Internet Manual

This manual was developed by Pat Caldon and Ian Johnson (Sydeny University Archaeological Computing Laboratory). Last substantial update 1996.

Contents

The Internet is the world's largest computer network connecting millions of computers and tens of millions of people together. The Internet is a rich source of resources and information, but there is an awful lot of trash accompanying the treasure.

The Internet has two major functions:

1. Worldwide electronic mail

Electronic mail ("E-mail") takes whatever message you type on your computer and automatically sends it to the person (or persons) you specify, be they in the next room or across the world. You can also attach wordprocessed files, data files, pictures or programs (even sound and video) to your E-mail messages.

E-mail opens up the possibility of daily interaction and exchange of work in progress with colleagues (or friends) across the world. Related functions (mailing lists and news groups) allow the broadcasting of messages to target audiences to ask questions, raise issues or publicise jobs, field schools, books, journals and services (although purely commercial advertising is discouraged in most of these).

E-mail is sent a received using mail programs such as Pine, Eudora, QuickMail or Lotus Mail. Many people consider E-mail to be the most useful function of the Intenet.

2. Information

The Internet is a veritable candy store of resources and information. Anything that the ?? million users of the Internet can think of will be there, literally from the sublime (there being a great deal of religous reference material available) to the utterly ridiculous. Some examples of the sorts of information (both archaeological and non-archaeological) available over the Internet include:

What should I look at first?

One of the easiest services to understand is the World Wide Web, accessible via the Netscape or Mosaic program, outlined below. If you already have the software set up try double clicking on the Netscape icon. Click on underlined pieces of text to move around. Click on the "Back" icon to move back to a previous page.

Internet Adresses

Every computer connected to the Internet and every person with E-mail access, has an address on the Internet. These addresses are just like postal addresses; they tell the system where to find you and/or a particular computer. In many ways the Internet works like a giant electronic postal system, posting fragments of mail and messages Armed with an Internet address and the appropriate software you can access whatever that computer has to offer.

A computer's Internet address looks like: staff.cs.su.oz.au

A person's E-mail address looks like: patc@staff.cs.su.oz.au

As you might guess, the part of a person's E-mail address following the @ sign tells you which computer or subnet (being a sub-network, a subsiduary network which makes up the Internet) at which the person's E-mail account is located. Addresses consist of a hierarchy of sometimes meaningful abbreviations leading from the specific (the person or the particular computer, as in patc or staff above), to the general (often the country, as in au = Australia above). In general, names are not case-sensitive.

Some common abbreviations include: edu (educational), ac (academic), com (commercial), Bitnet (the Bitnet network), gov (Government). Common country abbreviations include au (Australia), ca (Canada), nz (New Zealand) and uk (United Kingdom) - US addresses generally end with a non-country abbrevaiation such as edu or com. The same abbreviation may be used at different levels in the hierarchy - whereas US addresses may end with edu, this abbreviation indicates a sub-level of the au address which has nothing whatsoever to do with edu in the USA.

Every computer connected to the network has a unique address. [another example here ?]The addresses all look like a series of words surrounded by dots for instance: saturn.antiquity.arts.usyd.edu.au. Most of the addresses consist of (supposedly) meaningful acronyms to do with where the host is in the real world, arranged in a hierarchy indicating where the computers are on the network. The words towards the end of the address are more general, those at the beginning are most specific. For instance in the above address "au" refers to Australia, "edu" refers to an educational institution, "su" to the University of Sydney, "arts" the Faculty of Arts, "antiquity" SACAH, and "Saturn" is the name of the computer itself.

Services and other Jargon

A service is a method for accessing information or communicating via Internet. Various computers on the network (often dubbed hosts or sites) set themselves up in such a way that they are willing to receive requests from others on the network, and since they perform a service for other computers they are also given the name servers. What the computers actually provide is dependent on the method of asking, for instance when you use a mail program you are effectively asking for another computer to forward your mail onto its destination. When you use a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program you ask a host to deliver or receive files.

The program at your end is often given the name client or browser. A browser is so named because it is used to browse throughout things like the World Wide Web, a client receives its name because it is receiving a service from the server. The two words are interchangeable. The program at the other end is called a server itself, and sometimes a daemon.

Costs and Pricing

Essentially the Internet is free to users once they have paid their ISP (Internet Service Provider) or University computing service charges, if applicable. In practice the net is supported by governments, ISPs, universities etc. through subscriptions and/or traffic-based charges. Some services may charge you, but to do that they must ask for a credit card number or similar - there is at present no way it can cost you if you are simply accessing a service and have not given them a means of charging you.

Getting Help

The Internet is a vastly confusing place, and you will find yourself often requiring help. The cheapest and easiet way to find help is the most obvious; ask someone near you. Most university departments and computer labs will have a resident Internet junkie who knows everything that there is to know. However if possible read the manual before quizzing this person, and best of all be able to make the statement "I read the manual on page 78 which seemed to be the relevant section but did not understand a word". It will win sympathy, convince this person that you are serious in your intent, (i.e. prepared to put in a little work) and you may just find some useful information in the manual (gasp!). Also note that if you are on a UNIX style system the "man" command will give you access to the system on-line manuals, and the "apropos" command will look for a relevant command for you. However almost invariably UNIX style manuals are unreadable, and any system administrator worth their salt will realise this and proffer help.

The second place to go is on the Internet itself. This is the one place where Newsgroups (see below) will come into their own. If you have worked this much out, start up a newsreader (as outlined below) and access the group "news.announce.newusers". This group is full of advice for new users, with topics ranging from "What is Anonymous FTP" to "Emily Postnews, a guide to USENET Ettiquite". One thing you should not do is post "I'm new to Internet and can't get anything to work!" style postings, unless you are sure that it is an appropriate place to do so. The World Wide Web also has a few similar guides, if you can get such a program going. Try "The Global Network Navigator", which gives you an easy introduction to the concepts.

