If your computer talks to USENET or another computer via some forwarding gateway using a protocol other than UUCP, you are on an internet, short for inter-network. Being "on an internet" just means that you are using some network other than USENET. Note that this internet is spelled with a lower case i, and includes the Internet and several other networks such as CSNET and BITNET. When you're on an internet, your actual connection to USENET is via a gateway computer that talks to both the network you use and USENET.

The Internet (capital I) is the set of computer networks that are interconnected by the TCP/IP protocol and listed in the routing tables maintained by the InterNIC. This giant network of networks grew out of the Defense Department's ARPANET (Advanced Projects Research Agency Network). While USENET sites make phone calls to other computers, sending information in a store and forward fashion, the Internet is mostly a set of machines with permanent or on-demand connections that allow direct real-time communication between any two computers on the network. In addition, Internet lines usually run faster than the dial up lines used by UUCP. Most inter-city traffic and the vast majority of Network News is now transfered via the Internet.

The Internet is undergoing rapid change, and any column that attempts to describe it is chasing a moving target. In fact, as of the last months of 1993, as this column is being written, the Internet is on the verge of a very major change: it is moving from the public to the private sector, with NSFNET becoming the National Information Superhighway. However, to give a quick description of its current structure, I can say that Internet is a set of nation- wide backbone links connecting areas of the country at 45Mb/s (million bits per second). Connected to those backbone links are many regional networks running at speeds between 1.544Mb/s and 45Mb/s. Connected to the regionals are individual networks such as the networks at Datacomp Systems, Inc. These networks connect to the regionals at between 9.6kbps (on-demand dial-up links) through 1.544Mb/s and 45Mb/s (leased line connections).

Whereas connection to USENET via UUCP usually provides only mail and news, the Internet runs the TCP/IP protocol and thus supports news (NNTP, Network News Transfer Protocol), mail (SMTP, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), remote logins to any computer on the network on which you have an account telnet), remote file transfer (FTP, file transfer protocol), and many real-time on-line search engines including Archie, Gopher, and World-Wide-Web. All of these services coexist and work in real time.

On the Internet, all sites have a unique "Fully Qualified Domain Name" which is administered by the NIC. My site's domain name is node.DSI.COM, where node is the individual computer at my site. Thus my full current address is syd@dsinc.DSI.COM, but our mailer, like the mailers at a lot of Internet sites, is smart, and knows how to forward the mail to me even if you send it to syd@DSI.COM. This feature allows me to move around within the DSI.COM domain without having to tell everyone a new address. The Internet does not require you to know the path to the site; you only need to know the domain name. The domain name is the complete address to that site.

Now, a word of warning. Mixing both @ and ! in the same address leads to trouble. Not everyone follows the standard and processes the addresses correctly. Converting sitea!user@DSI.COM to a UUCP address would properly result in dsinc!sitea!user. Note that the @ has higher precedence than the !. Many sites get this standard wrong, and will cause your mail to bounce (be returned to you as undeliverable). Some sites, ours included, allow UUCP mail to have addresses including domain names in the ! path, as in dsinc!host.domain.type!user. Where allowed, this form of addressing is usually more reliable than mixing the ! and @'s.

Freely Distributable software is also different from Shareware, in that Shareware developers expect the user to pay a fee if he or she intends to continue using the program. Freely distributable software developers do not.

Each hierarchy has its own set of rules, which are enforced by consensus. USENET itself has no governing body, just a set of guidelines, that individual computer owners or administrators follow as they see fit. This scheme seems to work most of the time, as the net runs without too much chaos. There is even a hierarchy that runs without rules, called alt.

You are considered to be a recipient (or to pass) network news if your computer subscribes to one or more of the newsgroups in any of the hierarchies. Some sites receive only a handful of the groups, some receive most, and some receive all. However, we are talking about a large amount of information — over 60 megabytes of new postings every day. This volume is growing at about 7% per month. At 60 megabytes per day, each site can keep only a small portion of the feed on line at a time, and at that, only a few days worth.

