), this network will, in essence, be the successor to the research and education portion of the Internet in the United States. ``High-speed'' in this bill means gigabit-per-second speeds. For example, an entire encyclopedia could be trans- ferred in less than three seconds. This encyclopedia metric is often used to describe how fast the network will be, but it's important to realize that although some advanced appli- cations, such as videoconferencing, will require high speeds, this capacity will be used more to handle the increasing number of people that will be using the network. You can compare this additional capacity to a 10-lane high- way: the number of lanes does not enable you to drive 10 times faster; it just allows more cars to travel at the same time. The NREN will use this added capacity to link researchers with expensive hardware resources such as super- computers. Access to valuable information databases and online libraries will benefit the ``E'' in the NREN, the education community, hooking up all of the 2-year and 4-year colleges and universities. And, in addition to all the fancy applications, visualization, and multimedia services that will no doubt appear, remote learning applications, more user-friendly tools, and directories of people and resources are also planned. While all of this should be in place some- time in the mid-1990s, the NREN actually exists now. The NSFNET, the nationwide network connecting the majority of academic and research institutions in the United States, is now referred to as the ``Interim NREN.'' The whole idea is to use existing resources, building on top of the current infrastructure, instead of ``reinventing the wheel.'' 14 _______________________________________________________________ | | | The Internet and the Classroom | | | | Patsy Lanclos, a TENET Trainer, is an enthusiastic sup- | |porter of the Internet and how it is being used in K-12 | |classrooms. When asked what she thought of the Internet, she | |had this to say: | | | | ``You know, I think one of the greatest things I have | |seen regarding TENET and the Internet is the enthusiasm it | |has put back into teachers. Teachers who were tired and worn | |have suddenly been retread and are ready to roll! They are | |out there creating new and innovative lessons incorporating | |telecommunications of all kinds. They are taking risks. They | |are asking for the unthinkable-telephone lines in the class- | |rooms and computers! They want to belong. It has created a | |wonderful network of support. You really aren't out there | |alone! | | | | ``One of the classes became acclimatized to TENET when | |they wanted to know things in a hurry. Instead of waiting to | |hear it on the news, read the paper, or listen to the radio, | |the comments were, `Let's access the UPI news and find out!' | |From the Brenham explosion to the California quakes, the | |news was there instantly.'' | |_____________________________________________________________| It is imperative that this technology, now readily available to many scientists and researchers, be extended to practical applications in K-12 education, libraries, the health care industry, and manufacturing and be further extended to the home. The NREN will provide the basis for a national public network that will connect grade schools and libraries, hospitals and factories. Already there are a growing number of K-12 schools and districts being con- nected. The Texas Education Network (TENET), a statewide K-12 education network with a connection to the Internet, currently links over 15,000 educators in Texas. These teach- ers and administrators are using the network to communicate with other educators all over the world and to access educa- tional resources 15 _______________________________________________________________ | | | The Internet and Business Success | | | | According to Alvin Toffler, the well-known futurist, | |the economic well-being of the United States depends on the | |continuing development of the networks. ``Because so much of | |business now depends on getting and sending information, | |companies around the world have been rushing to link their | |employees through electronic networks. These networks form | |the key infrastructure of the 21st century, as critical to | |business success and national economic development as the | |railroads were in Morse's era.'' | | | |Source: Alvin Toffler, Power Shift (New York: Bantam Books, | |1990), p. 102. | |_____________________________________________________________| such as an online encyclopedia, the Educational Resources Information Center Documents Database (ERIC), lesson plans, study guides, current events (including daily guides such as CNN Newsroom and Stardate), and UPI news. It's interesting to note that the growth of this network paralleled the growth of the Internet. The Texas Education Agency pre- dicted there would be, at most, 3,000 participants at the end of the first year of operation; there were 13,000. Texas is not the only state that has initiated K-12 networking projects. Virginia, for example, has a similar network, called the Virginia Public Education Network (VA.PEN). The International Commercial Network The NREN is often compared to the national highway system, as a sort of electronic information freeway built, operated, and funded by the U.S. government. As you'll see in Chapter 2, there are some acceptable use restrictions prohibiting information of a commercial nature on federally sponsored networks, and it's not clear yet how these rules will apply to the future NREN. However, commercial Internet providers are appearing, building their own international networks and offering access to the general public and businesses around the world. Business