If there is no-one around to help you, and you can't get anything to work, try getting a book. The one book which I would recommend above all others, which critics across the world have praised unfailingly (or at least a bit), which is both readable and comprehensive is the one currently in your hands. See the bibliography for others - "The Whole Internet" by Ed Krol is excellent, and seems to be continbually being rebublished and updated. It suffers from being overly technical in a few places [i.e. ln(this)]

Your final option, born in desperation, is to pay someone to help you. Be aware that many of the commercial companies setting up are recent, an so do not have staff with long experience in this field.

The World Wide Web

WWW stands for World-Wide-Web. It was developed initially at CERN in Switzerland, but is now being worked on throughout the Internet. It is the easiest way of accessing Internet services

How it Works

The Web is composed of pages of text and graphics, with links connecting various pages together. A link is a reference to another page; by accessing that link you transfer yourself from one page to another. Accessing links is as simple as clicking on words or pictures in a piece of text. Have a look at this section of a page (taken from the Netscape "What's Cool" page) [replace with something Arch for gods sake]:

Click on the underlined pieces of text and you will find that the page you are looking at disappears, to be replaced with the new page. For instance, clicking on would cause another page to appear on the screen, concerned with the topic of "Cybernetics and Systems Theory".

Pages can also include boxes for entering text, buttons and pull down menus, features which are described as "Forms". Not all browsers support these, but Mosaic and Netscape do. An example of this is shown in the WWW page below, from the Lycos search engine.

The page above allows one to type in and edit the text in the "Query" box, click on the "Terse Output" box, and alter the number of replies to be sent. By doing this, and then clicking on the "Start Search" button, the program (in this case Netscape) will send off commands to the server in the U.S. with the specific request which you are asking for (in this case a search) and then return the results of your query.

There is little order to the WWW - anyone who wants to make up their own page and has access to network services can. This means that the anarchy can sometimes be a little difficult to navigate through, and so to use the net efficiently you will often find yourself employing search engines to search for pieces of data for you.

Your Home Page

A home page is a starting point in WWW exploration, it is the first page which is fetched when you access the program. Most WWW browsers have a button which enables you to return immediately to your home page should you want to. Most home pages have many links enabling you to quickly move to an area of interest.

World Wide Web Browsers

In order to access the world wide web you will need a WWW browser. These include the programs:

Netscape: This is an excellent browser, and freely available for educational purposes. See the section on Netscape below for more information on this program. It is available in Macintosh, MS-Windows and UNIX versions.

Cello: This is a WWW browser written by Carnegie Mellon University. It is competent, but excellent.

Mosaic: This was the most popular of the WWW browsers, although now superseded by Netscape. Later Windows versions require additional drivers in Windows (called Win32s) which is difficult to set up. It is available for Windows, Macintosh, and for some UNIX platforms.

Viola: The original WWW browser, now outdated.

Search Engines

The WWW is growing as of early 1995 at a rate of about 1% per day, with over a million pages. This massive growth makes it difficult to find what you are looking for without employing something to search for pages for you. For this reason search engines are used.

To use most search engines, such as the Lycos Search engine available at http://www.lycos.cmu.edu

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators)

The underlying technology in the WWW are URLs, or Uniform Resource Locators - these are combinations of the type of the service which you are going to (such as gopher, FTP or http) the address of the host on which the service is, and the directory of the service on the host itself (this is the place on the host where the service resides - it allows a host to have more than one service). The format of these is:

<service type>://<hostname>/<directory>

for example

ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/cdrom-faq [this is a FAQ about CD-ROM drives]

http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/archives/, [this is Sydney University Archives]

www.usyd.edu.au is the address of the server, and /su/archives/ is the directory where the service is located.

Services

Netscape and Mosaic

Introduction

Netscape is a program for browsing the Internet via the WWW, similar in style to its predecessor Mosaic. These programs displays a page of the WWW, and allows you to move about the WWW by mouse-clicking on pieces of text and pictures which are underlined. This causes the program to move you about the Internet. You can save the document you are looking at and download others off the Internet using the toolbar - if you want to look at a place on Internet (a specific URL) you can move directly to that point.

Use

Basic use of Netscape is easy - start up Netscape (in Macintosh a MS-Windows by double-clicking the Netscape icon) and wait a moment. Netscape will load and place you immediately on the Home Page, the home page being your WWW starting point. To move through the WWW, click on the pieces of underlined text. The text which you are clicking on, as well as the surrounding text, will (in theory) tell you what you will get when you click on that bit of text. Pictures can also be similarly highlighted; click inside the picture to move to a new page.

To find out where you are, look in the "Location:" line; this will give the location (i.e the URL) at which you are currently looking:

Toolbar

Clicking on the "Home" option in the toolbar allows you to get back to your home page at any stage.

To move through the Internet click on the underlined areas of text; supposing you want to go back to a page you have just seen click the "Back" icon in the toolbar, and you will move back through a sequence of pages. To move froward through the sequence again, click on the "Forward" icon. The icons will appear ghosted when you are at either end of the sequence, for instance at the first thing you opened, the buttons would look like this:

"Reload" allows you to reload the page which you are on. This is useful when the connection has become jammed, or when the page itself changes with time, such as a page giving you by-the-minute statistics on something.

This allows you to open (i.e. move straight to) a specific page. When you click on this box, a requester pops up into which you type the URL which you want to move to. Netscape will then load the page which you are after.

This opens the Netscape find dialog box.

You enter the text you are looking for in the box, and click on the button to make the program search for the specific string of text. For instance, as above find will search for "Hello" in the text.

