Freequently Asked Questions

General Questions

How do I find someone's electronic mail address?

There are a number of directories on the Internet; however, all of them are far from complete. Many people can be found, however, via the InterNIC WHOIS services, or KNOWBOT. Generally, it is still necessary to ask the person for his or her email address.

What is USENET? What is Netnews?

USENET is the formal name, and Netnews a common informal name, for a distributed computer information service that some hosts on the Internet use. USENET handles only news and not mail. USENET uses a variety of underlying networks for transport, including parts of the Internet, BITNET, and others. Netnews can be a valuable tool to economically transport traffic that would otherwise be sent via mail. USENET has no central administration.

How do I get a Netnews feed?

To get a Netnews feed, you must acquire the server software, which is available for some computers at no cost from some anonymous FTP sites across the Internet, and you must find an existing USENET site that is willing to support a connection to your computer. In many cases, this "connection" merely represents additional traffic over existing Internet access channels. One well-known anonymous FTP archive site for software and information regarding USENET is ftp.uu.net. There is a "news" directory which contains many software distribution and information sub-directories. It is recommended that new users subscribe to and read news.announce.newusers since it will help to become oriented to USENET and the Internet.

What is a newsgroup?

A newsgroup is a bulletin board which readers interested in that newsgroup's particular topic can read and respond to messages posted by other readers. Generally, there will be a few "threads" of discussion going on at the same time, but they all share some common theme. There are approximately 900 newsgroups, and there are more being added all the time. There are two types of newsgroups: moderated and unmoderated. A moderated newsgroup does not allow individuals to post directly to the newsgroup. Rather, the postings go to the newsgroup's moderator who determines whether or not to pass the posting to the entire group. An unmoderated newsgroup allows a reader to post directly to the other readers.

How do I subscribe to a newsgroup?

You don't subscribe to a newsgroup. Either you get it on your machine or you don't. If there's one you want, all you can do is ask the systems administrator to try to get it for you.

What is anonymous FTP?

Anonymous FTP is a conventional way of allowing you to sign on to a computer on the Internet and copy specified public files from it [3]. Some sites offer anonymous FTP to distribute software and various kinds of information. You use it like any FTP, but the username is "anonymous". Many systems will request that the password you choose is your email address. If this fails, the generic password is usually "guest".

What is "archie"?

The archie system was created to automatically track anonymous FTP archive sites, and this is still its primary function. The system currently makes available the names and locations of some 2,100,000 files at some 1,000 archive sites. Archie's User Access component allows you to search the "files" database for these filenames. When matches are found, you are presented with the appropriate archive site name, IP address, the location within the archive, and other useful information. You can also use archie to "browse" through a site's complete listing in search of information of interest, or obtain a complete list of the archive sites known to that server. The archie server also offers a "package descriptions" (or "whatis") database. This is a collection of names and descriptions gathered from a variety of sources and can be used to identify files located throughout the Internet, as well as other useful information. Files identified in the whatis database can then be found by searching the files database as described above.

How do I connect to archie?

You can connect to archie in a variety of ways. There is a conventional TELNET interface, an electronic mail interface, and a variety of client programs available. The use of a client is strongly encouraged. There are currently 22 archie servers located throughout the world. To try the TELNET interface to archie you can TELNET to one of the 22 archie servers (preferably the one nearest you, and during non-peak hours). Log in as "archie" (no password is required). Type "help" to get you started. Here is a list of archie servers as of the date this was written:

archie.au- 139.130.4.6- Australia
archie.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at- 140.78.3.8 -Austria
archie.univie.ac.at- 131.130.1.23 -Austria
archie.uqam.ca- 132.208.250.10 -Canada
archie.funet.fi- 128.214.6.100 - Finland
archie.th-darmstadt.de- 130.83.22.60 -Germany
archie.ac.il- 132.65.6.15 -Israel
archie.unipi.it- 131.114.21.10 -Italy
archie.wide.ad.jp- 133.4.3.6 - Japan
archie.hana.nm.kr- 128.134.1.1 -Korea
archie.sogang.ac.kr- 163.239.1.11 -Korea
archie.uninett.no- 128.39.2.20 -Norway
archie.rediris.es- 130.206.1.2 -Spain
archie.luth.se- 130.240.18.4 -Sweden
archie.switch.ch- 130.59.1.40 -Switzerland
archie.ncu.edu.tw- 140.115.19.24 -Taiwan
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk- 146.169.11.3 -United Kingdom
archie.unl.edu- 129.93.1.14 -USA (NE)
archie.internic.net- 198.48.45.10 - USA (NJ)
archie.rutgers.edu- 128.6.18.15 -USA (NJ)
archie.ans.net - 147.225.1.10 -USA (NY)
archie.sura.net- 128.167.254.179 -USA (MD)

Note: Sites marked with an asterisk "*" run archie version 3.0. You can obtain details on using the electronic mail interface by sending mail to "archie" at any of the above server hosts. Put the word "help" as the text of your message for directions. Questions, comments, and suggestions can be sent to the archie development group by sending mail to info@bunyip.com.

What is "gopher"?

The Internet Gopher presents an extremely wide variety of diverse types of information in an easy to use menu-driven interface. Gopher servers link information from all around the Internet in a manner that can be transparent to the user. (Users can easily discover the source of any piece of information, however, if they wish.) For example, gopher links databases of every type, applications, white pages directories, sounds, and pictures. Some gophers are available via TELNET. Since most gophers are linked to other gophers, if you can get to one, you can get to many. You can, for example, telnet to naic.nasa.gov and use their public gopher. The best way to use the gopher service, as with all client/server type services, is by running your own gopher client. The Internet Gopher was developed at the University of Minnesota. More information is available for anonymous FTP on the host boombox.micro.umn.edu.

