Ben Smith
Most small- to medium-size businesses do not have a connection to the Internet. The main reason for this is that it's orders of magnitude easier to get a phone line connected to your office than it is to get a connection to the Internet.
If you want to be an Internet information provider, your Internet connection needs to be the best IP connection that you can afford. However, that's difficult to achieve.
If your business needs to be only a consumer of Internet resources, the simplest way to get access is by subscribing to any of the commercial information exchanges that have recently added Internet access. This access, however, is usually limited.
The second line of access is through dial-up Internet-access providers that provide you with shell accounts on a server. These systems are specifically built on traditional Internet-server platforms, so they provide all the service that you'd expect to get if you had your own Internet server in your office that included Usenet news, Internet E-mail, FTP, and many other Unix utilities.
One of the best-known dial-up access sites, The World, is located in Brookline, Massachusetts. Like subscribers to the large information exchanges, subscribers to The World can access the server by dialing in directly, either through The World's own network of access points or through the CompuServe Packet Network, the U.S. nationwide communications network. (You don't have be a subscriber to CompuServe to use this access.) On the West Coast is a famous server called The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link). Yet another is CERFnet, which offers toll-free dial-up service.
Another notable dial-up service is The Pipel
ine, located in New York City. By using a proprietary communications protocol, you can achieve many of the attractive features of Mosaic at a fraction of the cost of other services. The Pipeline includes E-mail and Usenet news, along with some Internet-browsing tools, all with a common user interface. As with Mosaic, the client program is free (
see the screen
).
There are other advantages of using dial-up access. For example, all the processing, file retrieval, and caching takes place on the remote servers and doesn't burden your system with the storage and management of all those files.
But there are disadvantages as well: You are totally reliant on the remote system for access methods and control. Your connect time is determined by the speed at which you read the text on the remote system, not by the potential bandwidth of your connection. (Chat scripts, which automatically log in and download files for local viewing, can eliminate this problem.) Finally, you are often lim
ited to just text. True, you can retrieve images, but the process of retrieval and viewing is not integrated into the search-and-retrieval method. The only way to eliminate these limitations is by tying your system to the Internet using UUCP or TCP/IP, the Internet's native protocols.
Internet Protocol Connections
UUCP is the Internet protocol that is the least expensive to implement. It's the modem-to-modem protocol that's traditionally used to distribute E-mail and Usenet news. You need to have your site connected to get your E-mail and news via UUCP. UUNET Technologies (Falls Church, VA) operates the most famous and the most connected dial-up site in the U.S. Being a UUNET client has another advantage: You're connected to one of the most important archive sites--a computer system that has copies of the most popular freely available programs and information files.
With UUCP, you can not only send and receive E-mail and Usenet news but also retrieve files from the systems
that you're connected to. Since all files on all UUCP connections can be automatically transferred among machines, the connection time and phone charges are much less than when you use a modem to interactively read a file on another system.
Even better than a UUCP connection to an Internet site is an IP connection. While UUCP is a store-and-forward protocol-and-networking design, IP and its companions, TCP and UDP, are the basis of the fully connected client/server networking that represents most of the Internet today.
You don't have to have a Unix or VMS server at your end to take full advantage of an IP connection. There are plenty of client programs that you can run on your MS-DOS, Windows, NT, or Macintosh computer, Mosaic being the most modern of them. But first you need to get an IP connection.
There are many places to go to obtain an IP connection, as well as many ways of implementing it. A small business may not need--or be able to afford--a full-time, leased-phone-line connectio
n to the Internet. Two IP connection-on-demand alternatives might be sufficient: SLIP and PPP.
SLIP is a simple and nonstandardized, but widely available, protocol that requires few resources to implement or install. It was designed for relatively low-speed modem-to-modem connections and low loads.
PPP, on the other hand, offers standards, flexibility (i.e., you can implement more than TCP/IP over it), and optional security. However, it not only requires more sophistication to implement and install than SLIP, but it also needs more bandwidth overhead from the serial connection to run.
Many of the larger dial-up-connection providers that offer shell accounts also offer SLIP and PPP connections. Be sure to work out your local system's communications logistics before you approach a vendor for a connection. Steer around any protocol and system incompatibilities when searching for the best connection provider. If you are achieving your IP connection from an MS-DOS or Windows PC, the applicatio
n that you run on it for navigating the Internet must be an application that the connection provider can ensure will work with its system.
If you find yourself in need of a local network with a TCP/IP connection to the Internet, you've entered a world of servers, routers, and system administration. You've become a member of the Internet, with all its associated powers, privileges, and responsibilities.
It's possible that errors on your network may cause problems for other members of the Internet once your little LAN is going to be seen in some form in the outside world. You must have registered and approved IP addresses, network-domain names, and IP ports and services. If you're doing an IP-LAN-to-Internet connection for the first time, you may need some on-site help to get up and running cleanly.
illustration_link (55 Kbytes)
The Pipeline, a nota
ble dial-up service located in New York City, lets you achieve many of Mosaic's features at a fraction of the cost of other services. It provides a Mosaic-like browser free of charge, and it includes E-mail and Usenet news, along with some Internet-browsing tools, all with a common user interface.
Ben Smith is a consultant, a former BYTE Lab testing editor, and the author of Unix Step-by-Step (Hayden Books, 1990). You can reach him on the Internet at
ben@ronin.com
or on BIX as "bensmith."
Making the Internet Connection