This stops the current transfer. This is useful when the network is getting slow, or when you realise that you have hit the wrong text link. It is shaded out when no transfer is taking place.

If you have Netscape set up not to receive pictures with the text (which speeds up the program considerably), by clicking on this icon you can cause all the images to be shown on your computer. See the "Menus" section for information on how to turn off the importation of such images.

Mosaic: Mosaic does not have these buttons, but there are equivalents to each of these options in the menu bar.

Buttons

The buttons along the top of the screen move directly to pages. The most useful one there is the "Net Search" page, which will put you onto a series of Internet search engines. With these it is possible to enter a subject or series of keywords about which you are interested, and have the engine report back to you with a series of URLs leading to pages which you are interested in. [See the section on search engines above.]

Mosaic: This is not available in Mosaic.

Bookmarks

These are a very useful way of saving a reference to a current page on the WWW which you are on. If you have found something which interests you, and which you intend to come back to, you can use a bookmark as a placeholder to that spot. Using the "Bookmarks" menu you can either add a bookmark, or retrieve a bookmark, which takes you back to the page which you were on previously.

To Add a bookmark, select the Bookmarks > Add Bookmark option, and a bookmark will automatically be added for the page you are on.

To return to a bookmarked page, select the option in the menu corresponding to that page - for instance selecting Bookmarks > Mapinfo WWW Site in the pictured menu will take you directly to the Mapinfo WWW site. (Note that your own menu may be different to the one shown on account of your having different bitmaps there.)

To delete a bookmark go to the Bookmarks > View Bookmarks menu, and click on the box, which will cause the window to double in size and display the button. With the relevant option highlighted in the box on the left, click the button to get rid of it.

It is also possible to create multiple level menus in the bookmarks menu see the Netscape documentation for how to do this. [This is really beyond the scope of this little effort]

Mosaic: The operation of bookmarks in Mosaic is different.

A "Worked Example"

Here we access [something or other]

1) Start up Netscape. You will find a screen like [picture] appearing. Wait for the loading of your home page to finish, which you can tell in three ways:

A "Done" message appears in the lower left hand corner of the screen;

The scroll bar indicating the progress of the transaction in the lower right hand corner [picture] reaches its full extent.

The [stop] icon in the toolbar which stops a transfer in progress becomes greyed, [thus].

2) Click on the [Open] button in the toolbar. In the dialog box which pops up, type "[URL]" without the surrounding inverted commas. Type <return>, and wait as Netscape tries to contact this new address.

3) [ move about wherever]

Using Netscape to access Gophers

Using Netscape for a Gopheris similar to using Netscape normally. First you have to find the address - if someone has already given you a URL (which will look like "gopher://gopher.usyd.edu.au:80") then all you have to do is select File > Open, type the URL into the box and then hit return, and wait a little while. Before long you will find a screen similar to this one before you:

[...]

If you haven't been given a URL, tbut just a stndard address (see the section on addresses above)

For more information

Try the on-line documentation. Click on the "Open" box, and in it type:

http://mosaic.mcom.com/home/online-manual.html

which is the address of the online manual.

Saving what you are looking at

To save the piece of text which you are looking at, go to the File > Save As .. menu, as shown to the right. On selecting this a dialog box will open up, in which you will be able to type the name of the file which you want to save.

NOTE: when you save pages with links and graphics embedded in them you will not be saving the page with its graphics but instead the underlying HTML page.this will cause a page which looks like this:

to be saved as a piece of text which looks like this, which is the underlying format (the source) of the above page.

<TITLE>Welcome to Netscape!</TITLE>

<IMG SRC="images/mozwelcome.gif" WIDTH=472 HEIGHT=137 ALT=""><P>

<H1>

<FONT SIZE="+3">W</FONT><FONT SIZE="+2">elcome to </FONT> <FONT SIZE="+3">N</FONT><FONT SIZE="+2">etscape</FONT>

</H1>

You have just embarked on a journey across the Internet, and Netscape is your vehicle. This welcome page will help you get started on your use of Netscape and your exploration of the Internet. <p>

<FONT SIZE="+3">G</FONT><FONT SIZE="+1">etting </FONT>

<FONT SIZE="+3">S</FONT><FONT SIZE="+1">tarted...</FONT><P>

To get around, just single-click on any blue or purple word or phrase (<a href="welcome_docs/example-link.html">here's an example</a>). You can take a quick peek at Netscape Navigator's <A HREF="manual_docs/graphics.html#RTFToC3">basic features</A> or, for a more comprehensive view, start <A HREF="online-manual.html">Netscape Handbook</A> from the beginning.

If you are using the Netscape Navigator for the first time, please fill out the

<A HREF="registration_docs/index.html">Registration Card</A>.

<p>

<A NAME="download"></A>

<HR ALIGN="right" WIDTH="85%"> <FONT SIZE="+3">V</FONT><FONT SIZE="+1">ersion </FONT>

<FONT SIZE="+3">1.0 </FONT> <FONT SIZE="+3">P</FONT><FONT SIZE="+1">roducts </FONT>

<FONT SIZE="+3">N</FONT><FONT SIZE="+1">ow </FONT>

<FONT SIZE="+3">A</FONT><FONT SIZE="+1">vailable!!!</FONT>

If you want the text of a particular page only, highlight the text by clicking and dragging the mouse pointer accross it, copy it to the clipboard by pressing <Ctrl-C> and paste it into your word processor. See "Essential Windows" in Module 1 for more information on how to do this. [perhaps a better/more accurate/page number reference than this?]

If you only have an image on the screen, you can save the picture directly. For the most part, the gif and jpeg/jpg graphics file formats are used, and so you will need a viewer capable of viewing either of these file formats.

[Another approach is to use an HMTL page editing program, and save the thing in RTF I think. Check this. ]

[ Also an approach for saving graphic images from files directly.]