With so much information coming in each day, it would seem like a lot of work just maintaining it, or finding something worthwhile to read. It's not that bad. The software to run the news system controls itself almost automatically. The software includes facilities to send only those groups to which a recipient subscribes, as well as expiring old articles to recover space. However, to be a major site in the USENET Network News distribution system does require a large amount of disk space, and considerable modem time.

Several of the groups are of interest to readers of this column; these are the source distribution groups. Generally, these groups congregate under the comp hierarchy in a collection called sources, thus the names comp.sources.unix and comp.sources.misc. Originally, comp.sources.unix released Freely Distributable sources that were designed to run on UNIX systems. Many of the sources posted there now also run on personal computers and other operating systems, but all can run on UNIX. Some of the other sources groups in the comp hierarchy currently are: amiga — for software specific to amiga systems, atari.st — for atari-specific software, games — restricted to game software (and game software is also restricted to this group), mac — for Apple mac's, misc — general software, not necessarily for UNIX systems, reviewed — a peer-reviewed software source code group, sun — software specifically for Sun Microsystems workstations, and x — software for the X windowing system.

Authors submit their sources to a moderator, who is the only person allowed to post to the group. The moderator bundles the sources for distribution, checks that they are complete, and posts them. The moderator also assigns Volume and Issue numbers to each of the postings. A submission might require several issues, because an issue is limited to 60K to 100K bytes. The moderator also posts periodic indices of the sources posted to his group. Unlike some groups, moderated groups post no discussions of software. Moderated groups post only software. This restriction gives moderated groups what is called a high "signal-to-noise ratio."

Because of the high "signal to noise ratio" in these groups, some computer sites around the world save the sources for future access. These sites are called archive sites. Each archive site decides on its own what groups to archive and for how long to keep the archives. It's to these archive sites I refer you to obtain the sources mentioned in the column. Why to the archive sites? Because the individual members of USENET, unless they archive these groups, will have deleted the sources to make room for the newer postings, usually within a week of the original posting.

A major site might exchange news with 20 or more neighbors. How can they do that? Several ways — one is via a whole bank of modems. Another way to send data to so many sites is to only exchange partial feeds of selections from the list of 8,000 newsgroups. And the last way is via the high speeds offered by the Internet.

The current version of the traditional Network News transport software is named C News, not because it is written in C, but because it follows A News and B News as the third rewrite of the transport software. C News supports transfer of the news articles (the individual messages) between every member of the USENET network. C News works best for smaller sites that mostly have UUCP feeds, and that feed a limited set of neighbors.

Larger sites, especially those with Internet connections, generally run Internet Network News (INN) from Rich Salz. INN is largely responsible for cutting down the time it takes for an article to be propagated throughout the backbone networks. Whereas C news uses batching to distribute articles in bulk, INN uses an immediate transfer to its NNTP (TCP/IP based network news protocol) neighbors. Thus an article on Internet now reaches most of the backbone and regional network sites in only one to five minutes. (Just three years ago this delay was close to a day).

If a site supports FTP access, you need to be on the Internet to access it. FTP allows you to open up a direct connection to the FTP server on a remote system and transfer the files directly to your system FTP will prompt for a user name and optionally a password. Most FTP archive sites allow you to enter a user name of "anonymous." If such a site then prompts for a password, any password will work, but convention and courtesy dictate that you use your name and site address for the password.

If a site supports UUCP access, anyone with UUCP can access the archives. Most sites of this type publish a sample entry for the Systems file (L.sys) showing the system name, phone number of their modems, the connection speeds supported, and the login sequence. Using the uucp command you can poll the system directly and retrieve the software. Many sites post times-of-day restrictions on when you should access the modems. Courtesy dictates that you follow their requests, and some sites enforce the limit with programs. Be sure to call far enough before the end of the period to complete your transfer in time.

A third transfer method, used for smaller files, is through access to an electronic-mail-based archive server. In this method, you send an electronic mail message to the archive server's mailbox name specifying the files you wish. The server will return the files to you via electronic mail. Remember that many sites limit the size of a single mail message, so don't ask for too much at once. Also remember that the archive server is a program, so phrase your request exactly as specified in the instructions for that archive server, and limit your message to exactly that request. Other comments in the message could confuse the program and make it fail to honor your request.

