A Guide to the Internet
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by m.pallen@ic.ac.uk |
A Guide to the Internet
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by m.pallen@ic.ac.uk |
Aside from email and the world wide web, there are several other systems for distributing information on the the Internet. Telnet is a system that allows you to log on to a remote computer from anywhere on the Internet. Telnet affords access to many useful biomedical sites on the Internet. File transfer protocol (FTP) is a method of transferring files from one computer to another over the Internet. FTP can be used to download files, including software, from numerous publically accessible "anonymous FTP archives" around the world. Such archives can be searched using a tool known as Archie. Network News is a system of electronic discussion groups covering almost every imaginable subject, including many areas of medicine and the biomedical sciences. MOOs are virtual environments that allow real time electronic conferencing and teaching over the Internet.
It is difficult to predict the future of medicine on the Internet. However, it opens up many possibilities not available through previous technologies. It is now up to medical practitioners to realise the Internet's full potential.
Telnet is a tool that allows you to use a remote computer on the Internet as if your computer were a terminal directly connected to it. To create a telnet connection between your microcomputer and a UNIX computer elsewhere on the Internet, you need telnet client software, such as NCSA Telnet for the Mac (1) or DOS (2). The principal use of telnet is to manipulate files and run programs on a UNIX computer where you have an account. To do this you must supply the telnet program with the Internet address of the remote machine, then supply the remote machine with your login name and password.
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Figure 4.1: |
There are, however, a number of open access sites on the Internet, where anyone can login via telnet (see table) by using a publicly advertised login name and password. Such sites usually allow you to use only a limited number of commands. You can search for open access telnet sites using an online tool termed Hytelnet (3), via Telnet, (4) or the world wide web (5).
Table 4.1: Some open access telnet sites | ||
| Service | URL | login instructions |
|---|---|---|
| The Biron System:The ESRC's Archive Online Catalogue And Subject Index | telnet://155.245.10.133 | Login name: biron Password:norib |
| Biotechnet Electronic Buyer's Guide | telnet://biotechnet.com | Login name: BIOTECH Password: bguide |
| BUBL (bulletin borad for libraries) | telnet://bubl.bath.ac.uk | Login Name: bubl |
| E.T.Net At The National Library Of Medicine | telnet://etnet.nlm.nih.gov | Login name: etnet |
| FDA (Food & Drug Administration) Electronic Bulletin Board | telnet://fdabbs.fda.gov | Login name: bbs |
| Fedworld: National Technical Information Service | telnet://fedworld.gov | no Login name needed |
| Grants Bulletin Board (Calstate) | telnet://atl.calstate.edu | Login name: grants |
| Health Sciences Libraries Consortium CBL Software Database | telnet://shrsys.hslc.org | Login name: CBL |
| Higher Education National Software Archive At Lancaster University | telnet://micros.hensa.ac.uk | Login name: hensa Password: hensa |
| HSTAT (Health Services/Technology Assessment Text)(Nlm) | telnet://text.nlm.nih.gov | Login name: hstat |
| Janet News And Public Access Directory Service | telnet://sun.nsf.ac.uk | Login name: janet |
| Medline | telnet://medlars.nlm.nih.gov | Account needed |
| Music And Brain Information Database (MBI) | telnet://mila.ps.uci.edu | Login name: mbi Password: nammbi |
| NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination | telnet://nhscrd.york.ac.uk | Login Name: crduser Password: crduser |
| NIH Grant Line (Drgline Bulletin Board) | telnet://wylbur.cu.nih.gov | Login name: ,gen1 (must include comma) INITIALS? bb5 ACCOUNT? ccs2 |
| NSF Center For Biological Timing | telnet://minerva.acc.virginia.edu | Login name: biotiming |
| Nurse Net Netherlands | telnet://bbs.nursing.nl | Login name: (Your name) |
| Oxford University Radcliffe Science Library | telnet://rsl.ox.ac.uk | Login name: gopher (to use the Gopher client) Login name: lynx (to use the Lynx WWW client) Login name: hytelnet (to use Hytelnet) Login name: libs (for LIBS Internet Access Software) |
| Texas Cancer Data Center | telnet://txcancer.mda.uth.tmc.edu | Login name: TCDC |
| The Well | telnet:// guest@well.com | Login name: guest |
| Wisdom: Wellcome Information Service Databases | telnet://wisdom.wellcome.ac.uk | Login name: wisdom |
Telnet can also be used to connect to MOOs (see below) and electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs). Bulletin board systems (6) allow people to log in and leave messages for others or even communicate in real time. Messages and discussions are typically organised into topic groups. Thousands of local BBSs operate throughout the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe. Some are accessible only by telephone, others can be reached on the net through telnet (7). Some BBSs are free; others charge for access. Bulletin board systems such as the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) (8) (9) often act as virtual communities, providing intellectual, psychological, and social support for their users. (10)
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Figure 4.2 : FTP client programs, |
You can use FTP to move files to and from a UNIX machine where you hold an account; for example, I routinely use FTP to move sequence files between my Macintosh and various UNIX machines. A more common use of FTP is "anonymous FTP," which allows you to retrieve files from thousands of open access software and data archives around the world. With anonymous FTP, you can "bootstrap" yourself on to the net, obtaining all the software needed to use the net's resources.
