During the 18 years I have been dealing with computers, different aspects of computing have caught the public eye, generally through the media.
The latest public fancy seems to be the Internet. I have seen articles in newspapers, weekly newsmagazines, computer trade journals, and even in women's magazines! In one of our local book stores is a new crop of books on connecting to the Internet and navigating around it once connected. What is it that has attracted such a large amount of press?
Since I work with Wimsey Information Services, one of the major commercial Internet connections in the Vancouver area, I can tell you. In daily contacts with our subscribers I have found that there are many reasons for their use of and connection to the Internet. Some are hooked in because they require E-mail to others equally connected, some are looking for the interaction of the Usenet News groups in fields they are interested in, and some are there simply for the feeling that they get from "being connected to the rest of the world". But what is it that those who are not yet connected glimpse through the articles they have read - what are they expecting when they phone up and say "I want to connect to the Internet"?
The answer in many cases is that the person doesn't know exactly. They want to get in on this thing that has been so talked about and find out for themselves what all the Hoopla is about. They have read glowing accounts of "reaching the global community" and "browsing the world's libraries" and "cyberspace". The thought of missing out on all of this exciting stuff is just too much for them, so the phone call is placed to activate an account and get on the bandwagon.
The typical questions I get from such neophyte cybernaughts are:
What does it take to get connected? What does this connection really cost in terms of required hardware and software? What do I get for my money? And the final question - What is the Internet really?
In this short article I can't go into as much detail as some of the books that are now available, but maybe I can give a summary and point the reader at some other places to look.
What does it take to get connected:
The minimum required to connect to the Internet is a 'dumb' terminal capable of minimal full screen (80x24) clearing and cursor addressing. This means that the system you connect to must be able to tell the terminal to clear its screen and place its cursor anywhere within the confines of the 80 column by 24 line visual area, and start putting text received there. This doesn't sound like much, but it is substantially more than many BBS systems require, which is simply a 'scrolling' terminal where new text is put at the bottom of the screen and old text is pushed up a line at a time until it disappears off the top.
The cursor addressing requires that the central system know what commands to send to your screen to do the clearing and move the cursor around. There are several thousand different ways of doing this! Fortunately, there are some terminal types that have become defacto standards for Internet connected systems. One of these is the DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) VT100 type terminal and another is the ANSI standard - actually a superset of the VT100 in most ways.
Whatever you use must be able to emulate one of these, or you need to make special arrangements with your Internet supplier. Most communications software packages for the popular PC's can handle this type of emulation at minimum. Packages are available for the IBM-PC, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari, Next, and virtually any other computers found in homes these days.
Once you have a terminal or terminal emulator running on your PC, you require a telephone modem and means to hook it to the PC. Most people today can afford the $200 - $300 for one of the faster V32bis/V42bis 14,400baud modems. The difference between these and the older but more common 2400baud modems is remarkable, and well worth the difference in price. If you have problems with errors showing up on your screen at this speed, see my article in the September issue about problems with serial communications ports at high speed.
Now you need to find a willing Internet connection provider. Here in the Lower Mainland there are many BBS's that will give you access to some of the features of the whole Internet - Usenet News, E-mail, and maybe some file transfer, but most are not directly connected to the 'real' Internet, they simply take copies of some of the interesting bits and provide it to you from within the confines of their own machine.
Some people are connected via feeds from UBC and SFU. These people are probably students and faculty of these and other institutions, and access is part of their relationship with the University. If you are a student or staff member, this is probably the easiest way to join the Internet fraternity - in essence, you already are members if you use the University computers at all.
In addition to personnel at the Universities, some businesses closely connected with the research and development community are also connected via either the Universities or direct connection to BCNet which is the main backbone of BC. If you belong to one of these businesses, you may be able to access the facilities outside of office hours for personal use. See your system administrator for permission and details.
What about those with neither connections to the school systems nor benevolent bosses that are already connected? How do we connect? At this time there are only three providers of public access, intermittent dialup Internet access here: Wimsey Information Services, Cyberstore, and Mindlink. WizZone Computers (Kerrisdale and West Van) also has a system in place for their customers.