Gopher

Introduction

Gopher is most easily described as a more primitive version of the World Wide Web. It is based on directories, similar in style to MS-DOS directories, where one can move into subdirectories which might contain files or other directories. What makes Gopher useful is that directories can form links to other computers, so you can easily move from one computer's gopher server to another. This chapter introduces a text based gopher as is found on many systems. Note however that anything accessible by a text based gopher is also accessible through tools like Netscape and Mosaic; if you have these browsers, you will probably find it easier to use them instead.

Many services are available on gopher which are not available elsewhere (such as on the WWW). For instance most library services are accessed through gopher.

Gopher is based on the idea of a directory, which is a container for other objects. By placing directories within other directories a hierarchy is formed.. When you start up a gopher client, you will see a screen like:

[text gopher screen]

The line across the top of the screen is the title for where you are now. The list down the screen shows what is available from this point. Some of the things there are text files (like [...]) others are sub-directories of this directory (like [...]), others directories on other hosts ([...]), which will transport you into a different hierarchy, and some allow you to access telnet and ftp services (like [...]). One accesses these further servies by highlighting the lines on the screen (in some systems) or by typing the numbers.

You can also move directly to a gopher host. How this is done will depend on your gopher client.

Accessing Libraries via Gopher

Veronica and Jughead

E-Mail,and X.500

E-Mail is what you use to send a message directly from yourself to another person. You will have an "electronic mailbox" on a computer system. You type messages into the computer and, having adressed them, send them to the intended recipient. The Internet will work as an eletronic postal service for you, and failing calamity your mail should end up in the intended recipients mailbox. Other people can send mail to your mailbox in a similar fashion. No-one else will be able to read your message (but see the caveat concerning security below).

Addresses

Almost everyone on the Internet has an E-Mail address of some kind. Most look something like: patc@cs.su.oz.au, where the first word (in this case "patc") is the login-name [Better term here] which identifies the person to whom the message is being addressed, and the second part (in this case "cs.usyd.edu.au") is the mailing centre to which the mail is to be forwarded. Often the login name will be supplemented with the persons real name, and occasonally prsonal details, so you may see a message coming from:

patc@cs.su.os.au <Patrick Caldon, MadsenG7, +61-2-351-4802>

Only the first part of the address (here "patc@cs.su.oz.au") is relevant to the computer. The rest is ignored, as it exists only to make life easier for humans.

Using a Mailer

Exercise

Try sending a message to yourself. (This is not as ridiculous as it may sound. If you are in the habit of reading your e-mail, it is a fairly good way of sending yourelf reminder notices.) This will require you to:

Find out what your own e-mail address is.

Sending Programs, Pictures and Other Files Through E-Mail

Occasionally you will want to send binary data, such as programs, graphic images, and database files through e-mail (see Binary vs ASCII transfers in FTP above). Unfortunately mail systems are not set up for the sending of binary data, and so you need to encode your binary data into a non-binary format, send it, and then have the recipient convert it back from the encoded format.

The most common program for this purpose is uuencode, short for Unix to Unix encode (this was first used on UNIX systems, but can be used on almost any). On Apple Macintoshes a program called "BinHex" is used, which takes care of some features peculiar to Macintosh files. An emerging but as yet uncommon standard is MIME.

Uuencoded text looks like:

[]

X.500 - finding someone's E-Mail address

The easiest way to find someone's e-mail address is to ask them for it on the telephone, or failing that writing a letter with a similar request. There is however a developing service called "X.500", which should (if it ever becomes comprehensive) allow you to find e-mail addresses easily.

To X.500, find a X.500 server. [give an example of one here] On selecting the server a prompt will appear asking you to enter information concerning the person you are looking for. Enter first general information, such as the country or organization of the person whom you are looking for, and then move on to more specific things such as their name or building. X.500 is a service (as of 1995) in the early stages of adoption, and so currently the databases are incomplete.

To access X.500 services, use Netscape and access a nearby server, an inclusive list would be:

[1 in USA, 1 in UK, 1 in germany/finland, 1 in Aust]

See the section in "Netscape" above for how to use Netscape to access X.500.

Security

The mail is technically private, however, you are wise not to send anything very personal through E-Mail since it is fairly easy for someone with the knowledge to snoop at other peoples mail. It is similarly easy to forge mail. In short don't send things like credit card numbers, passwords and such over Intenet These warnings aside, given the vast volume of mail which passes over the Internet, the chances that a malevolent spy will single out your messages are very small.

If you want to to send messages and be confident of their safe arrival, you can use an encryption program. To find out more about these, look at:

[PGP reference]

PGP stand for Pretty Good Privacy. It is for all all resonable purposes secure.

Mailing Lists

An electronic mailing list is similar in concept to a conventional mailing list. One central place sends out messages to all the people on the mailing list, who can then read them. Most mailing lists also allow people to post to them. In this case, when the listserver receives your message it sends the message back out to all the recipients of the mailing list. Similarly when someone else sends a message to the listserver it will bounce back to you. The listserver becomes a conduit through which messages pass. In this sense the mailing list functions similarly to a USENET Newsgroup, although generally on a much smaller scale.

There are generally two E-Mail addresses associated with a mailing list: one of these is used to subscribe to the list (that is become a member of the list so messages will be sent to you), the other is used as the conduit of messages as described above. If you want to join or leave the Mailing list, send messages to the first, if you want to post messages to the list at large (so everyone on the list can read it) send messages to the second. It is considered by many to be a aux-pas to confuse the two.