To connect to an anonymous FTP site, you must supply the site's name (say, "ftp.somewhere.edu" or "ftp.somewhere.ac.uk") and then give "anonymous" as the login name and your email address as the password. On connecting to an anonymous FTP site, you will usually start off in the "pub," or public, directory. From here, you can move down the directory hierarchy to the location of any desired software or other files. Some FTP programs allow you to enter the file path before connecting, so that you are automatically placed in the appropriate directory. FTP directories usually contain a "ReadMe" file and other text files describing the directory's contents.
Many web pages now contain hypertext links to FTP sites. These are driven by FTP-specific URLs such as:
ftp://ftp.qmw.ac.uk/pub/aids/aids9409.datTo use such an URL to make a connection through a dedicated FTP client you must ignore the ftp:// preface, then supply the FTP program with the name of the FTP site:
ftp.qmw.ac.ukand with the filepath:
/pub/aids/aids9409.dat
When using FTP, as with email, it is important to note the difference between ASCII files (text files) and binary files (any other kind of file--programs, images, sound etc). You will often be asked to state whether you wish to download a file in text or binary format. In text mode, the FTP software may make changes to the file during transfer to compensate for differences in the way different operating systems handle text. For example, UNIX terminates lines with the linefeed character; the Macintosh operating system with a carriage return; and MSDOS uses one of each. Correcting for these differnces during a text transfer is useful. However, similar changes to a binary file would be disastrous. Fortunately, the FTP software is often be able to tell automatically whether a text or binary transfer is more appropriate.
Many files stored in anonymous FTP archives are encoded in a compressed format, so that they take up less server space and can be downloaded more quickly. On receipt they must be decompressed with the appropriate decompression software, which will vary according to the compression format (.gzip, .zip, .sit, .hqx, .tar, .uu, .uue, .cpu) and operating system (Macintosh, DOS, Windows, Archimedes, Atari, or Amiga). Although there are a few compression formats that are particular to a given platform (.sit, .sea, .cpt for the Mac; .exe for self-extracting DOS programs), most compression formats can be used, given suitable software, on most platforms. (14)
If you know the name of the file that you are looking for, things get easier, thanks to a utility called Archie (17). Archie consists of a set of computers on the Internet that continually search all the anonymous FTP sites around the world and then compile the results into a single searchable database. Currently, Archie tracks the contents of over 950 anonymous FTP archive sites containing some 5.7 million files representing more than 94 gigabytes of information. Although Archie client software exists for several operating systems (18) (19), it is often now easier to do Archie searches through a web tool known as Archieplex (20). Archie searches typically take a few minutes. Archieplex and most Archie clients allow automatic retrieval of any files found using built in FTP routines. If you do not have full Internet access you can access Archie by email (send a message to archie@archie.doc.ic.ac.uk containing the word "help"), or by telnet (21) .
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Figure 4.3: A typical Archie search |
Each top level category is further subdivided many times, with each group conforming to a hierarchical naming convention, so that, for example, sci.med (36) is a general medical newsgroup within the sci category, and sci.med.aids (37) is a newsgroup dealing with the medical and scientific aspects of AIDS.