people are beginning to realize the importance of being well-connected in order to be more competitive in the global marketplace. New players, such as the new coordi- nated European market and the former Eastern bloc countries, are broadening the playing field. In order to compete, busi- nesses need the advantages of instant communication and access to valuable information. More and more commercial information providers and networks, such as Dialog and Com- puServe, are establishing connections to the Internet, tak- ing advantage of its worldwide reach and allowing their 16 customers more communication options. Recent statistics con- firm that commercial organizations are flocking to connect to the Internet in greater numbers than ever. This movement started in the late 1980s, when the requirement for federal sponsorship of access to the Internet was dropped. The trend shows that many others will be connecting. THE FUTURE It's hard to know what will happen in the future. Internet experts don't have a great track record when it comes to predicting how people are actually going to use it for their everyday needs. The developers of the early ARPANET envi- sioned it being used to bring expensive hardware resources closer to researchers. What they didn't expect was that electronic mail would become so heavily used by researchers at geographically distant sites wanting to talk and collabo- rate with each other. Although the NSFNET was built to con- nect supercomputers, it is now used more for collaboration and access to information. As the Internet connects more people and starts to yield more applications, it will be used for more than just electronic mail and transferring files. Internet engineering groups have played with connecting vending machines and household appliances such as toasters and stereos to the Internet, allowing them to be operated remotely. Several recent experiments allowed network engineering meetings in San Diego and Boston to be ``virtually attended'' by researchers in Australia and Europe and other parts of the United States by transmitting audio and video images of the conference. No doubt, other virtual reality applications incorporating multimedia-sound and graphics will appear soon. The future of the Internet, while hard to foretell, will be exciting. Many future applications will make the Internet ''transparent'' to people who are using it. That is to say, the network and computer will be integrated in the home and office, performing important, vital functions with- out making you aware of the nitty-gritty details. Already there are interesting applications appearing that are making the Internet easy to use by simply hiding the network details. You don't actually have to know where information is or where resources are located; the applications figure that out for you. At this point, you're probably less concerned about the future of the Internet than about your own immediate future on the Internet. So stay with us as we explain a bit about how it works and some concepts you need to know before we take you to this electronic world. Onward to Chapter 2, for the ``lowdown'' on the Internet. 17 Chapter 2 INTERNET: THE LOWDOWN Ask an Internet wizard what this network is all about, and you'll probably get a long and sawdusty discourse studded with acronyms and techspeak. It's friendly if you approach it right, but potentially huge and terrifying, especially to people who don't know its special ways. In this chapter we'll try to explain some of the basic principles that underlie the Internet. Let's begin with the most important principle of all: You don't have to fully understand how the Internet works to use it. Plenty of blissfully unaware Internet users are pounding away at keyboards and communi- cating merrily, with absolutely no knowledge of how the Internet fits together. But although ignorance may be bliss, the more you know, the more doors are open to you. So here goes. A NETWORK OF NETWORKS The Internet is a worldwide web of interconnected univer- sity, business, military, and science networks. Why do we say a ``web''? Isn't the Internet just one network? Not at all! It is a network of networks. The Internet is made up of little Local Area Networks (LANs), city-wide Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), and huge Wide Area Networks (WANs) connecting computers for organizations all over the world. These networks are hooked together with everything from reg- ular dialup phone lines to high-speed dedicated leased lines, satellites, microwave links, and fiber optic links. And the fact that they're ``on'' the Internet means that all these networks are interconnected. This network web extends all over the United States and out to the rest of the world, but trying to describe all of it and how it fits together is a bit like trying to count the stars. In fact, so many networks are interconnected within the Internet that it's impossible to show an accurate, up-to- date picture. Some network maps show the Internet as a cloud, because it's just too complex to draw in all of the links. To complicate matters, lots of new computers and links are being added every day. 18 _______________________________________________________________ | | | A Very, Very Long Cat | | | | Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: | |``You see, wiretelegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. | |You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los | |Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly | |the same way: you send signals here, they receive them | |there. The only difference is that there is no cat.'' If ra- | |dio is a very, very long cat, then what is the Internet? A | |very, very long tiger? | | | |Source: UNIX Fortune