To give an example, suppose you wanted to connect to the mailing list "ARCH-L", a general archaeological discussion list. You would first send a message to [listserver address] which is the address of the listserver itself. Leave the subject of the list blank; make the body of the list the following:

SUBSCRIBE ARCH-L

This has the effect of instructing the mailing list controller that you want to be a part of the list. No-one besides yourself and the list controller will see this message; it will not be seen by everyone else on the mailing list. The listserver will send you back a message explaining that you are now attached to the list, and soon messages from other people on the list will reach your mailbox, having first passed through the mailserver.

Now suppose you want to write a message to the list. Write to the address [ ... ] and use the Subject and body of the message as you would in a normal message. Your message will soon appear on the list.

Types of Mailing List Server

Many of the mailing list servers are automatic, so that a computer (rather than a human reads your message to subscribe or unsubscribe to a list and acts upon it itself. There are three common varieties of mailing list servers:

listservs:

requests:

majordomos:

FTP

Introduction

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is one of the oldest services on the Internet, used for transferring files from one place to another. If there is a file or a program somewhere which you have heard about perhaps through E-Mail, and you want to get this file, FTP is what you use to get it. If you want to find where a specific file is, Archie is the program which you should look at.

FTP will be useful for transferring files There are a few programs available on the network of use in archaeology, but many more for general GIS work.

It is possible to use ftp through a WWW browser, such as Netscape. This involves creating a URL to jump to that place and then accessing that file. It is perhaps easier to use a dedicated FTP client, such as WS_FTP FTP client for Windows.

[Perhaps explain about directory hierarchies ?]

Anonymous FTP

[some notes on anon ftp vs login name ftp ]

Use

First start the FTP client by clicking on its icon. You will find a window like this appearing

To make a connection to somewhere you have not been to before, click on the button to set up a new entry in the FTP client's internal database. Enter the site which you want to go to in the "Host Name:" box and for anonymous ftp (which is what you will probably want) click on the "Anonymous Login" checkbox. To start the FTP session click on . The window will disappear and in the small scroll bar at the bottom of the screen you will see the signs of the connection being made flash by. Within a few seconds a connection should have been formed.

The top half of the screen represents what is on your own computer, the "Local System". On the left there is a are shown directories, and on the right the files in the current directory your own computer. In the middle of the screen is a set of buttons allowing operations on your own files.

The lower half of the screen is devoted to the computer with which you have connected, the "Remote System", and is similar to the top half.

Moving around

To move aroud the remote system, just double-click on the directories on the lower left hand side of the screen. For instance if in the following situation

I wanted to move from the /micros/pc/oak directory (which I was currently in) to the /micros/pc/oak/archiver directory I would double click on the "archiver" line on the right hand side. To move back up the directory hierarchy double click on the ".." line.

Fetching Files

In order to fetch (or download) a file from a remote system double click on the filename on the right hand side; for instance to fetch the "UNZIP.EXE" file double click on the line which it is on. A box like this will appear to report on the progress of the downloading:

The scroll bar indicates the progress of the fetching.

Binary vs ASCII Transfers

You will often be confronted with the two words "Binary" and "ASCII". What do they mean? When data are stored in computers they are encoded into code words. For most systems each letter and punctuation symbol has an associated code. "ASCII" is the name of the most common coding scheme, it stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Almost all computers use ASCII for representing text. In ASCII, the letter "a" is represented by the number ??, and the symbol "{" by the number ??. There are a few special codes (called control codes) for ringing bells and controlling Teletype machines (since the code dates from a time when these were common), as well as some still in use to represent a carriage return or a line feed. Altogether there are 128 of these codes.

For historical reasons for other things (such as graphics files) modern computers use a 256 codeword encoding scheme.

Archie

Archie is a tool for finding files. When you click on Archie, it establishes a connection with a large database of worldwide file locations, called (surprisingly) Archie. You can use the program to query this database, and find a location of the file for you. In general files in Australia will come to you the quickest, and you can identify Australian places as they end with a ".au". The Archie program will also FTP the file for you, just select the "FTP file...".

USENET News

Introduction

USENET news is a system of news groups into which people post news articles which can be read by everybody else subscribing to the news group. The nature of it is similar to Mailing Lists. You can access USENET from the WWW, or you can use a dedicated newsreader.

The quality of USENET News is often poor. Some of the newsgroups are of value, however there seems to be very little archaeogical discussion of any value occuring in USENET. USENET is perhaps better viewed as a source of fun than a source of knowledge.

Using a Newsreader

Telnet

[ Another Telnet Client other than QNT??]

Telnet is the command to allow a remote login over the network. Your computer becomes a text terminal to another computer, so what you type in on a text screen is read by the host to whih you are attached, and information is echoed back to you.

The main use you will find for telnet is accessing library catalogues and on-line databases.

Use

Click on the Terminal icon to start up a Telnet client. (You can also use the FTP and News clients, although News is a little slow at present.). Another window will pop up, with a section into which you can type the host which you wish to connect to.:

Type the name of the host, for example, info.anu.edu.au, and press the return key. After a few seconds, a screen much like the following will appear:

At this point type in your name on the system you are trying to access, or the login you are asked for on the screen, in this case "eliza". You may be prompted again for a password, and, as usual the password should not appear on the screen.

Now you should be accessing the account on the remote host, and when you log out of the remote host, telnet will automatically close.

Questions

A set of questions requiring use of Internet resources to discover the answers. Note: this exercise is designed such that you find the answers to these questions on the Internet so as to help you learn and practise skills in using these tools. Do not just look these up!

[ should these be moved so that there are a few questions after every chapter - probably not.]

The questions assume that:

· You are using Microsoft Windows, and know how to use "Copy" and "Paste". A reminder - to cut, highlight the text you want to copy by holding down the mouse and dragging (say in Netscape), and then type Control-C (i.e. press the control key, and holding it down press the "c" key). To paste, move the cursor to the place you are pasting to (remember you can use Alt-Tab to change screens) and type Control-V.