Not all newsgroups are part of USENET. Local university sites often run newsgroups that are only available locally (e.g. at Imperial College there are several ic.* newsgroups). The BIONET newsgroups (38) form a widely available set of newsgroups outside USENET that are of interest to biomedical workers. The number of newgroups taken by sites varies; some of the more perverse or arcane newsgroups, particularly those involving sex, are carried by very few sites.
Once you have access to a news server, you can read or contribute to thousands of newsgroups. However, it is useful to select, or "subscribe to," a set of newsgroups that you will want to follow in detail. The medical newcomer to the Internet should take a look at the newsgroups in the table and subscribe to those that seem most interesting. After a while you will get an idea of which groups are worthwhile; you can then unsubscribe from the less useful ones.
The world wide web browser, Netscape (49), is now also able to act as a threading newsreader (See figure). The advantage of using a web browser as a newsreader is that hypertext links can be made to newsgroups from web pages (using URLs prefaced with "news:") and links to web pages to be followed directly from newsgroup articles. Network news can be accessed by email (23).
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Fig 4.4 Click on image to view full sized figure |
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Fig 2.5 The Newsgroup Click on image to view full sized figure |
As with email messages, the substance of a newsgroup posting should be summarised in the subject line and previous messages should be quoted in abbreviated form to provide a context for the new information. Contributers should post only material that is clearly within the scope of the newsgroup. This is usually defined in a list of frequently asked questions (or "FAQ") about the newgroup, which is posted on the newsgroup at regular intervals or can be retrieved via FTP (54) or the world wide web (55) (56). Advertising of products or services may or may not be allowed, depending on the type of newsgroup (it is forbidden in the BIONET groups). Where advertising is permitted, it should be done discreetly and only to an appropriate newsgroup. Mass advertising by posting inappropriate messages to a large number of groups--a practice known as "spamming" (57) (58)--is likely to lead to a deluge of complaints by email, sufficient to d rive the spammer off the net (59) (60).
Despite the rules of netiquette, some network newsgroups are characterised by a low level of common courtesy and a poor signal-to-noise ratio. Naive or inappropriate postings may be met with gratuitous insults (or "flames") (61), far worse than anything you may have experienced off line. If you reply in kind you may set off a "flame war," the newsgroup equivalent of a bar-room brawl. However, do not be too put off: both flaming and inappropriate postings are far less common on the BIONET newsgroups. Another way of improving the quality of the information you receive from network news is to use an "infobot," a program that searches out postings that might interest you, then emails them to you. Stanford University's Netnews Filtering Service (62) scans the USENET groups, while the EBI Netnews Filtering Service (63) scans the BIONET groups. Both are accessible via the web (62) (63) and by email (send an email with "help" in the body to netnews@db.stanford.edu or to netnews@ebi.ac.uk).
The Internet is bristling with activity. In these articles a selection of services of most immediate use to the biomedical worker have been covered. There are many other Internet tools (64) includingthe following.
MOOs (MUDs, object-orientated) (69) (70) are derivatives of MUDs that can be used not just for playing games but also for electronic conferencing. MOOs of interest to biomedical workers include the BioMOO (71) (72), the Neurosurgery MOO (73) (74), the Diversity University MOO (75) and the CollegeTown MOO (76) (77). In a MOO, academics from around the world can meet on line without physically leaving their offices. For example, during a recent Internet based course on sequence analysis (78) I attended tutorials at the BioMO O, (83, (84) where students from Israel and Europe were taught by an expert in the USA.
The medical colonisation of cyberspace has only just begun. It is difficult to predict the future of medicine in this new world. Some have already proclaimed the death knell of medical journals (82) (83). Others point out that the Internet cannot yet compete with a good library as a source of scientific information (84). However, medical librarians are already planning to tame the Internet's wild frontier with the ambitious OMNI (organising medical networked information) project, which aims to provide biomedical workers with a gateway to high quality networked information. (85)
The Internet will prove most immediately useful in medical education and research; clinical applications, for example, in telemedicine, are further off. McLaren and Ball, when discussing telemedicine, have recently emphasised the problems of being mesmerised by new technologies (86) (87). However, the Internet promises possibilities that are simply not available through earlier technologies; imagine:
Box 1: When things go wrong.The Internet is far from perfect. It is sometimes impossible to connect to an FTP, telnet, gopher or web site; the site might be too busy; it might be down for maintenance or other problems; or you may have made a typing mistake. If you get a "login incorrect" message from a telnet site, then check the spelling of the site name, login name, and password (these last two are case sensitive). If an email bounces it is usually because you have mistyped the email address.If, when using the web, you get a message saying that the file you want cannot be found, try nibbling back at the right hand end of the URL--for example, instead of http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~rhbm001/intro.htmltry: http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~rhbm001/or http://www.qmw.ac.uk If when you start to load a web page, things start slowing down, try using the "Reload" option on your web browser; you may get a quicker connection. If you are in Europe try to avoid using the net after midday, as it slows down once North America comes on line.