program. | |_____________________________________________________________| So just think of the Internet as a ``cloud of links.'' The cloud hides all the ugly details-the hardware, the phys- ical links, the acronyms, and the network engineers. Remem- ber that you don't actually need to know all the details to communicate and use resources on the Internet. HOW COMPUTERS TALK The computers on a network have to be able to talk to each other. To do that they use protocols, which are just rules or agreements on how to communicate. Standards were men- tioned in Chapter 1 as an important aspect in computer net- working. There are lots of protocol standards out there, such as DECnet, SNA, Novell, and Appletalk, but to actually communicate, two computers have to be using the same proto- col at the same time. TCP/IP, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, is the language of the Internet. You may speak Japanese and I may speak English, but if we both speak French, we can communicate. So any com- puter that wants to communicate on the Internet must ``speak'' TCP/IP. Developed by DARPA in the 1970s, TCP/IP was part of an experiment in internetworking-that is, con- necting different types of networks and computer systems. First used on the ARPANET in 1983, it was also implemented and made available at no cost for computers running the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) of the UNIX operating system. TCP/IP, developed using public funds, is considered an open, nonproprietary protocol, and there are now imple- mentations of it for almost every type of computer on the planet. ``Nonproprietary'' means that no one company-not IBM, not DEC, not Novell-has a lock on the products needed to connect to the Internet. Any number of companies make the hardware and software necessary for the network connection. TCP/IP isn't the only protocol suite that is considered ``open.'' Since the early 1980s the International Organiza- tion for Standardization (ISO) has been developing the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocols. While many of the 19 OSI protocols and applications are still evolving, a few are actually being used in some networks on the Internet, and more are planned. So even though most of the computers speak TCP/IP, the Internet is officially considered a ``multi- protocol'' network. The whole idea of protocols and standards can get com- plicated, but as an Internet neophyte, all you need to be concerned with are the basic applications that TCP/IP offers. The Internet Toolbox Three TCP/IP applications-electronic mail, remote login, and file transfer-are the Internet equivalent of the hammer, screwdriver, and crescent wrench in your toolbox. There are plenty of fancier applications using variations on or combi- nations of these basic tools, but wherever you roam on the Internet, you should have the Big Three available to you. We'll be covering the three basic Internet services in later chapters, but here's a quick introduction to get you on your way. Electronic mail, also known as email or messaging, is the most commonly available and most frequently used service on the Internet. Email lets you write and send a text mes- sage to another person or to a whole group of people. For example, a third-grade student in Texas can send an email message to a third-grader in Japan to ask how kids spend their free time there. Or a group of teachers can have an email conference on using the Internet in the classroom. Remote login is an interactive tool that allows you to access the programs and applications available on another computer. Say, for example, that Sven, a student at the University of Oslo, who is heading out to a ski vacation in the Rocky Mountains, wants to check out the weather condi- tions and snowfall there. An Internet computer at the Uni- versity of Michigan houses a weather database called the Weather Underground, with temperatures, precipitation, and even earthquake alerts for the entire United States. Sven uses the remote login tool to connect to this computer and interactively query the Weather Underground for the informa- tion he needs. File transfer, the third of the ``Big Three'' tools, allows files to be transferred from one computer to another. A file can be a document, graphics, software, spread- sheets-even sounds! For example, you may be interested in information on Chernobyl from the Library of Congress's ``Glasnost'' online exhibit of documents from the former Soviet Union. Using file transfer, you can download those articles from the computer they're stored on to your own 20 personal computer, where you can read them, print them out, or clip and incorporate parts of them into a paper you're writing. How Does TCP/IP Work? When you're actually using the above-mentioned tools, infor- mation of various types is being transferred from one com- puter to another. TCP/IP breaks this information into chunks called packets. Each packet contains a piece of the document (several hundred characters, or bytes) plus some ID tags, such as the addresses of the sending and receiving computers. Say you wanted to take apart an old covered bridge in New England and move it lock, stock and barrel to California (people do do these things). You would dismantle the sec- tions, label them very carefully, and ship them out on three, four, maybe even five different trucks. Some take the northern route and some the southern route, and one just has to go through Texas. The trucks get to California at various times with one arriving a little later than the others, but your careful labels indicate which section goes up first, second, and third. So each packet, as TCP/IP handles it with its address- ing information, can travel just as independently. Because