Pegasus Mail, Frequently-asked question resources Copyright (c) 1995 David Harris, all rights reserved. Connecting to the Internet This document is intended as a brief guide to the various methods available for connecting to the world-wide Internet. It is not a definitive statement of this process, because there are so many local variables involved, but it may offer helpful guidelines to those hoping to take advantage of the resources of the world's largest network. The first step in the process is to decide what kind of access you want to the Internet. This essentially involves answering these questions: * Is the connection for a single person, or for a user community? It is generally easier and cheaper to connect a single user to the Internet than it is to connect a group of users (for instance, the users on a file server). * Which Internet services do you want - do you only want e-mail, or do you want access to other services such as the World-Wide-Web, File Transfer and Terminal emulation? If you only want electronic mail access, you may be able to use inexpensive dialup solutions, but almost all other Internet services will require some kind of dedicated IP connection, especially if you are connecting a group of users. * How much are you willing to spend? The costs of setting up an Internet link can vary hugely depending on the answers to the previous two questions, but you can count on it costing you something no matter which way you go. Before proceeding any further, gather those people who are to be involved in the decision process and work out how much Internet connectivity is worth to you in cold business terms; this will at least give you a yardstick when it comes time to talk dollars and cents. The next step in the process is to find a mythical creature called an "Internet Service Provider", or ISP; these ethereal beings have the know-how and resources to be able to provide you with your Internet connection. Unless you are a very large company with considerable financial resources, you will not be able to afford a direct link to the Internet yourself, so instead you will normally "lease time" from an ISP, paying fees for that portion of their Internet bandwidth which you consume. Most ISPs charge very reasonable rates because they can take advantage of economies of scale. The easiest way to find an ISP in your area is to contact the Networking Specialist at the Computing Services Centre of your nearest University; if you approach them politely, you should find these people helpful and extremely knowledgeable - they will almost always have some idea of the ISPs in their area and in some cases may even offer Internet services themselves. Once you have found an ISP, you are most of the way to being connected to the Internet. At this stage, you have to decide on the services you need and work out what options the ISP offers to provide them. If you are a single user, you will almost certainly end up leasing a SLIP or PPP account from the ISP. SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) and PPP (Point to Point Protocol) are the standard ways of accessing Internet services using modems and most ISPs will offer one or the other or both; PPP is the more modern and efficient protocol and is probably preferable if it is available to you. When using a SLIP or PPP account, you will run a special program called a "TCP/IP stack" on one computer attached to a modem. Via another special piece of software called a "SLIP driver" or "PPP driver", your computer can then connect on demand to the ISP's computer systems and from there to the broader Internet. Single users running SLIP/PPP links almost always use Microsoft Windows, and a special interface protocol called Windows Sockets, or WinSock for short. WinSock is the software component which allows applications like your mail program or web browser to talk to the SLIP connection. Probably the most popular WinSock implementation is Peter Tattam's Trumpet Winsock, a shareware system produced in Australia. Trumpet provides all the components you need to establish a SLIP link - the TCP/IP stack, the SLIP driver and the Windows Sockets file, WINSOCK.DLL. Trumpet is available via FTP on the Internet from ftp.trumpet.com.au. There are other commercial WinSock implementations as well, varying widely in price and feature level. Electronic mail Electronic mail on the Internet is sent almost exclusively using a protocol called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Unfortunately, SMTP is based on the assumption that you are permanently connected to the Internet and that your system is reachable at any time, which is clearly not the case if you are using a SLIP or PPP connection. This limitation makes it nearly impossible to receive mail reliably via the SMTP protocol on your own machine, so instead, Internet mail is almost always retrieved using an alternative protocol called POP (Post Office Protocol). Under POP, the ISP's machine accepts mail on your behalf and holds it until you dial in to retrieve it. When using POP for your mail, your e-mail address will actually be an address on the ISP's system, rather than the address of your own machine. POP is a receive-only protocol - it provides no mechanism for sending mail, only for retrieving it. To access electronic mail using your SLIP connection then, you will need an electronic mail system which supports POP to receive mail, and SMTP to send it. There are several such electronic mail systems available, including Pegasus Mail and Qualcomm's Eudora. Your ISP must also offer both SMTP and POP access - the most common version of the POP protocol is version 3, so you should ask your ISP for a "POP3 account". Connecting multiple users If you need to connect a group of users to the Internet, then the situation is more complicated than connecting a single user. If you only want access to electronic mail, then you can use a venerable protocol called UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Program). UUCP