From: brown@odin.ins.cwru.edu (Dan Brown)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs.internet
Subject: Re: BIG INTERNET QUESTIONS (IGNORE OTHER VERSION!)
Date: 5 Oct 1992 16:09:02 GMT
Organization: Subversive Student Publications un-inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: odin.ins.cwru.edu

In an earlier posting rsb5c@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Richard S. Bondi) writes:
>Dear Netters,
>I am working on a story for a local newspaper about the Internet. 
>The story is for everyone who has never heard of it or used it. 
>While I am an Internet user (obviously - I am posting this myself),

This in not obvious from the fact that you are posting. There is a BIG
difference in Usenet and Internet. Usenet is NetNews. It is a bunch of 
sites using a bunch of different programs that exchange news articles. Some
of this exchange takes place over the Internet, but much of it doesn't. 
There are always the UUCP sites, the Fidonet and the bitnet sites around
the world that carry Usenet news.

>and have read a number of articles as well as the NCSA Hypercard
>stack on the Internet, I still have a number of questions that no

After reading the rest of your article, I would suggest you dig a bit deeper.
Find yourself a copy of Zen and the art of the Internet. If you want to get
into the Technical stuff, get a copy of Internetworking with TCP/IP by 
Douglass Comber. You seem to have a few gaps in your understanding of the
network... as most of us do... :-)

>
>(Questions 2 through 4 are basic, the stuff I am really interested
>in begins with question 5.)
>
>1.   In one sentence, what is your technical experience with the
>Internet? 

Cannot be describe in one sentense. Have been around it for about 4 years.

>2.   Is the following characterization correct, and if not, please
>make any corrections:
>     The Internet is a world-wide network of wires, cables, and
>satellite connections that connects computers all over the world in
>much the same way that telephone connections globally connect
>individual telephones.  More specifically, instead of connecting
>individual computers, the Internet connects small networks, which
>actually connect individual computers.  Thus the a typical
>university has a campus-wide network connecting thousands of
>university desktops and computers, and this campus network is at
>one geographical point connected to the Internet.

The Internet is a network of networks. It is based on the 7 layer model.
Many different means of connection are used. A goodly number of the Physical
connections are over "Leased Line" phone lines, often T1's and T3's, depending
on how much bandwidth you need. Comber has a good overview of how the net
is put together. 

>3.   Is the following characterization correct, and if not, please
>make any corrections:

>     Not all small networks use the same program or language -
>called a "protocol" - to shunt data from one computer to another. 

True. Some networks (CWRU's for example) have multiple protocols running
over them all at the same time. 

>Protocols vary depending on what brand of network software you buy. 
>Examples include Novell Netware, Banyan, Microsoft, and a few
>others.  By contrast, the Internet uses just one protocol - TCP/IP
>-, and all small networks that connect to it must either themselves
>use TCP/IP, or connect to the Internet via a dedicated computer
>that does nothing but translate the small network's protocol to
>TCP/IP, and vice versa.  Such a dedicated computer is called a
>gateway or bridge.

Actually that should be gateway or router. A bridge is a piece of
hardware that normally connects two parts of the same LAN. Bridges
usually do some filtering, but it is at a lower level than a router would.

>4.   Is the following characterization correct, and if not, please
>make any corrections:
>     Macintosh and IBM PC users may have heard of programs like
>Carbon Copy or Timbuktu that let one Mac or IBM take complete
>control of another.  In other words, on my screen I actually see
>YOUR screen, and all the commands and programs I run are actually
>run on your computer, not mine.  A program that does this for any
>two computers connected to the Internet has been written, and it is
>called Telnet.  Since it was written with tax-payers money at the
>National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), it is free. 

You really did read the NCSA docs... NCSA didn't write telnet. They wrote
a couple versions of telnet, one that is available for Mac, one that is
available for PC's. Many many other people have put in time on various
versions of telnet the program. I would suggest gettng a copy of the RFC
about telnet. RFC's can be FTP'ed from a variety of places, like nic.ddn.mil.