Each has its own particular style of access, ranging from the very elegant to the very functional. Different people, with varying technical capabilities and needs will choose one or the other of these providers. All however provide direct real time access to the rest of that nebulous entity called the Internet. All provide facility to browse through 'gopher space' or telnet through 'cyberspace' or ask 'archie' for the locations of public access software and all of the other things that come along with such direct connection.
In addition, you soon will be able to get at least some access from the Vancouver FreeNet, and you can already get access through the Victoria FreeNet. One point about the FreeNets is that although they are generally connected to the Internet in some fashion, their main reason for being is to foster and promote access to local information, not things from other systems. Access to outside systems and information is generally restricted by the fact that they rarely have enough facilities for the local stuff, let alone for remote access.
As well as the standard terminal software for "Interactive" access, there is now software which uses network access protocols on PC's for single user systems. These systems use either PPP (Point to Point Protocol) or SLIP (Serial Link Interface Protocol) to connect to the Internet provider. Public domain software such as Eudora for the Apple Macintosh, along with MacPPP and MacTCP have made this type of system a serious platform for Internet access. Similar software is available commercially for the IBM-PC type machines, and public domain versions of the Eudora software are supposed to be available in early 1994.
If you have a Macintosh or are willing to spend the money for software for your IBM-PC, this type of access has some very intriguing aspects. With a PPP or SLIP link, your machine is directly connected to the Internet and shares all of the capabilities of any other system so connected. File transfers from "out there" come directly to your system instead of going to your Internet provider's system first and then having to be transfered using something like Zmodem or Kermit. Graphical files can be directly seen while traversing the "World Wide Web" with Mosaic software. A whole new aspect of cyberspace opens up with the immediacy of the direct connection. You can also have multiple sessions working at the same time; a file transfer session in one window, a telnet session in another, and a gopher session in a third, all at once.
So in order to get connected, you need a minimum of a cursor addressable terminal, preferably a VT100 or emulator, a modem, preferably 14,400baud capable, and an account on an internet access provider of your choice. You can go much further in hardware and software, but this is not really necessary, at least in the beginning.
What does it cost to connect:
The cost of the hardware you require can range from a used terminal and modem for as little as $10 at an auction, to a couple of hundred dollars to add a modem and software to an existing system, or several thousand dollars for a fully networked system with off line mail and news reading facilities and the disk storage necessary to hold a couple of days worth of Usenet News (200-300 Megabytes!).
The cost of the Internet connection depends on the supplier, and on the method you use to access them. An "Interactive" account, which all supply, is generally less than $50 to set up, and runs from about $1 an hour to over $4 an hour. Some systems restrict the number of hours each day you can connect, and charge a flat fee per month or per year, with a surcharge or a different level of service for those who want more time or different services. The FreeNets don't charge anything, but they also restrict the amount of time an individual can be on line, and don't have many lines so will be busy much of the time.
At this time, only Wimsey Information Services provides intermittent dialup PPP, SLIP, or UUCP. Pricing for PPP and SLIP are similar to interactive, with a surcharge for using more than one session at a time over the link. UUCP is not really a direct connection to the Internet, being used mainly for batch E-mail and Usenet News transfer for offline reading. It is priced at double the Interactive rate to reflect the increased machine resources needed to feed the link at full speed.
So the cost of the access is about $50 to get started, and up to $4 an hour for usage. This compares favourably with plugging loonies into a video game at a rate of up to 30 an hour. It's comparible to renting a video for $3 and getting 2 hours of entertainment. It can be a lot more than the $25 a month for the cable feed, but there are more channels and it is far more stimulating. It is generally less than the cost of hooking up to Compuserve, Prodigy, or any of the other commercial computer services, yet you can send and receive E-mail to/from any of these other services.