· You have the Netscape program availiable

· You have and can use a word processor such as Microsoft Word. The "Notepad" program is adequate but not great for this purpose, since it has no "Insert File". Write will also work, but the "Insert Object" can work strangely at times.

NOTE WELL: As this progresses, you will probably find yourself having a few "Network errors", "DNS Lookup Failures", and such forth. If you do, remember the following:

· It is probably not your fault. The Internet was designed to work well with 70,000 computers attached to it. It is a testament to the skill of the designers that it is still adequate with some 3,000,000 computers. However, given that is is being pushed places it was not meant to go, there will be occasional failures in the network.

· When typing in a network address, remember that the addresses are long, often meaningless and easy to mistype. Check you have typed the address in correctly. Remember that it is case sensitive, so This is different to this.

These exercises concentrate on services in roughly this order of importance:

· WWW (using Netscape)

· FTP (Using FTP for windows)

· Gopher (again using Netscape)

· Telnet (mostly Library catalogues, using a telnet)

· Archie (using a windows Archie Client)

All of the software used is freely availiable (at least for educational purposes) on Internet. See "On Obtaining Networking Software" in the accompanying manual.

[ line ]

1. Using Netscape, find the "Netscape Handbook" the Netscape on-line (i.e. computer based) manual. You will need to start Netscape, and then use the hypertext links to move from the Netscape home page to the manual. See if you can find the section in the manual concerning the open button in the toolbar. Write a short (one sentence summary) of its function. Paste this text into your document.

This should not be too taxing. The question assumes that the student starts at the URL "http://mosaic.mcom.com/home/welcome.html" which has a link to "http://mosaic.mcom.com/home/online-manual.html", the online manual proper. There is an idex on this page at the bottom, from which the student should be able to select the "O" to get to the page with the reference to the word "Open". An example answer for the final part of the question would be:

The "Open" button pops up a box which allows you to enter the name of the {loacation|page|URL} which I want to go to next.

2 Again using Netscape, use the "Open" box to transport you to ArchNet. ArchNet has the URL "http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/ArchNet/ArchNet.hmtl". (If you forget what a URL is, see the "World Wide Web" section of this manual, or perhaps have a look in the network itself.) You should be greeted by a screen with "ArchNet" embalzoned across the top. Have a hunt around, and see if you can find the "Site Files and Tours" section. Read one of the reports therein. Is (in your opinion) the hypertext better or worse than a conventional report, such as [ example from a very famous textbook ? I doubt it]? [The objective of this exercise is that you have a play with the software. Have a play; mess about.]

The address the students should find is "http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/ArchNet/Sites/Sites.hmtl". A suggested answer is:

"Maybe"

3. Again, starting in Netscape look for the "National Archaeological DataBase", or NADB. This is a database of journal articles and references. Starting from the ArchNet page, look around for this database. This may take you a few minutes. If you don't find after about ten minutes, summon an instructor to guide you. Have a look at the "toolbar" section of the manual for help in using the "Forward" and "Back" buttons; they will be useful to you. Also the "Go" menu contains a list of previously visited places which may be useful as well.

. NOTE: You are looking for a hmtl hypertext page, NOT "Telnet". Before accessing something with NADB written on it, look down to the bottom line of the screen. If it is a line beginning with "telnet:" then you are acessing a service via telnet. If it begins with "http:" then you are accessing a hyper text page. Look for a URL starting with "http:".

Having reached this place, try a query on the NADB database. As of January 1995 the database only supported searches on the "References" section accoring to author; that may have expanded a bit by now. Try searching for something. W.F. Limp is the creator of the database; "Limp*" in the "Author" box will seach for references by this gentleman.

The search being asked for here is quite difficult, and may take the student some time. The page which they are finally seeking is:

The real purpose of this exercise is to draw the students attention to the line at the bottom of the screen, and to start asking niggling questions, such as "Just what precisely is this telnet thing anyway?"

A sample answer would be:

4. The last exercise was probably quite time consuming. However, there is a quicker way. Try the "Net Search" button underneath the toolbar. This will connect you to a page of Network search engines. Try the "Lycos" engine, which should be fairly near the top. Select one of the individual databases, and then type "NADB" in the box. If the machine doesn't refuse your connection in a few seconds you will receive a page with many many references to "NADB".

This time go to the "NADB" with Telnet. You will be asked to logon; log on as nadb, and you should probably select "vt100" as your terminal type unless your instructor tells you otherwise. Enter your details. (You will notice that the connection is probably quite slow - for this reason it is better to use telnet only when it is necessary.) Follow the directions, and see if you can bring up the same list of references.

This has two purposes - to show the student an Internet search engine, and to show how telnet works. Perhaps at this time it would be useful to explain to a class that telnet is a much older service than the WWW, and that the archaeism shows in this case. The samle answer is the same as above.

5. Again try the Lycos search engine; try to find something to do with both "Mailing-Lists" and "Archaeology". There are several lists of internet resources for archeologists avaliable on the Net. If you have mail availiable, subscribe to the maling list ARCH-L (which is a fairly large mailing list. It will probably take a few hours for this request to get through and for you to start receiving the mail on the mailing list, however when it does happen, you may well find mail filling up fairly quickly, so unsubscribe to the list if you want to. Include the mailing list subscription message in your document.

The search engine is keyword based. If one set of keywords gets you nowhere, try others.

REMEMBER: Subscribe to the list server address, not the address of the list itself. You will be making yourself look silly in front of several hundred people if you ignore this most fundamental rule. See the manual under the section "Mailing Lists" for more help on this.