uses dialup lines, connecting occasionally to the ISP's system, sending outgoing mail and retrieving incoming mail then hanging up. The advantage of UUCP is that it is very inexpensive because it does not require a dedicated Internet link; the disadvantages are that it only provides access to electronic mail and NetNews (the Internet's version of Bulletin Boards) and that it is potentially complicated to set up and administer. Not all ISPs will offer UUCP services - if you think UUCP is the protocol you need, then make sure you talk to your ISP before proceeding. As its name suggests, UUCP is almost always based on unix systems, so the usual way to implement it is to install a small unix system somewhere on your Local Area Network. With the proliferation of free or low-cost unix implementations available these days, installing a unix system need not be expensive - Linux, for example, is a completely free and very complete unix implementation which can run on as little as a 386SX with 8MB RAM. The real problem with this approach is that unix is inherently complicated to install and manage, especially if you have little experience with it. The advantage of using a unix system on your LAN is that it allows you to run the Mercury Mail Transport System on your NetWare file server. Mercury, which is SMTP-based, has some very powerful capabilities, but does not directly support UUCP; the unix machine, however, can take the SMTP output Mercury generates and pass it on to the rest of the world via its UUCP transport. Other possibilities include the Waffle BBS system, which includes a very reliable UUCP mail system, and a number of public domain or shareware UUCP systems such as UUPC (note the spelling). These are somewhat easier to set up and can be left running on an old AT in a remote corner of your office. Gateways are available which allow both Waffle and UUPC to connect to Pegasus Mail for sending and receiving mail; if you are running a Novell LAN, there is a particular gateway called WafPeg which is Novell-aware and integrates tightly with Pegasus Mail. All these gateways are available on the Internet via FTP from risc.ua.edu in /pub/network/pegasus/misc. These solutions are generally not satisfactory if you want to run Mercury on your file server - you would usually use these instead of Mercury. If you want access to services other than simple electronic mail for a group of users, then you are into the most complicated and expensive level of connectivity. Your options are to set up a permanent Internet link or to obtain a dial-on-demand router. Setting up a permanent Internet link involves leasing a data circuit from your Telephone company and connecting it permanently to your service provider. At each end of the circuit you will need a device called an "IP Router", which are together responsible for ensuring that your Internet traffic gets to the right place. IP routers range widely in price, starting at around US$1600 each for the cheapest items. If you are running a NetWare file server, then you may be able to cut costs a little by using Novell's Multiprotocol Router (MPR) product, which runs on your file server directly. You may also be able to use an older product called PC-Route on a pair of old PCs: PC-Route is a quite good free IP router which offers good throughput on cheap hardware, but it is no longer a supported program and can demonstrate slight relia- bility problems in heavy-traffic environments. Dedicated Internet connections of this kind are the ne plus ultra of Internet connectivity - with a dedicated connection, you are "on" the Internet and can take the fullest possible advantage of it. The process is, however, complicated and expensive; you must obtain IP addresses and register your domain name (your ISP will be able to advise you on how to do this) and must go through the usually demeaning and frustrating process of trying to get service from your telephone company. Because your site is always accessible using a dedicated circuit, you can use SMTP for your mail; once again, you will usually either install Mercury on your NetWare file server, or else have a small unix machine on your LAN and use the POP3 protocol locally on your workstations to retrieve your mail from it. Having a dedicated connection of this type is also the only way you can provide advanced services such as World-Wide-Web servers, or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) servers reliably. The other option is to get a special device called a dial-on-demand router. This is a router just like the ones you would use on a dedicated connection, except that it is capable of dialing and establishing a SLIP or PPP connection to your ISP when it detects outbound traffic, and of hanging up when the connection is closed. Using a dial-on-demand router means that you are only establishing your connection when you actually need it and that you can do so over ordinary phone lines without the need to lease circuits from the telephone company. Dial-on-demand routers are slightly more expensive than standard routers; models like the NetBlazer and the MorningStar Express Router are commonly-used for this kind of connection. Dial-on-demand connectivity is nearly as good as dedicated connectivity inasmuch as it provides access to all standard Internet services; the downside is that there can be a considerable connection delay while the router establishes the connection to the ISP, and if you generate or receive a lot of traffic, you may find that the call charges end up being more expensive than leasing a line. Furthermore, because the person who originates the call usually pays for it, some ISPs will not provide dial-on-demand services. In conclusion, remember that this document is by no means definitive: your mileage will almost certainly vary depending on the resources which are available in your region. For definitive answers and more detail on methods which may be available to you, contact a service provider in your area.