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Box 2: Getting more information on the NetIf after reading these articles and setting up your Internet connection, you want to learn more, there are several sources of information and guidance for newbies. Unfortunately, most books on the Internet are out of date by the time they are published. Ed Krol's Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalogue (95) (96) (97) (98) remains a good solid introduction to the net. Otherwise, you are probably better off concentrating on Internet magazines;my favorites are Internet,(99) .net (100), Internet World (101), NetUser (102), Internet & Comms Today(103) and Wired(104), all of which also have a presence on the web. The mailing list NewbieNewz is aimed at answering newbie's questions and provides much information of value to the newbie; to subscribe send an email to A href="mailto:Majordomo@pentagon.io.com"> Majordomo@pentagon.io.comwith the message subscribe newbienewz Among network newsgroups, the following are of use to newbies: Useful information for newcomers to the Internet is available via the web site "NETLiNkS! Newbie Help Link"(109). Patrick Crispen's Internet Road Map(110) also provides a useful introduction.
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AcknowledgmentsI thank the following citizens of cyberspace (most of whom I have never met IRL) for their help in preparing this series of articles:
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2. NCSA IBM PC and Compatibiles Products
4. Hytelnet Telnet access at Oxford
5. Hytelnet WWW access at Cambridge
6. The Jargon file 3.2.0 - BBS
7. Guide to Select BBS's on the Internet
10. Rheingold G. The Virtual Community. London: Minerva, 1994.
20. List of WWW Archie Services
23. Accessing The Internet By E-Mail: Doctor Bob's Guide to Off-line Internet Access, 4th Edition July 1995
24. USENET Software History and Sources
38. BIOSCI/bionet Frequently Asked Questions
39. EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet: USENET - The Global Watering Hole
40. Tutorial on Tin, The News Reader
48. The Jargon File 3.2.0 - thread
49. NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR FTP AND MIRROR SITES
50. A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community
51. Hints on writing style for Usenet
52. Rules for posting to Usenet
53. The Jargon file 3.2.0 - Lurker
57. The Jargon file 3.2.0 - spam
58. Lovely spam, wonderful spam
60. Clueless marketing on the Internet
61. The Jargon File 3.2.0 - flame
62. Stanford Netnews Filtering Service
63. EBI Netnews Filtering Service
67. Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)
69. GNA-VSNS Biocomputing Course Chapter 2: Networking section 3.6 MOOs
73. Telnet to Neurosurgery MOO
74. About the Neurosurgery MOO
75. Telnet to Diversity University MOO
77. CollegeTown Information File
78. Welcome to the VSNS BioComputing Division
82. The death of biomedical journals
83. LaPorte RE, Marler E, Akazawa S, et al. The death of biomedical journals. BMJ 1995;310(6991):1387-1389.
84. GNA-VSNS Biocomputing Course Chapter 2: Networking
85. OMNI: Organizing Medical Networked Information
86. McLaren P, Ball CJ. Telemedicine: lessons remain unheeded. BMJ 1995;310:1390-1391.
87. Telemedicine: lessons remain unheeded
88. Doyne & FMLH Drug Formulary
89. Virtual Pharmacy Center: Drug Databases
90. xxx.lanl.gov e-Print archive
91. Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine
92. Gerald Malone launches Cochrane database of systematic reviews
93. The Cochrane Collaboration
94. NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination
95. Krol E. The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalogue. (2nd ed.) O'Reilly & Associates, 1994.
96. "Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalogue" Order at Blackwells
97. About the Online Whole Internet Catalog
98. "Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalogue" Order at O'Reilly's
109. NETLiNkS! Newbie Help Link