The students should find these docs, although not necessarily on these servers:

"http://hwb.hwc.ca:7002/Internet_Resource_Guide.hmtl", or

"ftp://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/pub/Anthropology_network_FAQ"

or something similar. Both of the above have the required address in them. A good set of keywords for the Dec 27 Lycos Engine is "Archaeolo" "Resource", and "Internet".

It would probably be wise to vet students mail before they send it off to the ARCH-L so that you don't get a posse of irate denizens of that place descending upon you.

6. Start up the FTP client which you have. Try accessing the site "lucy.ukc.ac.uk". Logon as "ftp" or "anonymous" (both of these will work) and enter your e-mail address as the password (this is the accepted custom on anonymous ftp sites). Change into the /pub diectory. NOTE: if your ftp client is a text based one (i.e. no pointing and clicking) the slahes are forward slashes. Retrieve the document "Anthropology_network_FAQ", which you may have retrieved before. Be careful - are you using Ascii mode or binary mode to get the file? Now, work out what the URL for this document would be, and use Netscape to retrieve it again. Paste the file into your document. Can you tell which country you have been retrieving this document from?

An exercise in FTP. This will cause signifigant headaches if you have a text based FTP client, so try it with a point and click one if you have one; John A. Junods "FTP client for Windows" is excellent for this purpose.

Working out what the URL is may cause some difficulty, but if the students can do this they will understand thouroughly the nature of URLs. Suggested answer:

ftp://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/pub/Anthropology_network_FAQ

7. Use FTP to retrieve a FAQ from "rtfm.mit.edu".

[ not a good question. Replace ]

8. Use Archie to find the "Calib3" program. Start your Archie client, enter "Calib3" as the search text. Use FTP to fetch what you think is the correct version of Calib3 (you will also find other programs with the word "calib3" in them). Create a directory for the file and uncompress it. Insert the introduction of the document in your text.

A location for this file is:

ftp.u.washington.edu in the /pub/calib directory.

Students will probably forget to set this to a binary transfer. This should be useful to show them the way forward.

9. Connect to the gopher "gopher://coombs.anu.edu.au/". Notice the difference between the gopher and a hypertext page; there is far less information in the gopher to guide you around. A more subtle difference is that the gophers tend to be far mor hierarchical in their ordering, like directory structures on You will find it useful to look at the "Readme" documents which will be all over the place explaining what the current directory if the gopher has in it.

10. Find out how big the island of Cyprus is. Where did you find this information?

"CYPRUS GEOGRAPHY

LOCATION:

CYPRUS island is an independent country located in the eastern Meditarenean Sea, 97 km west of Syria and 64 km west of

Turkey

AREA:

total area: 9,250 km2

land area: 9,240 km2

comparative area: about 0.7 times the size of Connecticut

COASTLINE:

648 km"

This is taken from "http://cville-srv.wam.umd.edu/~cyprus/geography.html"

11. Find a map of Israel (preferably topolgical). Can you get it as a gif file and save it in your document?

There is one to be found at:

"http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/middle_east_and_asia/Israel.GIF"

Note first that this is a big file, roughly 300 k, and second that there are many maps of Israel scattered around the place.

12. See how many publicly availiable library catalogues you can find. Locate a copy of ????

There are lots of these, many with gateways into "Current Contents" style journal databases. One for instance is:

"gopher://info.anu.edu.au/other/"

Which seems to have links to 100+ libraries around the world.

13. Find books/articles on the early history of metallurgy. What were your sources? Paste the references into your document.

B01 Metallurgy as a human experience//(TITL=1)

B02 Metallurgy basics//(TITL=1)

B03 Metallurgy Division//(CORP=3)

B04 Metallurgy for engineers//(TITL=1)

B05 Metallurgy fundamentals//(TITL=2)

B06+Metallurgy in ancient Mexico//(TITL=1)

B07 Metallurgy in archaeology//(TITL=1)

B08 Metallurgy in art//(SUBJ=1)

B09 Metallurgy in Australasia//(TITL=1)

B10 Metallurgy in Bulgaria//(TITL=1)

B11 Metallurgy in literature//(SUBJ=1)

B12 Metallurgy note//(SERI=21)

This list of titles/subjects is from the Library of Congress; however there are obviously thousands of books on these subjects.

14. Find a registry of aborignal site data. Paste what you find in your document.

15. How

Internet Internals

It is not necesary to know anything about Internet internals to use it, just as it is not necessary to know how a car works to use one. Read this only if you are curious.

Protocols and Protocol Stacks

The essecnce of any network is what is known as a protocol. In an anaolgous way to which humans use ettiquite to communicate, computers use protocols to ensure that the other computer knows what to expect. A simple protocol might go along the following lines:

You will notice that some of these steps would seem to have sub-steps. For instance, to open a connection, we first have to find out where the other computer is on the network. There are other protocols for accomplishing this (difficult) task, which allows the protocol shown here not to have to worry about finding out where the other computer is. Neither is there anything in the above protocol which tells the computer how to send or receive information, merely some commands which do it; this again is accomplished by another protocol. The protocols sit together in what is called a stack - stack is a hierarchy of protocols working together. It is called a stack since the protocols are layered one on top of the other.

Arranging the protocols in a hierarchy allows different protocols to work together. For instance, you can have the same physical Ethernet network running both IP (Internet Protocol, used on Internet) and IPX (Internet Packet eXchange, oddly almost never used on Internet, but mostly as what underlies the Novell NetWare software).

Packets and Headers

In order to send information over a network, the information is broken up into small units called packets. This allows two computers to use the same piece of cable to send information. Examine the following diagram:

You can see that the single cable has data from both computers flowing down it. Now suppose we sent all the data from one computer, and then all the data from another ...

You can see that computer #1 has to wait quite a while for anything to happen. Now suppose that on receiving the data from #2, computer #3 discovers that there is an error somewhere in the file. The whole set of data has to be sent again. Were packets being used, then only that packet would have to be resent.