>The verb "telnet" refers to connecting to another computer on the
>Internet (or any network) using Telnet.  Similarly, a very
>efficient program called ftp uses a protocol (also called ftp) to
>transfer files at incredible speeds from one computer to another,
>and "to ftp" refers to transferring files in this way.

I believe both telnet and ftp are considered protocols in their own right.
There are programs, usually called telnet and ftp that use these protocols
to make computers talk to each other (in the case of telnet) and make 
computers exchange files (in the cast of FTP).

>5.   Email is free, whether to someone else at your university or

Email is not always free. Someone has to pay the bills, which tend to
be astronomical!

>to New Zealand.  When you post something on Netnews, you receive a
>warning that the post will cost thousands of dollars - but you

That is because it does. Depending on where and how it gets shipped, it 
can cost thousands for the dial up UUCP sites alone! Send some mail to
info@uunet.uu.net. 

>never receive a bill.  Telneting and ftp-ing to sites even across
>continents is free.  Who pays for all this?  Similarly, when Email
>travels across the country or oceans, it presumably travels over
>cables.  Who laid these?  Who paid for them?  And who pays the
>salaries of the people on all the wonderful committees like the
>Internet Activities Board, Internet, Assigned Numbers Authority,
>and so on?

Much of it is paid out of government grants and by educational institutions. 

>6.   Somehow, the untold thousands of Netnews postings are
>assembled.  Where does this assembling take place?  Does one always
>telnet to the same place in the world whenever one reads Netnews? 
>Who pays the netnews moderators, or do they manage to sift through
>hundreds of messages a day in their free time?

Get some information about NNTP, Cnews, INN, etc etc.

>7.   Could anyone with enough money attach their PC in their home
>directly to the Internet?

Depends on where they are. In general, Yes. It is however a good bit 
less expensive to become a UUCP site if all you need is Email, Netnews
and occasional files. If you need or want interactive usage, you would
need to find a different way to connect, like SL/IP. 

>8.   Where are the Internet cables?  Can they be seen around town
>as easily as telephone and high-tension wires?

As stated previously, much of the network is connected with Leased Phone
lines. They run the same places all the rest of the phone lines do.

>9.   Apart from the following, what are some of the major resources
>available over the Internet?  email; newsnet; downloading software
>and other files over ftp; archie; telnetting to library catalogs;
>(genbank for molecular biologists).

Basically, the Internet offers access to information repositories and 
computational facilities all over the world. There are thousands of services
offered. Zen and the art... has a good overview. 

>10.  How is it possible for Internet connections to be so damn
>fast? A server in Finland responds faster than my own desktop
>machine can load Lotus. This boggles the/my mind.  Can you give
>some insight on how this is possible with so much traffic?

T1 phone lines run at 1.544 Megabit/sec (pg 437, Comber) T3 speeds are
several times faster. How much speed to you need?
 
>11.  Dialing in to one's unix account with a modem, instead of
>logging on campus where one is directly connected to the network,
>reduces one back to the clunky line based programs for pcmail,
>Netnews, and other programs.  Is SLIP (Serial Line Internet
>Protocol) something that could overcome it?  How does SLIP work?
>
SLIP can be used to create point to point IP connections over serial lines. 
You can then run telnet and FTP sessions over those lines. It actually
would be considerably slower for interactive and file transfers if you
are using the same modem for both regular dial up, and SLIP. When you are
using slip, all of your data is packtized, just as it would be on the 
Internet. This increases the ammount of data that you have to send over the
line. The big gain for SL/IP is the ability to have multiple IP sessions
running at the same time on one phone line. Presumably, with a fast enough 
modem, it wouldn't matter.

>12.  Where can I get a short description of every/most data
>archives (publicly) available on the Internet?

Try Zen.

>13.  Is Gopher anything more (or less) than a program that lets you do
>point and shoot telnetting and ftping from a list of internet sites?  What
>exactly is Gopher?

If it is anything like WAIS, it is a program that allows your to search
for and retrieve information from remote sites. 

>Thank you very much for your assistance!
>
>Yours,
>
>Richard Bondi
>University of Virginia
>

-- 
Dan Brown	
brown@ins.cwru.edu