of all the network interconnections, there are often multi- ple paths to a destination. Just as you might drive a dif- ferent route to work to save a few minutes here or there, the packets may travel different networks to get to the des- tination computer. The packets may arrive out of order, but that's okay, because each packet also contains sequence information about where the data it's carrying goes in the document, and the receiving computer can reconstruct the whole enchilada. And that's why the Internet is known as a packet-switched network. The switches are computers called routers, which are programmed to figure out the best packet routes, just as a travel agent might help you find the best flights with the fewest layovers. Routers are the airport hubs of the Internet which connect the networks and shuttle packets back and forth. The packet is just a chunk of infor- mation; it doesn't care (or know) how fast it travels. So it can travel over a ``fighter-jet'' network, running at Mach- whatever speeds and connecting supercomputers, that inter- connects with a ``biplane'' network operating a lot slower. The Networks That Make up the Internet The Internet network connections don't follow any specific model, but there is a hierarchy of sorts. The high-speed central networks are known as backbones. The electronic 21 equivalent of an interstate highway system, they accept traffic from and deliver it to the mid-level networks. Mid- level networks, in turn, take traffic from the backbones and distribute it to their own member networks, the neighborhood roads of the networking world. The network links have speed limitations, but speeds are determined by the technology used (not by some ``Packet Policeman''). Seamless Worldwide Networking The bottom line here is that the Internet, which is actually thousands of networks, looks seamless to the user. Also known as the internet-working or internet concept, it hides all the details from you-the packets, the routers, and all those interconnections. Despite legions of different com- puters and disparate networks, somehow the whole web works, and any computer directly connected to the Internet can talk to all the other computers on the Internet. So you, working on a computer in your office in Iowa or in your spare bed- room in Los Angeles, can communicate with a colleague in South Africa or a friend in Calgary. It's as if you are directly connected by one wire. WHO RUNS THE INTERNET? So who controls this web, this cloud, this network of net- works? Well, as Christopher Davis, an Internet regular, so concisely put it when asked this question: ``Lots of people, and nobody, and the National Science Foundation, kinda, sorta.'' Well put. People is the operative word here. The Inter- net seems to be both institutional and anti-institutional at the same time, massive and intimate, organized and chaotic. In a sense the Internet is a cooperative endeavor, with its member networks kicking in money, hardware, maintenance, and technical expertise. The U.S. government has a big influ- ence on the federally funded parts of the Internet. The National Science Foundation (NSF), for example, provides funding to assist academic and research networks in getting started. NSF initiated the NSFNET, the nationwide backbone in the United States that connects these mid-level networks, which in turn connect universities and other organizations. For this reason, NSF sets policy for and operates a chunk of the Internet in the United States, but it does not have con- trol over all the mid-level networks it connects. In addition to the NSFNET there are other federally funded and operated backbones in areas such as the military, space science, and energy research. The Federal Networking Council (FNC) was formed to coordinate these efforts, and it will be working toward combining them into the NREN (see 22 Chapter 1). There are also, of course, many international networks that are overseen by other governments and organi- zations. Technical coordination of the Internet is more centralized. For example, the NSFNET is technically managed and operated by Advanced Network Services, Inc. (ANS), a company established by Merit, Inc., IBM Corporation, and MCI Communications Corporation. Furthermore, the development and improvement of TCP/IP protocols is sanctioned by the Internet Society. Chapter 5 provides more information about that organization. Of particular interest to business users are the com- mercial Internet providers that have sprouted up in the United States-companies such as UUNET Communications Ser- vices, Performance Systems International (PSI), Advanced Networks & Services Inc. (ANS), Sprint's Sprintlink, and the California Education and Research Federation Network (CERFnet). UUNET, PSI, Sprint, and CERFnet have intercon- nected their backbone networks to form the Commercial Inter- net Exchange, or the CIX (pronounced ``kicks''). In addition to connecting organizations' networks, all of these commer- cial providers offer users with modem-equipped PCs and Macs access to the Internet, this huge electronic cooperative of people and institutions. Another interesting undertaking is the Enterprise Inte- gration Network (EINet), being spearheaded by Microelectron- ics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC). EINet uses UUNet's nationwide backbone, Alternet, to offer value-added services, an Internetwork infrastructure purely in support of business and commercial applications. The appendix con- tains contact information for all of these providers. ACCEPTABLE USE As you can imagine, with all the people and networks and government agencies participating in the Internet, there are bound to be rules, restrictions, and policies for parts of it. Probably