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                        *  H  O  W  *  T  O  .  .  .  *

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                 ...use JANET, INTERNET, and FTP to get files!


... With the help of this great  article  by Robo! Thanks a lot! Myself, Genie,
and other members of Network Trash including  Davros, Magic rat and Banana Hand
have found this article very useful. If  you're just starting out with academic
networks on shitty PCs, then you might  also  be intrested in my article, which
is a complete lamers guide to downloading stuff off HENSA. (Well, I was a lamer
on the PC when I first tried to download stuff off them!) Sorry for making your
text file all nice and justified, (I know  you really don't like it!) but I had
to fit into the "house style"!!!


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       A   G U I D E   T O   J A N E T   A N D   T H E   I N T E R N E T

1.  Introduction

Most UK universities and several  colleges  offer  access to the Joint Academic
Network, or JANET for short, either directly  from terminals or through a local
computer.  Access is  made  via  a  PAD  (Packet  Assembler/Disassembler). Some
institutions may have terminals hooked  up  to  the  PAD, some have PCs running
terminal emulation software  and  some  may  be  connected  to  a PACX (Private
Automated Computer  eXchange).   In  the  latter  case,  try  25  (for  the X25
protocol) when  asked  to  "enter  class".   If  there  are  PCs  (possibly  in
University libraries), look around for instructions!

If you need to go through a local  computer, try commands such as "pad", "cpad"
or "spad".  If you're really lucky, you  can  get direct access to the Internet
with the "telnet" command although I'll  come  back  to  that later. And if you
find a PAD or PACX offering direct Internet access, I wanna know!

A further possibility is that you may have  to go through some kind of terminal
server.  "help" is usually a good place to start.

So you've got a PAD prompt of some description.  What now?

PADs are notoriously unfriendly, so don't expect  too much in the way of online
help, although "help address" will tell you all the hosts you can connect to.

None of the following commands is guaranteed  to work on your PAD, although the
actual commands should not be too different.

"logon foo bar" will try to log you  on  as user "foo" with password "bar". All
this appears to do is stop you being logged off after one call, as the password
is (in my experience) completely ignored.  "logon foo bar" would probably work,
in fact.  "logon p p" was on a list of instructions I once saw.  Note that this
command may not be implemented at all.

"call foobar" will call up the host  named  "foobar".  This will usually be one
of the hosts listed by the "help address" command.

"logoff" will log you off.  This is  the  only way to quit after having entered
the "logon" command.

2.  Hosts

It has to be said that most of the  hosts you can call are dull in the extreme:
other universities' computers (account required) or libraries.  A handful offer
useful facilities, and the purpose of this guide is to list some of them.

If the call clears straight away - you  will get a message of the form "Cleared
- 0000" - either the host is down or there are communications problems.

2.1.  HENSA

HENSA is the Higher Education National  Software  Archive.  This is basically a
PD/shareware archive with a mammoth collection  of  software, which tends to be
mainly "sensible" in nature (ie not many games) but is certainly worth a visit.
The actual name of this service varies  from  PAD to PAD, but it usually called
up with "call lancs.pdsoft".  Give "hensa" as login name and password.

HENSA's command line interface is based  on Unix.  Use "cd micros/atari/tos" to
change to the ST directory, then  "more  index"  to  page through the index, or
"cat index" if you want to capture the index to a file.  (You could transfer it
with Kermit, but I always capture and then clean it up later.) The first couple
of pages in the index tell you just  about  all you need to know to extract the
actual software from  its  archived,  uuencoded  form.  Basically,  if  you are
interested in the  package  with  index  number  "m123",  you  would  enter "cd
m/m123".  "ls -l" lists the files  in  that  directory,  and you can "more" the
documentation file for a fuller description of the package.  I would then start
the text capture and enter "cat *.uue".   To return to the directory containing
the index, enter  "cd  ../.."  (remembering  to  switch  capture  off first, of
course).

A preferable method of grabbing software is to use NIFTP on your local machine.
On Unix machines, the command is possibly  "cpf"  or "hhcp" (try "man -k NIFTP"
to find out for sure).   See  the  appropriate  manual  pages for more details.
Under VMS, the command may be "transfer".

2.2.  NISS

NISS offers several services, the  most  useful  of  which may be the computing
vacancies bulletin board.   It  also  provides  a  restricted  gateway to other
hosts, which may occasionally be useful in the event of communications problems
between your local host and the remote  host.  Enter "call niss" and follow the
on-screen instructions.

2.3.  Guest FTP

Now we're talking.   This  is  a  service  run  by  the  University of London's
Computer Centre.  These lucky folk have a direct connection to the Internet and
very kindly provide a transatlantic  file  transfer service.  However, you need
to have a local host in  order  to  get  your  hands  on anything you manage to
transfer.  And as  more  and  more  institutions  are  being  hooked  up to the
Internet, you may find the next paragraph redundant.

Enter "call nsf.sun".  If this isn't recognised, try "call j.000040010180". (If
this fails too, you may be able to  go through NISS.)  Then login as "guestftp"
with password "guestftp".  Now,  after  specifying  the  name of your temporary
directory for file transfers, you will have FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access
to anywhere in the world.   A  full  explanation  is  beyond  the scope of this
introduction, but you can have instructions  emailed to you with the "getguide"
command.

