Why are we here?  The Internet conference is for discussing the
worldwide computer network known as the Internet.  Your fair-
witnesses would like to try to limit the discussion here to the
'net.  Discussion of editors such as vi and emacs, mail programs
such as elm and pine, and newsreaders such as trn and rn should
remain the info conference.

What is the Internet?  It is  a network which links thousands of
hosts (computers) and millions of users all over the world.  The
modern Internet (with a capital I) evolved from the US Defence
Department's Advance Research Project Agency's network (DARPA's
ARPAnet).  It was created to allow non-classified information to
be shared among people in the government, the military,
commercial defence contractors, and educational institutions
conducting military research.  Now, the Internet has grown to
include ordinary people like Grex members.

What does all this have to do with Grex?  Grex has been linked to
the Internet indirectly for mail and Usenet news for a long time. 
But now there is a more powerful and direct Internet link.

Some of the advantages of this improving link include or may soon
include:

faster and more reliable transport of mail and usenet news
ftp: File Transfer Protocol for exchanging files with remote sites
telnet: permitting interactive connections to remote sites
gopher: menu driven, easy access to public information
irc: Internet Relay Chat - worldwide verson of the party command 
talk and finger: network implementations of existing commands

This is the place to talk about the services available out there
on the Internet and how we can take advantage of those services
from Grex.  In addition to the discussion items, we intend to
create a repository for files that will help Grexers better
utilize the Internet resources.  If you have files such as lists
of ftp or gopher sites, let us know and we'll make them availabe
to all.

147 responses total.

Isn't it pre-emptive to talk about irc when we don't have access to
it yet?

No, IRC is an interesting thing to talk about.  Although coop may be a
better place to decide if we should get access to IRC, internet
is the place to talk about what irc is, why people like it, how
people who've used it have recovered from their addiction to it, 
how it works, and where grexers might go if they want to try it out.

Exactly so, Jeff. I'm listening attentively because I have no
familiarity with IRC.

ok, why don't I link in the irc item from agora?  I've not used irc much
myself, and I don't know more about it than was said there.

Ummm...has anyone heard of Hytelnet... it is an internet navigation Tsr...
i have it but it is not useful since i cannot access the internet. Is there a
way for me to upload it here so someone who nets will be able to utilize it...

btw.. from what i understand it is very good... useful too

Can someone please tell me how to do two things:  1)use internet to chat with
my daughter who logs in through the U of Washington CS dept., and 2)get certain
scientific information through Gohper.  Thanks in advance.

To do the first, you will need to find a machine running IRC (internet relay
chat) a net-wide version of the talk program.  Grex does not currently run
this software.

To use gopher, you need to telnet to a machine that runs a gopher server.
See the item on gopher for more details.
     Chris

Actually, the talk program that's currently on Grex can be used to chat
over the internet, if it's been configured for that.  I'm not sure if
has been.  You'd type "talk your-daughters-login@her-machine-name"
starting the command with a "!" if you do it from the "Ok:" prompt.

About the scientific information, you may want to check the World Wide Web.
If your term is set to emulate a vt100, just log in to the msu-gopher
from the Which Host? prompt.  Login as "gopher" then select 13, 5, 13
and 10 from the following menus.  After telnetting, login as "www" and
you'll be viewing the World Wide Web.  There's a *lot* of stuff in
various scientific fields.

Item 5 is devoted to using Mosaic to suft the World Wide Web.

The command "talk sryan@sils.umich.edu" did not yield any error messages,
though it did not yield a talk connection either, so I don't know what this
means.

What it probably means is that the person you were trying to talk to didn't
talk back (Maybe that person was not logged in anywhere?).

I would like to announce that I read davel's suggestion, took another look
at item 2, concluded that all but two of the responses in item 2 were
useless, reposted those two responses in item 12, and retired item 2. 

Feel free to point out other fw-related things that I've failed to do so far.

You've failed to supply free doughnuts to the participants.

 I prefer warm molasses cookies and blaque tea.
;)
,

what's "TSR" ?

TSR is one of those baffling TLA's  ;-)

TLA = Three-letter-acronym.
TSR = Terminate and Stay Resident, a DOS-ism for a program that
      loads when you boot your computer and wan't go away.

At least that's the only meaning I know for TSR. Perhaps there's another
intended by chavez in #5.

Ah, you seem to be suffering from TOS. (TLA Overload Syndrome)

TDM TLA's

I quote from the Hacker's Jargon Dictionary (available on-line via WWW)
from the entry on TLA:

   The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is often used to
   bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the
   journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think
   will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's
   straight-faced response: "There are only 17,000 three-letter
   acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.)

:-)

Transoft, Ltd. also uses TSR for Transoft Software Report or something like
that (bug reports etc.).  This overloading is not much of a problem ...

Come to think of it, TSR is the trademark of that D&D company, too.

Thanks for the new header!

FTP = File Transfer Protocol   What is FSP??

On Yanoffs ( I think) list there are great many ftp sites listed. How do I
access the[D [D[D[D [D[D[D[D   [D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D  

Sorry about that, not sure what happened. Anyway, how do I access these
FTP sites?

(What appears to have happened is that you hit your cursor-left key
a few times to get to an early point in your line of typing.  You'll
have better luck using your "backspace" key instead.)

gibber you can also abort the response. Then just choose respond again.
typing help will give you instructions for this :)
Can anyone tell me what FSP is ?

I guess nobody's answered gibber's question.  Jamie, you need
to be a member of the Grex cooperative to access ftp from Grex.
"finger danr" for more info.

or !support from any Picospan Ok: or Respond or pass? prompt.

FSP is another file transfer protocol.  It is actually file stealing protocol. 
With it you don't have to log in to a site.  It only actually connets when you
send a command and then it disconnects.  I THINK that is about right.

I think you can use to FSP to connect to other ports as well.
(you're not stuck to the ftp ports)

Is there a client for FSP around somewhere (downloadable)?

#30 makes it sound a lot like gopher protocol.
Connect-request file-blast file down the pipe-disconnect

That's how ftp works - with a client.

Ummm. Actually I didn't think that was true. I think the two programs
continually handshake over the ftp session. I'm no expert on ftp protocol,
though.

I'm even less of an expert! I'm distinguishing ftping from a telnet
session, where you have to start ftp on the server, and from a client,
where they are no line commands (that one sees). Apparently the telnet
session takes more bandwidth than the client. I recall an archie
server telling me that they were planning on locking out archie via
telnet, and to require client use. But this (fsp?) sounds like taking
it a step further, if you know *exactly* where the file is.

Well, I am new to this system and very tired but I would like to explain
a little how I think of "cllient-server" (telnet ftp, fsp and so on)
There is Always a server involved in ftp,telnet and fsp.
Therefore you need a client. The protocols are the same up to a certain
level. They all use IP and TCP.
The higher level protocols differ alot.
Telnet just opens a TCP-connection to port 23 on the servermachine.
the server starts a login to that port and thats it.
Ftp is a lot more complicated. If you want to see just what it's about
then telnet to port 21 and type help.
I havn't experimented with fsp alot since it cant be used for
anything practical. I don't know what the advantage would be.
Anyway it seems to connect to a port and use that for both commands and
data(ftp has separate ports)
I see no point in using fsp however since most of the stuff available
is Illegal!
Hope this inspires you to find out more. (man ftpd, ftp, telnet, telnetd
is a good start)

Thanks, Lars.  Also welcome to Grex.  (And what, if I may ask, is Floorball?
(Just out of curiosity.))

help

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