the best known and most widely applied is NSFNET's Acceptable Use Policy, which basically states that transmission of ``commercial'' information or traffic is not allowed across the NSFNET backbone, whereas all information in support of academic and research activities is accept- able. 23 _______________________________________________________________ | | | Living on the Fault Line | | | | One California energy company uses the Internet exten- | |sively to give it a competitive edge in the energy explo- | |ration business. Earthquakes shake things up in the oil | |business, so their seismic engineers transfer the latest | |earthquake data from Caltech to help find potential payoff | |in their existing geothermal fields. Data from a recent Cal- | |ifornia earthquake was in the hands of the engineers within | |minutes of release by Caltech. | | | | The company also uses the Internet to get state-of-the- | |art software for modelling seismic data and technical con- | |sulting on the uses of fractals in seismic work. Access to | |the research community through the Internet keeps the compa- | |ny up to the minute in a very competitive business. | | | |Source: Peter Ho, Unocal Corp. | |_____________________________________________________________| What is ``commercial'' traffic? Some examples are pur- chase orders, invoices, and unsolicited advertising. How- ever, there is a gray area including, for example, announce- ments of products or software updates. Such information may be acceptable because many times it is considered important and useful to academic and research organizations. Many peo- ple also use the Internet to request information about ven- dors and their products. In this instance, responses-including pricing information-are generally acceptable, because they were solicited by a user. But restrictions are not universal, especially with the advent of commercial network providers selling Internet access. These providers may or may not have restrictions or acceptable use policies for their own networks. When traffic from their backbones requires passage over the NSFNET, though, things can get a little sticky. Commercial providers usually make their customers aware of acceptable use on other networks. It sounds somewhat complicated, but you need to remem- ber that the original Internet began as a U.S. government- funded experiment, and no one expected it to become the widespread, heavily used production network it is today. It's going to take a while for commercialization and priva- tization of these networks to occur. The Internet as a whole continues to move to support-or at least to allow access to-more and more commercial activity. We may have to deal with some conflicting policies while that process evolves, but at some point in the near Internet future, free enter- prise will likely prevail and commercial activity will have a defined place, making the whole issue moot. In the mean- time, if you're planning to use the Internet for commercial 24 reasons, make sure that the networks you're using support your kind of activity. INTERNET CONCEPTS We'll soon be telling you how to get your hands on the Internet, but before then-as with almost any new adventure in a foreign land-you'll need to acquire a bit of new vocab- ulary. The basic concepts are simple, and because the net- work protocols do much of the work, you don't have to become an Internet maven to travel its highways and byways. Names and Addresses If you've ever travelled in a country where you couldn't read the street signs or figure out how they numbered the houses, you'll understand the wisdom of learning the Inter- net's name and address system. Most computers on the Inter- net can be identified in two ways. Each computer has a name and a numerical address (both unique), just as most of us can be located by our names or numerically by our phone num- bers. It's easier to remember a name than a phone number, and it's the same on the Internet. An Internet computer name is usually several words separated by periods, such as planet10.yoyodyne.com. An Internet address, or technically an IP address, is four numbers also separated by periods-for example, 161.44.128.70. When you're saying these names and addresses out loud, to look like you belong you should substitute dots for the ``periods.'' This is known as dotspeak, and there's a whole lot of it in the Internet. In the examples above, you would say ``planet10 dot yoyodyne dot com'' and ``161 dot 44 dot 128 dot 70.'' The idea is for people to use the computers' names when accessing resources and to let the computers and routers work with the IP addresses. Each Internet-connected organi- zation keeps a database of the names and addresses of all the computers connected to its own networks. Because there are so many computers on the Internet and no real central authority, name assignment is best left to the local net- works. Imagine if everyone had to get their new phone num- bers from Washington, D.C.! The Defense Data Network (DDN) Network Information Center (NIC), which is operated by Gov- ernment Systems, Inc., in Chantilly, Virginia, does provide a central registering authority in the United States for organizations' second-level domain names and network num- bers. Each organization then assumes responsibility for assigning names and numbers to its computers. So how's it work? When you want to access a public 25 domain software archive on the wuarchive.wustl.edu computer, a database at Washington University in St. Louis (the wustl.edu domain) is consulted to find out the IP address of that computer. The address (not the name) is passed on to the routers so that they can make the connection. This is done automatically and transparently to you. Why, then, do you