What do I really get:
What do you get? The world, fraternity, brotherhood, information, stimulus, education, all these and more. The internet is as much or as little as you make of it. It isn't an end in itself, it is a means to an end. It can provide you with some of the most concentrated information (FAQ's or Frequently Asked Questions) that you have ever found in one place. It can show you the satelite's view of the weather on an hourly basis. It can help you find the answer to a question that has been puzzling you for months (Usenet News). It can allow you to chat with friends old and new from virtually any part of the globe (IRC or Internet Relay Chat). It can be used to play games with others from anywhere (MUD - Multi User Dungeons).
On a different plane, you get the chance to interact with some of the largest publicly accessible information structures in the world. You have access to online books, research papers, graphics, historical information, biological information, international facts and figures, and hundreds of other categories. You can do keyword searches on court and government documents, retrieve endless reams of text about subjects as diverse as aphids and the space shuttle.
You also get a chance to show your ignorance, bias, prejudice, bad manners, and stupidity to millions of people at once if you don't watch out. You can end up the recipient of "flames" from every corner of the world, flooding your incoming E-mail box to the point that it is useless for any reasonable correspondance. You can be ostracized from forums on which you have grown to depend. You can be banned from using the facility at all! Remember, the facilities and users on the 'Net are there for their own reasons. They are not there for you to abuse and play silly games with. You are allowed the priviledge of using their equipment and information because they expect either a direct return of such favours (you make available your data or help organize other's) or indirect return by aiding others in need of information and help. At minimum they expect your benign minimal interference with what it is that others do. At best, it is assumed that persons connected to the 'Net will add to the synergy enough to justify their continued access along with that of others on their local network. At worst, it is assumed that you won't abuse the priviledges granted you by intruding your requests and transmissions into the legitimate business of others enough to agravate anyone.
I have seen instances where an individual that pushed the limits of what are called the "Acceptable Usage Guidelines" has been kicked off a system because other network owners had threatened to severe the connection of the smaller network unless this was done. The individual had sent large unsolicited commercial E-mail messages to thousands of users on networks that have specifically banned commercial traffic. Other people have lost their net access for many other reasons.
So what you get from the Internet can be directly related to what you put back into it. If everyone takes the time to make the 'Net a more friendly, helpful, social facility, then it will succeed in what the visionaries who have helped put it together have hoped it will do. Each has had a specific reason for their original connection with other nets, however all have found that the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts in this case.
The Reality of the Internet:
The Internet really does exist. But it exists only as a collection of separately controlled smaller networks each of which has agreed to connect to others in order to make the whole more useable than the parts are individually. There is no one person or government or corporation that owns or controls the Internet. It is probably the only truly working anarchy in existence today.
This loose aglomeration of networks exists solely for the benefit of users of the constituent networks today. Few of the major players really require this level of interconnection for their major functions - moving data around, internal E-mail, long distance interactive terminal sessions, etc. Only because of the synergy created by the interaction of the larger numbers of systems and people working in a cooperative way, are the connections allowed and fostered.
What this means to the individual desiring access is that s/he may be allowed to connect to one of the already connected networks, but that both their own continued access and the access of the smaller network to the larger one hinges upon staying in the good graces of those other networks. This is one place where good sense and good manners make a major difference in the way one is treated by an enormous number of others - most of whom you will never meet with in person.
So the Internet does exist, but no one owns it, and your access to it may depend on people in other countries, of varying nationalities and backgrounds, whom you have never met. This leads to one of the most gratifying aspects of the 'Net - almost everyone is extremely polite.
The Internet will show you that it is possible for people from anywhere, with widely diverse technical, ethnic and religeous backgrounds, to interact and share a facility that all agree is incredible in its diversity and depth; a facility that millions of people are working towards making better and greater. The Internet is a sample of the vision of a truly united world.
For other information: The Whole Internet Catalogue O'Reilly & Associates Inc.
The Internet Companion Addison Wesley Publishing Co.
The Internet Navigator John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Zen and the Art of the Internet Prentice Hall
Connecting to the Internet O'Reilly & Associates Inc.
Navigating the Internet Sams Publishing
Internet: Getting Started Prentice Hall