UIUC Computing Wisdom Workshop

What is this Information Superhighway thing Anyway?

An introductory overview of resources available on the Internet

Table of Contents

1. Getting Connected on Campus
2. Short net.history
3. The Big Picture
4. Electronic Mail
5. NetNews, aka USENET news
6. FTP Transferring Files across the Net
7. gopher, a nice menu interface
8. WorldWideWeb (WWW) and Mosaic
9. Further Reading
10. Conclusion

Getting Connected on Campus

• Direct Connection
  • Usually the fastest kind of connection
  • Offers widest range of Internet options
  • Where to get direct connection access:
    • CCSO Sites
    • Residence Hall Sites
    • Residence Hall Rooms (this year)
    • SLIP and dedicated phone line
• Dial-up connection
  • Speed depends on the modem
  • Requires PH password
  • Where to get dial-up access
    • dial 333-4000 with your modem
    • get handout in 1420 DCL for more numbers
• Common confusion points
  • Running programs remotely
  • Running programs locally

Short net.history

• Physical net.history
  • Internet started out as ARPAnet in mid 1970's
    • U.S. Defense Department Project
    • distributed net, no central control
    • Network of networks
  • Added NSFnet in late 80's
    • 5 Supercomputing centers
    • 1 of them is NCSA@uiuc (home of Mosaic)
  • Relatively recent gateways
    • BITNET, FIDOnet, DECnet
• User net.history
  • 1970's ARPAnet users were mostly Military and Academia involved with the Military
  • 1980's Internet and NSFnet users were more Academia and some industry
  • 1990's Internet users are anyone that wants access. Consumer providers are cashing in on the press coverage of the Information Superhighway.

The Big Picture

Electronic Mail

• Started on ARPAnet because email was easy to add, once the computers were in place. ARPAnet was not started for email, but it turned out to be one of its most widespread uses.
• used to send text asynchronously to one or more Internet connected users.
• several UNIX programs to read mail. Here are a few, in order of increasing ease of use:

  mail

  the plain vanilla UNIX mail reader.

  elm

  a nice menu interface and addressbook feature, as well as support for folders to sort your messages in.

  pine

  a nicer still menu interface, addressbook, and lots of other goodies that elm doesn't have, including support for Multimedia Mail.

• Anatomy of an email address:

  yakko@ux5.cso.uiuc.edu
  This is the email address of Yakko the Warner Brother. We disect the address into its parts.

  yakko

  This is the userid, what Yakko types when he sees the "login:" prompt.

  @

  The @, pronounced "at sign" separates the userid from the domain name.

  ux5.cso.uiuc.edu

  This is the complete description of how to get to Yakko, the fully qualified domain name. This part is further broken down into parts as follows:

  ux5.

  This is the hostname of the machine that Yakko lives on. Note that if Yakko wanted to send email to another user on ux5, all he would have to type is the userid, since they live on the same machine.

  cso.

  This part of the domain name means that ux5 is a machine that is operated by CCSO, formerly CSO.

  uiuc.

  This part means that yakko goes to school here at U of I.

  edu

  The absolute last part of the address, "edu" deserves special attention. It tells what kind of institution the address exists at. There are several possibilities for the last segment of an email address, you may have seen some of them already. Here are some of the more common ones:

  .edu

  The address with this on the end is from a University in the United States.

  .gov

  The address with this on the end is from the United States Government

  .mil

  The address with this on the end is from the United States Military

  org

  The address with this on the end is from some sort of organization, ie acm.org, or ieee.org

  .com

  The address with this on the end is from the private sector. Usually this is a company on the Net, or an access provider such as aol.com, compuserve.com, or digex.com

  .de, .jp, .at etc.

  Any country outside the U.S. that is connected to the Internet has a corresponding two letter ISO country code.

NetNews, aka USENET news

• Started after the ARPAnet email users discovered that large email distribution lists were unmanageable
• Modeled after real world bulletin board. Users can
  • post messages
  • read messages
  • search for messages
• Discussions of related topics are conducted in Newsgroups.
• Newsgroups are broken down in a dotted hierarchy similar to email addresses, ie rec.music.phish. Here are the major top level groupings:

  news

  Newsgroups about newsgroups and netnews. Cool, eh?

  rec

  Groups about hobbies, music, and the arts

  talk

  A forum for debate on hot topics such as abortion, rape, and politics

  alt

  This is where the fringe elements of the netNews community are seen. Anyone can create an alt group, and thus we have such groups as alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die, and alt.sex.bondage. There is lots of fun to be had here, but beware of the lack of enforced censorship (an essential element of the Net is its lack of sensorship, love it or leave it.)