How to packets and protocols fit together? They use a mechanism called headers. A header is a special section of data at the front of a packet which tells the destination computer what type of packet it is, and what should be done with it.

There are two things worthy of note in this diagram. The first is the packet source and destination address. For different protocols you may well have different addresses, for instance you may have a Ethernet address something like <sample E'net address> and an Internet address something like "129.78.16.129". There are even more protocols for converting between different types of address formats.

Second, there is a section which tells the computer which protocol higher in the hierarchy to to pass this packet up to. This allows the same kind of packet to carry two (or more) different protocols. It is not uncommon to run ten protocols over the one packet variety.

The Protocols Themselves:

Here is a brief list of protocols used on InterNet:

Physical Protocols:

Note that physical protocols are different from the others mentioned here inasmuch as there are no "packets" involved. Physical protocols detail how each little bit of information is transported, rather than how chunks of data are transported. They are the wire at the bottom of the above diagram.

RS-232 - This is what your serial cable uses. Low speed.

X-?32? - this is used on WANs (wide area networks). Slightly higher speed.

The EtherNet cabling types: Quite high speed

These cables are all used mostly for Ethernet. Ethernet needs cvabling capable of high speeds.

10-Base-5, or "Thick Ethernet". This is largely superceded thick (1 1/2") co-axial cable. Thin Ethernet is largely used in its place

10-Base-2, "Thin Ethernet", "ThinNet", "Cheapernet" or just "Co-ax". Thin co-axial cable connected with Bayonet connectors (BNCs). Used on small cabling installations. This has the design flaw that disconnecting the cable will bring the entire network down. To circumvent this, 10-Base-T is used.

10-Base-T, "Twisted Pair", or "UTP" (Unshielded Twisted Pair). 10-Base-T networks have Hubs, boxes which connect all the copmputers together in a star formation. The hub electronics ensure that when a computer disconnects itself from the network, the rest of the network keeps functioning. More expensive than Thin Ethernet, but more practical for places where inquisitive fingers will be pulling the network to bits.

Shielded Twisted Pair. Used in the "Token Ring" protocol, which is now largely defunct.

Fibre Optics. Very High speed cabling.

Data Link Protocols:

These protocols serve to act within the network. They sit on top of the Physical protocols:

EtherNet. This is the most common protocol used for running Local Area Networks (LANs).

SLIP and PPP: Serial Line Internet Protocol and Point to Point Protocol. The latter supercedes the former.

Clients and Servers

Much Internet technology is based around the idea of Client and Server. In this case the two computers talking to each other to not communicate as equals, one (the server) provides a service, and the other (the client) asks for a service, which the server provides. You as an Internet user will for the most part be in the position of client, and so most of the software which you use will be client software.

As an example, suppose you are trying to connect via the World Wide Web (a popular Internet service) to find out some information. In this case you would start up some client software (such as Netscape, a popular WWW client program), and connect to the server. The server will have some software itself to provide the service (in this case probably httpd, the Hyper Text Transport Protocol Daemon), which will get the information you provide and send it.

What do I Need to Connect to Internet?

To connect to the Internet a few things are required:

· A computer. An IBM compatible PC running Windows 3.1 or OS/2 is quite adequate, as is a Macintosh caplable of running Apple TCP/IP [check that this is the real name of the thing]. More esoteric equipment may work as well.

· A way of connecting the computer to a network. This an inclusive list would be:

· a modem, in order to connect to a commercial Internet provider.

· a network plug in card for your computer, for the same kind of network as you have access to. For instance if your work has an Ethernet 10-base-T network you would need an Etnernet 10-Base-T card to put into your computer to connect to it. Note that these cards are typically for Local Area Networks (LANs) and so will not be able to travel over great distances, so this option will only be open to you if you want your computer at work. If you do things in this manner you will also need an IP number and address (mentioned below).

· Software to make the network work:

· A "TCP/IP Stack". TCP/IP stands for "Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol". A TCP/IP Stack allows software to talk to the network card.

· For Windows, you will need program called "WinSock".

· Programs which you will run to access various services on Internet. For instance if you want to connect to the World Wide Web you will need client/browser software, such as "Netscape" or "Cello", programs which talk to servers on the network. Different network services have different pieces of client software.

· If you are connecting directly to a network, an IP number and Internet Address. An IP number is a number which uniquely identifies your computer on Internet. It consists of four parts,

It is impossible to give a good bibliography for the books on the Internet since it changes so rapidly. However try the following books:

[ This needs redoing entirely. Perhaps move it. Cf Pitch:]

The Whole Internet, By Ed Krol.

This seems to be a good, up to date and thorough explanation of the Internet. It is written with a user conversant with computers in mind however, and does delve into the inner workings of the Internet.

There are also numerous other books on the market offering assistance, for instance catalogues of mailing lists, Internet White pages, and so on. Much of this information is available quite simply from the network itself, and is more likely to be up to date in an environment which can be radically different within the space of six months.

Archaeology On The Net: An Internet Resource List, by Simon Holledge

This book comprises a brief introduction to using Internetwork services, and then goes on to detail many services, such as mailing lists, FTP sites, and WWW servers with Archaeological information. It was written in August 1994, but seems a little incomplete and out of date

Zen And the Art Of the Internet.(version 1.0)

This is an old book, and so somewhat out of date. However, it is one of the best introductions to the use of the Net and the attitude which pervades it, as well as giving a good tutorial for some of the more established services. It is also free. There is a new version now available (version 2.0, which is not free), but I haven't seen it to comment on it.

© 1998 Archaeological Computing Laboratory University of Sydney CAST (Centre for Advanced Spatial Technologies)

Last updated: 18 April 2000 12:16