Zen and the Art of the Internet ________________________________________________________________________________ A Beginner's Guide to the Internet First Edition January 1992 by Brendan P. Kehoe ________________________________________________________________________________  This is revision 1.0 of February 2, 1992. Copyright cfl1992 Brendan P. Kehoe Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this guide provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this booklet under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this booklet into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in atranslation approved by the author.  i Table of Contents Preface 1 Acknowledgements 3 1 Network Basics 5 1.1 Domains 5 1.2 Internet Numbers 7 1.3 Resolving Names and Numbers 7 1.4 The Networks 8 1.5 The Physical Connection 8 2 Electronic Mail 11 2.1 Email Addresses 11 2.1.1 %@!.: Symbolic Cacophony 11 2.1.2 Sending and Receiving Mail 12 2.1.3 Anatomy of a Mail Header 13 2.1.4 Bounced Mail 14 2.2 Mailing Lists 15 2.2.1 Listservs 16 3 Anonymous FTP 19 3.1 FTP Etiquette 19 3.2 Basic Commands 20 3.2.1 Creating the Connection 20 3.2.2 dir 21 3.2.3 cd 22 3.2.4 get and put 22 3.2.4.1 ASCII vs Binary 23 3.2.4.2 mget and mput 24 3.3 The archie Server 25 3.3.1 Using archie Today 25 3.3.2 archie Clients 26 3.3.3 Mailing archie 27 3.3.4 The whatis database 27 4 Usenet News 29 4.1 What Usenet Is 29  ii Zen and the Art of the Internet 4.2 The Diversity of Usenet 29 4.3 What Usenet Is Not 29 4.4 Propagation of News 31 4.5 Group Creation 32 4.6 If You're Unhappy 33 4.7 The History of Usenet (The ABCs) 33 4.8 Hierarchies 34 4.9 Moderated vs Unmoderated 35 4.10 news.groups & news.announce.newgroups 36 4.11 How Usenet Works 36 4.12 Mail Gateways 37 4.13 Usenet "Netiquette" 37 4.13.1 Signatures 37 4.13.2 Posting Personal Messages 38 4.13.3 Posting Mail 38 4.13.4 Test Messages 39 4.13.5 Famous People Appearing 39 4.13.6 Summaries 39 4.13.7 Quoting 40 4.13.8 Crossposting 41 4.13.9 Recent News 41 4.13.10 Quality of Postings 41 4.13.11 Useful Subjects 42 4.13.12 Tone of Voice 42 4.13.13 Computer Religion 43 4.14 Frequently Asked Questions 43 4.14.1 The Pit-Manager Archive 43 5 Telnet 45 5.1 Using Telnet 45 5.1.1 Telnet Ports 45 5.2 Publicly Accessible Libraries 46 5.3 The Cleveland Freenet 47 5.4 Directories 47 5.4.1 Knowbot 48 5.4.2 White Pages 48 5.5 Databases 48 5.5.1 Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL) 48 5.5.2 PENpages 49 5.5.3 Clemson Univ. Forestry & Agricultural Network 49 5.5.4 University of Maryland Info Database 49 5.5.5 University of Michigan Weather Underground 50 5.5.6 Geographic Name Server 50 5.5.7 FEDIX_Minority Scholarship Information 50  iii 5.5.8 Science & Technology Information System 51 5.5.9 Ocean Network Information Center 51 5.5.10 NASA/IPAC ExtragalacticDatabase (NED) 51 5.5.11 U.S. Naval Observatory Automated Data Service 52 6 Various Tools 53 6.1 Finger 53 6.2 Ping 54 6.3 Talk 55 6.4 The WHOIS Database 55 6.4.1 Other Uses of WHOIS 57 7 Commercial Services 59 7.1 Electronic Journals 59 7.2 Commercial Databases 60 7.3 Clarinet News 60 8 Things You'll Hear About 63 8.1 The Internet Worm 63 8.2 The Cuckoo's Egg 64 8.3 Organizations 64 8.3.1 The Association for Computing Machinery 65 8.3.2 Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility 65 8.3.3 The Electronic Frontier Foundation 66 8.3.4 The Free SoftwareFoundation 68 8.3.5 The League for Programming Freedom 68 8.4 Networking Initiatives 69 8.4.1 NREN 69 9 Finding Out More 71 9.1 Internet Resource Guide 71 9.2 Requests for Comments 71 Conclusion 73 Appendix A Getting to Other Networks 75 Appendix B Retrieving Files via Email 77 ArchiveServers 77 FTP-by-MailServers 77  iv Zen and the Art of the Internet Appendix C Newsgroup Creation 79 Discussion 79 Voting 79 The Result of a Vote 81 Creation of the Group 81 Glossary 83 Bibliography 91 Books 91 Periodicals & Papers 92 Index 95 Copyright (c) 1992 Brendan P. Kehoe Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this guide provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this booklet under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this booklet into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the author. Up