X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.novell
Date:         Wed, 16 Dec 1992 11:34:37 PST
Reply-To:     Novell LAN Interest Group <NOVELL@SUVM.BITNET>
From:         Richard Warner <rick@SJSUMCS.SJSU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Archie and Gopher programs for PC and the Internet Q's
              at Dec 16, 92 1:33 pm

> I've been reading about all these DOS client programs that use the
> Internet. I'm assuming that the programs are stored on a file server
> and ip addresses are assigned by RARP or BOOTP.

Correct.

> Now the question I have is this: are these client programs attaching
> to a host server (ARCHIE or GOPHER) on their own networks? Or are
> they going directly to the host in the Internet? If they are going
> to the Internet directly, then I assume that there are no
> regulations against PC hosts acessing the Internet, or there is some
> sort of policing going on?

Gopher can do either (local host, or outside).  The idea of gopher is
that the client does not need to know WHERE the information is kept;
the server presents it to him and/or passes him on to another server
that has that information.  With gopher a user is moving all over the
network.

There is no Internet policy against any specific machine architecture.
BUT - each machine needs its own IP address.  Some sites do dynamic
allocation, some do static; for security reasons we do static (easier
to backtrace if someone does some mischief).

> I can't see how a PC GOPHER client could work on a system that has a
> 'firewall' to the Internet since my understanding of GOPHER is that
> it creates new connections from the client to each host, grabs the
> info, and then disconnects.

You need a proxy client, just as you would for ftp.  I will attach
a note from the gopher world about such a client (see bottom).

> The Internet provider we have is PSI, and as far as I can tell we
> only have 3 main/minis that are in its routing tables. I don't know
> what the actual service we have is because I can't get a striaght
> answer from the Director.

> Jeff Macdonald
> Assistant Network Engineer
> Southampton Campus
> Long Island University
> Southampton, NY 11968
> (516)283-4000 ext 352
>
> ======================================================================
> jeff@sand.liunet.edu                Novell File Server (perferred)
> ======================================================================
> jdonald@liuvax.bitnet               Bitnet Site
> jdonald@vax86.liunet.edu            Internet Site
> jdonald@ibm520.liunet.edu           Internet Site #2
> ======================================================================
>
>     The only thing that hurts more than paying income tax
>     is not having to pay income tax.
>
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Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 18:10:42 +0100
From: whna@ciba-geigy.ch (Heinz Naef)
Message-Id: <9212161710.AA02821@cgchf.wirz.cigy>
To: firewalls@greatcircle.com, gopher-news@boombox.micro.umn.edu
Subject: gopher proxy
Cc: a-tuchman@uiuc.edu, gopher@boombox.micro.umn.edu, wdbu@ciba-geigy.ch,
        whna@ciba-geigy.ch, wreb@ciba-geigy.ch
Status: OR

We have an experimental gopher service in our firewalled environment up
and running. It consists of a Gopher proxy server running on an Internet
relay host and a curses gopher client with minimal changes.

As required by the fundamental design of Gopher, the Gopher proxy server
is completely stateless: it is launched by inetd for each Gopher object to
be dealt with, connects to the ultimate Gopher server, copies the retrieved
information back to the client and then ends.

The following Gopher object types are currently supported:

 - Directory
 - File, document
 - Wide Area Information Service (WAIS) indexed document
 - Telnet (via itelnet)

The following Gopher object types are not yet supported:

 - CSO nameserver query
 - Tn3270 access

We did the development in Version 1.03 of the UNIX Gopher distribution.

As time permits, we will incorporate similar changes into the X Gopher
client (Version 1.2).

If there is enough interest, we may, after implementing the remaining
object types in the proxy server, think about getting in touch with the
Gopher developers and have them incorporate the changes and additions to
an upcoming release.

Please send me a short message if you are interested. Please don't send
the message to the firewalls mailing list, send it to hn@chsun.chuug.ch.

Regards,
Heinz Naef, hn@chsun.chuug.ch
David Buehler

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+-----------------------+-------------------------------------+
|   Richard M. Warner   |   Internet:  rick@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu  |
|                       | CompuServe:  71121,2257             |
+-----------------------+-------------------------------------+
|  ** DISCLAIMER:  All opinions are strictly my own.  I work  |
|                  hard enough at forming them!               |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
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