Using the Network

We are connected to the Internet. The Internet is a world wide network to which most universities, research institutions, and major corporations are connected. The Unix operating system provides a multitude of programs that allow you to access the many "network services" of the Internet. These services include:

Electronic Mail (Email)
Usenet News
FTP - File Transfer
Telnet or Remote Login
WWW (World Wide Web) Access
Gopher Access

Electronic Mail (Email)

Electronic Mail is the standard way to communicate with people over the Internet. On our system we provide several programs for sending and receiving electronic mail. These include:

Mail -- The standard Unix text based mail program. You can get limited help type hitting the ? key once the program has started.
elm -- An improved text based mail program. You can get limited help type hitting the ? key once the program has started.
xmailtool -- An X Window based mail program. You can select xmailtool from the menu displayed by pressing the 3rd mouse button.

Usenet News

Usenet News is the electronic equivalent of the common bulletin board. News is a collection of messages by subject which can be read by subscription. News is used within CCPO to circulate information and make announcements. International newsgroups have information about science or computers among other topics. Note that the first time news is read, the user must make a large number of choices about which groups to read. This process can take several tens of minutes. Our system provides the user with several tools to allow the user to read and post news. These include:

rn -- A text based news reading program. You can get limited help type hitting the ? key once the program has started.
Pnews -- A text based news posting program.
tin -- A text based news reading & postring program. You can get limited help type hitting the h key once the program has started.
xvnews -- An X Window based news reader and news posting program. You can select xvnews from the menu displayed by pressing the 3rd mouse button.

FTP - File Transfer

FTP is program that allows a user to get or put a file from/to a remote site on the Internet. It is possible to transfer files from other computer systems if you have login permission. Note that you may only send and receive files with this connection and you may not issue any other commands to the remote computer. The command is started with:

ftp address

where address is the name or IP address of the computer system from which you wish to get the file. You will be prompted for a login name and password. Many computers have a public account called anonymous which has no password, but you are asked to type your complete mail address as the password. Typing help or ? give short descriptions of the commands. quit discontinues the remote connection.

Related commands are archie (text based) or xarchie (X based) which allow the user to search a bunch of remote sites at one time for a particular program. It is possible to give part of a name and let archie find matches. For common files, there may be many matches so there are ways to limit the search. The man page describes options.

Telnet or Remote Login

One of the most useful features of being connected to the Internet is remote login. Remote login allows a user at one site to connect and login to a machine at other site. You will be prompted for a user name and password. Once the connection is established, you may issue commands as normal. Our system supports three programs for remote logins.

telnet -- A text based program for remote login. A connection is made by typing:
```
telnet address
```
where address is the name or IP Address of the remote computerTo break the connection to get back to your own machine, you may logout of the remote computer or press esc followed by ] and you will have access to the telnet program. Typing help or ? will give a sort list of commands. quit discontinues the telnet session.
rlogin -- An improved text based program for remote login. rlogin supports better terminal emulation and control.A connection is made by typing:
```
rlogin address 
```
where address is the name of the machine. To close the connection just logout of the remote machine.
x3270 -- An X Window based program for connecting to IBM Mainframes. IT emulates an IBM 3270 terminal.

WWW - World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (WWW) is becoming one of Internet's fastest growing methods of information distribution. The WWW system works by using a series of Hypertext links to link sites all over the Internet. To get more information on a subject, you simply click on the link, and your WWW browser will go fetch the information for you. The Center's WWW Uniform Resource Locator (URL) record is http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/. A URL is essentially an address for a document. Our system supports the following WWW browsers:

lynx - A text based WWW broswer.
Mosaic - An X Window based WWW browser. You can select Mosaic from the menu displayed by pressing the 3rd mouse button.
netscape - An X Window based WWW browser. You can select netscape from the menu displayed by pressing the 3rd mouse button.

Gopher

Gopher is system of information distribution similar to the World Wide Web. All though still in use, it is currently being phased out in favor of WWW. Our system support the following gopher browsers:

gopher - A text based gopher browser.
xgopher - An X Window based gopher browser.
Mosaic - An X Window based WWW/gopher browser. In order to access a gopher server using Mosaic you need to replace the http in the URL with gopher.You can select Mosaic from the menu displayed by pressing the 3rd mouse button.
netscape - An X Window based WWW/gopher browser. In order to access a gopher server using netscape you need to replace the http in the URL with gopher.You can select netscape from the menu displayed by pressing the 3rd mouse button.

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