Lastly, if your site is not connected to any network, some archive sites will copy the software onto media for you, if you send them a disk or tape along with return postage and a mailer. Other sites sell media with the software already copied onto it. This practice is especially useful for the largest distributions, such as the X windowing system, which spans multiple tapes.

If you don't have Internet access, but subscribe to UUNET, UUNET will retrieve the files via FTP for you and make them available for UUCP access.

To locate a package via WAIS or archie, use the archive name. The archive name is the short, one-word name in italics given with each listing. To find the file at an archive site, use the group name (from the section of the column you are reading — I place all listings for each group together in the column), the volume number, and the archive name. Most archive sites store the postings as group/ volume/archive-name. The issue numbers tell you how many parts the package was split into when posted. You can use issue numbers to be sure to get all of the parts.

In addition, I report on patches to prior postings. These patches also include the volume numbers, issue(s) numbers, archive name, the contributor's name, and the contributor's electronic mail address. Patches are stored differently by different archive sites. Some sites store patches along with the original volume/archive name of the master posting. Some sites store them by the volume/archive name of the patch itself. The archive name listed is the same for both the patch and the original posting.

Alt.sources, being unmoderated, does not have volume and issue numbers. So I report on the date in the "Date:" header of the posting and the number of parts in which it appeared. If the posting was signed an archive-name by the contributor, I also report on that archive name. Archive sites for alt.sources are harder to find, but they usually store things by the archive name.

As a quick review, here are the steps:

I. Figure out in what group, Volume, and Issue(s) the posting appeared. Also try and determine its archive name. If you know these items, it's usually easy to find an archive site that archives that group. Most archive sites keep their information in a hierarchy, ordered first on the group, then on the volume number, and last on the archive name. These specifications together usually make up a directory path, as in

    comp.sources.unix/volume22/elm2.3

II. If you do not know which sites archive the groups, or even if any site is archiving a particular item (because they are not archiving the entire group), consult Archie. (See "On the Networks," CUJ August 1991, Vol. 9, No. 8). Archie is a mail response program that tries to keep track of sites reachable via FTP that have sources available for distribution. Even if you cannot access the archive site directly via FTP, it is worth knowing that the archive site exists because there are other ways of retrieving sources available only via FTP. Archie can help you find out if the archive site exists, and where.

III. If you know the name of the program, but do no know what group it was posted in, try using Archie and search for the program based on the name. Since most sites store the archives by group and volume, the information returned will tell you what newsgroup and volume it was posted in. Then you can retrieve the item from any archive site for that newsgroup.

IV. If you do not even know the name, but know you are looking for source code that performs some function, retrieve the indexes for each of the newsgroups and see if any of the entries (usually listed as the archive name and a short description of the function) look reasonable. If so, try those. Or, make a query to Archie based on some keywords from the function of the software, and perhaps it can find items that match.

Walnut Creek CD-ROM, 1547 Palos Verdes Mall, Suite 260, Walnut Creek, CA (800) 786-9907 or (510) 947-5996 publishes several CD-ROMs each year. Published software includes the Simtel20 MS-DOS Archive, the X and GNU archives, MS-Windows sources, and other collections of sources and binaries. Disks run from $25 to $60 each (varying by title) plus shipping. In addition, Walnut Creek offers those hard to find CD-caddys at reasonable prices.

Prime Time Freeware, Prime Time Freeware, 370 Altair Way, Suite 150, Sunnyvale, CA 94086, (408) 738-4832, <ptf@cfcl.com>, publishes twice a year a collection of Freely Distributable source code, including the complete USENET archives. Prime Time's disks run about $60 each set plus shipping. The latest issue, 1993, has over 3 Gb of source code spread over two disks. Prime Time also offers a standing subscription plan at a discount.

However, what I have offered to do in the past, and am still willing to do, is provide a list of USENET sites in your area code. Send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope (my address is in the bio squib attached to this column). Those living in major metropolitan areas, please include two stamps on your letter. Note: I can only offer this service for US area codes. If you have net access, but need a news neighbor, I will also reply to Electronic Mail asking for nearby news sites.