need to know about IP addresses, when the system was designed so that you shouldn't ever need to concern yourself with them? The answer, as you may suspect, is that things don't always work perfectly, and there may come a time when you will need to know an IP address to access a resource. For this reason, many resources are listed with the computer's name and its IP address. The rec- ommended practice is always to use the computer name, since IP numbers-like telephone numbers-can change, while names tend to stay the same (see Chapter 5 for more information on finding IP addresses). Domain Name System There's actually a method to these names and addresses: a naming system known as the Domain Name System, or DNS. The DNS is also the worldwide system of distributed databases of names and addresses. These databases provide the ``transla- tion'' from names to numbers and vice versa, a sort of international Who's Who of computers. DNS names are constructed in a hierarchical naming fashion, which you can think of as a worldwide organization chart. At the top of this chart are top-level specifica- tions, like EDU (educational), COM (commercial), GOV (gov- ernment), MIL (military), ORG (organizations), NET (net- works), and also 2-letter country codes (like US for the United States and CH for Switzerland). An organization can register for a domain name, select- ing one of the top-level specifications mentioned above that describes it best and then preceding it with a recognizable version of its name. So, for example, the Yoyodyne Software Systems company will have a domain name like yoyodyne.com. From there, it can divide itself into subdomains, extending the organization chart to department levels, or it can just give all of its computers names in the yoyodyne.com domain. Once you understand how this naming system works you can remember names more easily, and you can also tell things about a computer, such as to what organization it belongs. The names do not, however, always indicate geographical location. For example, planet10.yoyodyne.com may be the main computer at the home office in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, mars.yoyodyne.com may be at the Hong Kong branch, while venus.yoyodyne.com might be located at the Santa Cruz 26 division. Many U.S. organizations and companies use the 3- letter designations mentioned above (for example, EDU, COM, and ORG). However, most countries have stipulated that organiza- tions use their 2-letter country codes for top-level domains. For example, an actual computer name, quake.think.com, refers to a commercial (COM) enterprise: The computer's name is quake and it belongs to Thinking Machines Corporation (think), a supercomputer manufacturer. Another example is fujitsu.co.jp, a computer at the Fujitsu Company in Japan. (jp is the 2-letter country code for Japan.) Now you probably have a few questions. After learning about the DNS, every new Internet user first wants to get a list of all the computers on the Internet. After all, you have a telephone directory of all the people in your home area. But there is no exact, up-to-date Internet name and address list available in hard copy or online anywhere. In the early days of the ARPANET, a list was maintained by the DDN's Network Information Center, but the Internet grew too rapidly to keep up with all the additions and changes. The distributed domain name system has replaced this centrally managed list and has allowed the Internet to grow gracefully. Internet Resources While a list of computer names would not be very helpful, a list of online resources would. Resources on the Internet are all of the useful things that you can access: hardware like supercomputers, graphics labs, computer centers, or printers. Or online information like the wealth of databases, documents, software, archives, pictures, and sounds. Resources can also be people. If you can talk to a group of people to figure out the answer to a question or problem, they are a resource; so are mailing lists and con- ferencing systems. An online forum on school networking or a workgroup on molecular biology are both Internet resources. Your understanding of the astonishing array of Internet resources, and how to get at them, will grow as you learn your way around the Internet. Internet or Outernet? To better understand what the Internet is, you also need to understand what the Internet is not and what networks are not on the Internet. There are a number of worldwide net- works that use protocols other than TCP/IP and provide their own sets of services. Some don't allow remote login, while some employ different file transfer methods; many have a 27 special connection to the Internet. These connections are not, however, the seamless web we were talking about ear- lier, where the participating networks interoperate to allow the same services. Instead, these are connections of conve- nience, which-like marriages of the same sort-have their purposes but not a lot of other interaction. We refer to networks on the outside as outernets, but understanding the distinction between outernets and the Internet can be difficult. Because of the differing govern- ments and languages involved in the Internet and the outer- nets, there's only one basic service-electronic mail-that currently can move between them. Electronic mail moves from the Internet to the outernets through email gateways, the connecting points that translate the different email proto- cols of each network. More and more of the outernets are setting up email gateways to the Internet. This worldwide system of networks and gateways has been called the Matrix or the Net. This second term is ambiguous because it doesn't refer to any one network, but it works well in referring