Enter "ftp" to get the "ftp>" prompt.  Now use "open foo.bar.edu" to connect to
the FTP server at site foo.bar.edu.  If  the  site supports it (the useful ones
do), give "anonymous" as your username and  your email address as the password.
The best site to try is  "atari.archive.umich.edu" (although this is "shadowed"
in the UK - see section  2.4).   Last  time  I  looked, the main site for Amiga
stuff was "ab20.larc.nasa.gov" (yes,  NASA)  which  had  a load of noisetracker
modules.    Other    well-known    sites    are    "wuarchive.wustl.edu"    and
"mars.ee.msstate.edu".

Note that any files you "get"  will  be  transferred to the temporary directory
and should then be transferred to a  local  host with NIFTP.  (And don't forget
to set binary mode  when  transferring.   However,  you  can  uuencode files on
nsf.sun, in case you need to transfer  them  to a VAX.)  The NIFTP transfer can
be invoked from nsf.sun itself,  with  the  command  "push", although it is not
really recommended.

2.4.  The UKUUG Archive

The UK Unix Users' Group archive is based at the Imperial College, London. This
site is along the  same  lines  of  HENSA,  but  has  a  much  wider variety of
material.  As well  as  archives  of  various  Usenet  newsgroups, it maintains
shadow archives of the more popular FTP sites, such as atari.archive.

Enter "call ic.doc.src" or possibly "call  j.00000510200001".  This logs you in
to a machine running Unix (surprise  surprise).   However, it is extremely busy
at most times of the day and may take an age to do anything.

Assorted documentation is in the root directory, and there is a lot to explore.
The directory  "computing/systems/atari/umich/"  contains  a  fairly up-to-date
shadow of atari.archive.umich.edu.  Note that all  the  ST stuff is lharc'ed or
arc'ed (or even zoo'ed), so if you  use NIFTP to transfer anything, remember to
specify a binary transfer (e.g. "cpf -b", I think).

2.5.  Guest Telnet

This site is along the same lines of  the Guest FTP service.  The difference is
that it can  get  you  a  login  prompt  for  practically  any  computer on the
Internet.  However, a site's usefulness is  often inversely proportional to its
Mean Time To Failure and Guest  Telnet  is  no exception!  If your local system
lets you "telnet" to anywhere on the Internet, you can skip the next paragraph.

Enter "call nsfnet-relay.telnet".  If  that  doesn't  work,  try "call nsf.tn".
Last resort is "call j.00004001018057".   Final  last  resort  is to go through
NISS.  If you get a connection, there is no  need to login - you go straight to
the Guest Telnet prompt, at which you are  expected to type the full address of
a host.  The service is restricted  in  at  least two ways: firstly, you cannot
specify a port number to telnet to  -  you  will always be connected to port 23
(login).  So, no  direct  telnet'ing  to  MUDs  or  IRC  (Internet Relay Chat).
Secondly, several more  interesting  sites  are  classified  as BBSes (Bulletin
Board Servers) and are unavailable  before  7pm.   I  am  pretty sure that they
monitor which sites are  being  connected  to  (this  applies  to the Guest FTP
service too) and check out the busier ones to see whether or not they should be
put on the daytime  blacklist.   This  might  seem  cruel  but  an awful lot of
traffic does go through this site.

A fairly recent development  on  the  Internet  has  been  the gopher.  This is
basically an information server.   The  information  held  on  a  gopher can be
anything at all - jokes, recipes, papers  on aspects of computing - but gophers
can also connect to other gophers, sites  on  the Internet or even BBSes.  I am
assured there is even a gopher which  connects  you to a modem, allowing you to
make a local call within Miami, Florida.   (Local  calls are free in most parts
of the USA.)  The client/server nature of  gophers is what makes them extremely
powerful.

Try  connecting  to   "134.84.132.4"   (aka   "hafnhaf.micro.umn.edu",  at  the
University  of  Minnesota),  logging   in   as  "gopher".   Alternatively,  try
"129.16.221.40" (aka "gopher.chalmers.se", in  Sweden).   Chalmers lets you get
to interesting places by connecting to UMN so should normally only be used when
normal connection to UMN is impossible (i.e. transatlantic comms problems).

After entering your terminal  type,  you  will  be  presented  with a series of
menus.  The first option you choose would normally be something along the lines
of "Other Gophers/Information Servers".  Then you will be allowed to narrow the
search down to a particular geographical  region  -  a favourite path is "North
America", then "USA", then a particular state  or  "All"  for a list of all the
possible connections.  There's nothing to stop you  having a good look around -
after all, if these folk  didn't  expect  people  to  call  up their gophers or
information servers, they wouldn't be on another gopher's menu.  And if you get
a connection to a BBS you  want  to  revisit,  take  a note of its address (the
sequence of four numbers or words,  separated  by  dots)  which comes up on the
screen at the start of the session.   You  can  then use this address in future
instead of "134.84.132.4" to connect directly, without having to go through the
gopher.  Assuming, of course, that it isn't on the daytime blacklist.

3.  And Finally

Try not to use this information  to  go  hacking  across JANET or the Internet!
(Anyway, if you were likely  to  do  that  sort  of  thing, you'd probably have
worked all the above out for yourself long  ago.)   Abuse It And Lose It is the
normal scheme of things.  Over the  past  year,  at  least two major BBSes were
closed down or  severely  restricted  by  their  operators  because  some clown
managed to hack the BBS software and get unlimited access.

Questions (try "help" first though!), comments,  or addresses of FTP sites with
large collections of "special interest" GIFs (:  [<- That funny sign is a grin,
by the way, it's used a lot in comms talk! -EGBSS] can be emailed to

    an8016@anon.penet.fi

    or possibly

    an8016%anon.penet.fi@uunet.uu.net

Note that  sending  email  to  this  address  will  automatically  generate  an
anonymous ID for yourself.  The email will also be "anonymised".

robo


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