Internet History
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Network Basics
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General Problems
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General Questions
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Glossary
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What is the World Wide Web? What is Mosaic?

The World Wide Web is a distributed, hypermedia-based Internet information browser. It presents users with a friendly point and click interface to a wide variety of types of information (text, graphics, sounds, movies, etc.) and Internet services. It is possible to use the Web to access FTP archives, databases, and even gopher servers. The most familiar implementations of the World Wide Web are the Mosaic clients developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Mosaic software is available online at ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu.

How do I find out about other Internet resource discovery tools?

The field of Internet resource discovery tools is one of the most dynamic on the Internet today. There are several tools in addition to those discussed here that are useful for discovering or searching Internet resources. The EARN (European Academic and Research Network) Association has compiled an excellent document that introduces many of these services and provides information about how to find out more about them. To obtain the document, send a message to listserv@earncc.bitnet or listserve%earncc.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu. As the text of your message, type "GET filename" where the filename is either "nettools ps" or "nettols memo". The former is in PostScript format. This document is also available for anonymous FTP on some hosts, including naic.nasa.gov, where it is available in the files/general_info directory as earn-resource-tool-guide.ps and earn-resource-tool-guide.txt.

What is "TELNET"?

The term "TELNET" refers to the remote login that's possible on the Internet because of the TELNET Protocol [9]. The use of this term as a verb, as in "telnet to a host" means to establish a connection across the Internet from one host to another. Usually, you must have an account on the remote host to be able to login to it once you've made a connection. However, some hosts, such as those offering white pages directories, provide public services that do not require a personal account. If your host supports TELNET, your command to connect to a remote host would probably be "telnet " or "telnet ". For example, "telnet rs.internic.net" or "telnet 198.41.0.5".

What is a mailing list?

A mailing list is an email address that stands for a group of people rather than for an individual. Mailing lists are usually created to discuss specific topics. Anybody interested in that topic, may (usually) join that list. Some mailing lists have membership restrictions, others have message content restrictions, and still others are moderated. Most "public" mailing lists have a second email address to handle administrative matters, such as requests to be added to or deleted from the list. All subscription requests should be sent to the administrative address rather than to the list itself!

How do I contact the administrator of a mailing list rather than posting to the entire list?

Today there are two main methods used by mailing list adminstrators to handle requests to subscribe or unsubscribe from their lists. The administrative address for many lists has the same name as the list itself, but with "-request" appended to the list name. So, to join the ietf-announce@cnri.reston.va.us list, you would send a message to ietf-announce- request@cnri.reston.va.us. Most often, requests to a "-request" mailbox are handled by a human and you can phrase your request as a normal message. More often today, especially for lists with many readers, administrators prefer to have a program handle routine list administration. Many lists are accessible via LISTSERVE programs or other mailing list manager programs. If this is the case, the administrative address will usually be something like "listserv@host.domain", where the address for the mailing list itself will be "list@host.domain". The same listserve address can handle requests for all mailing lists at that host. When talking with a program, your subscription request will often be in the form, "subscribe ListName YourFirstName YourLastName" where you substitute the name of the list for ListName and add your real name at the end. The important thing to remember is that all administrative messages regarding using, joining, or quitting a list should be sent to the administrative mailbox instead of to the whole list so that the readers of the list don't have to read them.

How do I send mail to other networks?

Mail to the Internet is addressed in the form user@host.domain. Remember that a domain name can have several components and the name of each host is a node on the domain tree. So, an example of an Internet mail address is june@nisc.sri.com. There are several networks accessible via email from the Internet, but many of these networks do not use the same addressing conventions the Internet does. Often you must route mail to these networks through specific gateways as well, thus further complicating the address. Here are a few conventions you can use for sending mail from the Internet to three networks with which Internet users often correspond. Internet user to Internet user: username@hostname.subdomain.toplevel domain e.g. gsmith@nisc.sri.COM Internet user to BITNET user: user%site. BITNET@BITNET-GATEWAY e.g. gsmith%emoryu1.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu. gsmith%emoryu1@CORNELLC.CIT.CORNELL.EDU Internet user to UUCP user: user%host. UUCP@uunet.uu.net user%domain@uunet.uu.net Internet user to SprintMail user: /G=Mary/S=Anderson/O=co.abc/ADMD= SprintMail/C= US/@SPRINT.COM -or- /PN=Mary.Anderson/O=co.abc/ADMD= SprintMail/C=US/@SPRINT.COM (Case is significant.) Internet user to CompuServe user: Replace the comma in the CompuServe userid (represented here with x's) with a period, and add the compuserve.com domain name. xxxx.xxxx@compuserve.com CompuServe user to Internet user: >Internet:user@host Insert >internet: before an Internet address. Internet user to MCIMail user: accountname@mcimail.com mci_id@mcimail.com full_user_name@mcimail.com.

What does :-) mean?

In many electronic mail messages, it is sometimes useful to indicate that part of a message is meant in jest. It is also sometimes useful to communicate emotion which simple words do not readily convey. To provide these nuances, a collection of "smiley faces" has evolved. If you turn your head sideways to the left, :-) appears as a smiling face. Some of the more common faces are: :-) smile :-( frown :) also a smile ;-) wink :-D laughing 8-) wide-eyed :-} grin :-X close mouthed :-] smirk :-o oh, no!