to the overall worldwide situation. If you hear someone say that he's ``on the Net,'' it probably means that he can be contacted by email. (See Chapter 3 for details on sending mail between networks). It's interesting to note that many computers on outer- nets these days have DNS names, so it may only look as though they're connected to the Internet. There's a neat feature in the DNS that allows for Mail Exchange (MX) com- puters. An MX computer is a gateway that's connected to the Internet and that is willing (meaning an arrangement has been made) to transfer email to an outernet computer. Instead of finding an IP address for the outernet computer in the database, the DNS obtains an MX record or the name of the Internet computer that will deliver the email to the outernet computer. All of this should be transparent to you, making it easier to send and receive electronic mail between the Internet and outernet networks. Which outernets have email gateways to the Internet? More every day, but some of the well-known international networks are: FidoNet, a coop- erative network made up of mostly microcomputers linked via telephone lines; BITNET (Because It's Time Network), an aca- demic and research network; and UUCP, a network of computers that talk to each other over dialup connections using UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol). Commercial networks, includ- ing CompuServe, MCImail, Genie, and America Online, have made connections, too. 28 _______________________________________________________________ | ``Enough of White Man's ASCII'' | | | | Dave Hughes, who is kind of an Internet evangelist, | |took to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to work with a | |group of Native American teenagers at the American Indian | |Science and Engineering Society's summer school in physics.. | |According to Dave, the kids, who were from the Navajo, Zuni, | |Crow, Tohono, Sioux, and Picurus Pueblo tribes, ``showed po- | |lite, quiet interest as I explained the technology and made | |a local call to the Internet (Colorado Supernet). They | |laughed a bit, read, and responded to email sent especially | |to them by Dr. George Johnston, physicist at MIT, whom I | |asked directly to `welcome' them to the world of mathematics | |and physics by telecom. | | | | ``Then I said, `enough of white man's ASCII' and start- | |ed calling up the Indian art, the Crow Dance poetry, the new | |pieces by Lorri Ann Two Bulls, via modem, at 240 baud. They | |*really* got excited! Putting questions to me, walking up | |to look closer at the full-color VGA monitor, their dark | |eyes | |_____________________________________________________________| Network News Another service available on many of these networks, is called network news. ``News'' in the network world refers not to current events from the newswires but to discussions, interest groups, and conferences. There are thousands of different discussion groups on topics ranging from artifi- cial intelligence to recipes, from politics to sex, from ornithology to skydiving-collectively generating the equiva- lent of some 175 books about the size of this one each day. (That's actually about 35 Megabytes of digital information.) News is transmitted on the USENET network, which has special relationships and connections with some of the networks pre- viously mentioned. For example, USENET news can be transmit- ted across and between the Internet and UUCP networks, allowing citizens of both cultures to participate. USENET is its own network, however, and no one person or organiza- tion controls it. It's a huge cooperative anarchy, with 2.5 million people participating worldwide. 29 _______________________________________________________________ | | |laughing, smiles, and half of them standing up for the rest | |of the hour-long session. When it was over, a crowd around | |the machine, picking up copies of the Online Access Magazine | |and Boardwatch Magazine I brought, and more questions. And | |from their obvious tribal knowledge, they were saying, | |`That's Crow, that's Sioux!' from the colors and symbols in | |the various pieces of art. | | | | ``A heart-warming session with 40 Indian kids who | |seemed to get a glimpse of a future even they could partici- | |pate in. And if I am right, by reaching these youth, start- | |ing with their own `images of their inner selves' as Indians | |produced by such technologies, they may be better able to | |move on into the world of science, math, and the cold re- | |gions of technological and white man's society, while still | |not losing their identity or associations with each other. | |Perhaps even doing their life's work as professionals, from | |the reservation, thanks to these little devices.'' | | | |Source: A posting by Dave Hughes to the Consortium for | |School Networking Discussion Forum List (COSNDISC@BITNIC) on | |July 100,1992. | |_____________________________________________________________| Even though USENET is closely related to the Internet and a lot of its traffic travels over the Internet, USENET is not the Internet. Many people who have access to USENET news don't have Internet connections; similarly, Internet connec- tivity doesn't always provide access to USENET news. Also, note that USENET is a conferencing system and is not consid- ered an email network. Now that we've cleared up what the Internet is and is not, it's time to get on with learning to use it. Conferencing, email, and interactive online conversations are the most exciting new developments in communications since the advent of the telephone. If you think the fax machine is great, wait until you try the Internet! With just your fingers on the keyboard, you can reach around the world. TO BE CONTINUED...