• Rules for posting
  • FAQ (frequently asked question) files
    Most established newsgroups have a FAQ file that was created to reduce redundancy. Basically, if you have a question that you want to post to a newsgroup, check the FAQ file first; it's probably already been asked so don't waste everyone else in the world's time on it.
  • Where to find FAQs
    There is a newsgroup just for FAQs from other newsgroups, news.answers.
• Watch uiuc.org.acm for news about upcoming ACM events.
• The UIUC news server offers about 4000 newsgroups for every topic imaginable. Most news reading programs allow a browsing mechanism to see all the newsgroups available.
• There are several UNIX programs out there for reading and writing netNews. Here are the more popular ones, in order of increasing ease of use:
  • rn
  • nn
  • tin

FTP Transferring Files across the Net

• FTP is used to transfer files between machines on the Internet.
• FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol.
• Two main uses:
  • Transfer files between machines that you have full access to.
    This is useful if you don't want to use disks to save papers:
  • Get files from machines that you do not have full access to.
    This is known as anonymous FTP. The free software that is available on the Internet is accessed via anonymous ftp.
    • The "anonymous" in anonymous ftp comes from how one uses a userid of "anonymous" and a password of their email address.
    • It really dosen't matter what you type for password, but you really should send your email address, since thats what anonymous FTP expects.
    • You have to know two pieces of information in order to do anonymous ftp
      1. the name of the file(s) you want to get
         We assume you know the file you want. For example, latex2html
      2. where the files reside on the net
         In this case, there is a program to help you, archie.
    • Anonymous ftp is most useful if you have your own computer and you want to get software for it.

gopher, a nice menu interface

• Relatively old interface (3 years since it got popular here).
• Very easy to use, just type gopher from a UNIX command prompt and you'll see: Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1 Root gopher server: gopher.uiuc.edu --> 1. Welcome to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Gopher. 2. Campus Announcements (last updated 8/12/94)/ 3. What's New? (last update: 3/15/94)/ 4. Information about Gopher/ 5. Keyword Search of Gopher Menus 6. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Campus Information/ 7. Champaign-Urbana & Regional Information/ 8. Computer Documentation, Software, and Information/ 9. Libraries and Reference Information/ 10. Publications (U of I Press, Newspapers, Newsletters, etc.) & Weath../ 11. Other Gopher and Information Servers/ 12. Phone Books (ph)/ 13. Internet File Server (ftp) Sites/ Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/1
• Just type the number of the choice or use the arrow keys to move the little --> thingie.
• Some things available on gopher:
  • Academic Calendar
  • Upcoming University events
  • Student newsletters and other publications
  • University Information (hours and such).

WorldWideWeb (WWW) and Mosaic

• I could rave for days about the wonders of the Web and its most potent client, Mosaic. Instead, I'll just say that it is the killer app of the Internet.
• Mosaic is a "client" because it is a browser for WorldWideWeb "servers".
• Most Internet machines can become web servers, therefore, the Internet is the data on which Mosaic operates.
• Allows you to do all of the above Internet things: ftp, news, telnet and gopher, with one point and click interface.
• Thus Mosaic is the Ultimate netSurf board.
• The Web supports Hypertext and, with Mosaic, Hypermedia

  Hypertext

  Clicking on one word leads to other places and documents

  Hypermedia

  Hypertext with sound, pictures, and movies

• If gopher is very easy to use, Mosaic is mondo easy to use, if you have access to a machine that has it installed.
• Currently Mosaic exists for the following platforms, in order of increasing coolness:
  • Microsoft Windows
  • Macintosh
  • The X Window System
• Most people have access to the first two in the CCSO and Residence Hall Sites, just double click and you are on your way.
• Gratuitous ACM plug: Next Thursday, at 5pm in this room, David Farley, the man who does Dr. Fun, will be speaking about the life of a comic strip artist in Cyberspace.
• Just for fun, there is another comic strip on the net, but you can get this one in print too. Dilbert, our favorite cyberspace geek, can be seen on line from this campus because our CCSO was cool enough to purchase a site license for it (yes there are lawyers on the Net too.)
• Here are some other fun and useful links:
  • Best of the Web Nominees
  • The Animaniacs homepage
  • CUI W3 Catalog
  • Yahoo - a guide to WWW
  • People at Illinois home pages. This could be you!
• Mosaic is also a great tool for learning how to use the Internet. Here are just a few of the many available resources on line for learning the Net:
  • Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet
  • Discovery System Computer Communications and Resources Tutorial

Further Reading

• Books

  Caveat: once something about the Internet sees print, its probably out of date. Nonetheless there are many good books out there about using the Internet. Here are a few I'd recommend:
  • UIUC's own Ed Krol has written an excellent book for the excellent people at O'Reilly and Associates:
    THE WHOLE INTERNET USERS GUIDE AND CATALOG. 2nd edition.
    By Ed Krol;
    Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates Inc. 1994
    
  • CROSSING THE INTERNET THRESHOLD. 2nd edition.
    By Roy Tennant, John Ober, and Anne G. Lipow;
    foreword by Clofford A. Lynch
    Berkeley, CA: Library Solutions Press, 1994.
    
  • Walk into IUB or TIS and ask for Internet books. With the amount of press coverage the Net has been getting, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. You probably have more than the amount of documentation you need about the net on-line, but its nice to have a book to take with you on the bus or between class or whatever.

• Magazines

  • Wired Magazine. I like to call this mag "the trashy rag of the Internet", but I have to admit it's a good way to stay current if you're not 100% on-line all the time. And the layout is spectacular! Also has an online site.
  • Mondo 2000. This mag seems to be not as credible as wired, but has just as cool layout, but a bit more on the gritty side. Not as 100% Internet as Wired.

Conclusion

In any case, the best way to learn the Net is to use it, and you will probably never again have such good net access as you do while you're here at the University of Illinois. In terms of hardware, network, and most importantly, people, uiuc is one of the best Internet schools in the world. Take take advantage of this!
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