Making a list of online services is difficult. Daily, new services are born, while others disappear. Addresses and access numbers are constantly changing. Only one thing is certain: Some details given in this handbook will be outdated, when you read it.
Web: http://www.afp.com/
features the CNN Newsroom (Turner Educational Services), the National Geographic magazine, PC World and Macworld, tailor-made graphical user interfaces for Apple, Macintosh, and PC compatible computers, Internet mail, Web, and much more. It had over 13 million subscribers in the United States by September 1998. In addition, they have many subscribers outside the U.S, plus many using the services of their CompuServe subsidiary.
Email: info@aol.com. World Wide Web address: http://www.aol.com
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is a worldwide partnership of member networks for peace and environmental users with host computers in several countries around the world. The APC nets have full Internet access (except FTP).
While all these services are fee based, they bring a wealth of information on environmental preservation, peace (including Greenpeace Press Releases), human rights, grant-making foundations, Third World Resources, United Nations Information Service, Pesticide Information Service, and more.
See Appendix 7 for more information.
Japanese PC network for hobbyists. This online service had around 120,000 members in October 1996. Phone: +81-3-3797-6506. Fax: +81-3-3486-0488. Full Internet connectivity.
AT&T Mail Customer Assistance Center, 5000 Hadley Road, South Plainsfield, NJ 07080, U.S.A. Email: postmaster@attmail.com.
Norwegian online service with conferences and many files. Modem tel.: +47 55 324447. PDN (Datapak) address: 0 2422 450134. Telnet: oscar.bbb.no (192.124.156.38).
English-language interface available. Annual subscription rates. Online registration. Limited free usage.
"Because It's Time NETwork" started as a small network for IBM computers. In October 1994, BITNET encompassed 1,481 host computers by academic and research institutions all over the world. It had around 111,000 users (source: Matrix News 1995 - http://www3.mids.org/mn/). Today, it is a dying network.
All connected hosts form a worldwide network using the NJE (Network Job Entry) protocols and with a single list of nodes. There is no single worldwide BITNET administration.
The European part of BITNET is called EARN (European Academic Research Network), while the Canadian is called NetNorth. In Japan the name is AsiaNet. BITNET also has connections to South America. Other parts of the network have names like CAREN, ANSP, SCARNET, CEARN, GULFNET, HARNET, ECUANET, and RUNCOL.
is operated as a joint venture between General Videotex Corp. and the North American computer magazine BYTE (McGraw-Hill). To some extent, it mirrors what you can read on paper. BIX offers full Internet access. In 1992, the service had about 50,000 members.
Send email to BIX members as user@bix.com.
The NUA address is 0310600157878. On Internet, do telnet://x25.bix.com. At the Username: prompt, enter BIX as a user name. At the second Username: prompt, enter NEW if you do not already have an account on the service. You can also telnet from its Web site:
http://www.mcs.com/~jvwater/bix.html
You can sign up for the service, and play during your first visit to the service. Email: TJL@mhis.bix.com.
Bibliographic Retrieval Services is owned by CD Plus. BRS/After Dark is a service for PC users. Available during evenings and weekends at attractive rates.
BRS has about 120 databases within research, business, news, and science. The service's strengths are medicine and health. Membership BRS requires paying an annual fee, plus hourly database usage charges. It is also available through CompuServe (at a different price).
Contact in Europe: BRS Information Technologies, Achilles House, Western Avenue, London W3 OUA, England. Tel. +44 81 993 9962.
owns BRS Online, which in turn owns BRS Online, BRS Colleague, BRS After Dark, and BRS Morning Search. The latter focuses on medical information. CDP offers about 160 databases, of which about 70 relate to biomedical fields. These services were earlier owned by InfoPro. They have been renamed to CDP Online and CDP Colleague. Voice: +1 212 563 3006.
is a network interconnecting a group of international research organizations. Besides email, CGNET provides news clipping services, airline reservation information, and database search. (See Dialcom)
Contact: CGNET Services International, 1024 Hamilton Court, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA. Telephone: +1-415-325-3061. Fax: 1-415-325-2313 Telex: 4900005788 (CGN UI) .
Compulink Information eXchange Ltd. (England) claims to be Europe's largest conferencing system. British online-service available by telnet, PDN services and direct dial. Full Internet access, and email exchange with CompuServe and Dialcom. Web: http://www.compulink.co.uk/cix/. Access for subscribers: telnet://cix.compulink.co.uk. For information, write to cixadmin@cix.compulink.co.uk.
The Commercial Internet eXchange is a North American association of commercial Internet providers in which they agree to carry each others' packets of mail, and more.
A commercial supplier of wire services to Internet users: general, international, sports, technology, entertainment and financial news, plus special features and columns, press releases from major companies.
Their services are delivered by email and through Usenet. The Newsgroups for Clarinet begin with clari. (also called ClariNews).
See Chapter 9 for more information. Single-user (individual) prices available. Associated Press, Reuters, Newsbytes, and other sources.
Clarinet Communications Corp: http://www.clari.net/.
has over 1,500 databases, 600 forums, 500 newspapers, online shopping from more than 170 stores and entertainment. It's like a large electronic supermarket. It was sold to America Online in September 1997.
An updated list of available forums can be retrieved from Library 1 of the free Practice Forum (GO PRACTICE).
The IQuest database service gives access to over 450 databases spanning the fields of business, government, research and news. Bibliographic and full- text searches (check http://www.iquest.n2k.com/).
Some IQuest databases are the property of other online services, like Brainwave for NewsNet, Dialog, and BRS, DataSolve (has TASS in the World Reporter database), Data-Star, and Questel-Orbit. However, it may be faster and cheaper to search them on CompuServe, than by directly contacting these services.
Knowledge Index offers over 120 of Dialog's more popular full-text and bibliographic databases, the full text of 33 major newspapers, scientific abstracts, reference sources, and more within 27 subject sections (1993).
CompuServe can be accessed though local access numbers in over 100 countries, Packet Switching, and outdial services. The international NUA address is 0313299999997. Also accessible by: telnet://compuserve.com.
CompuServe Information Services Inc.: http://www.compuserve.com.
SPRY, CompuServe Internet Division, provides worldwide Internet access, services and software for the home and business markets. Information: http://www.sprynet.com/.
A service of Deutsche Telekom (Germany) having around 800.000 subscribers (1995).
is a leading European-based online service that is part of the Dialog Corporation, and owned by M.A.I.D. (previously Knight-Ridder Information, Inc.). It offers over 400 databases (1996) from a broad scope of disciplines. In addition to a global coverage of automotive industry data, detailed import/export trade statistics, and specialized pharmaceutical, biomedical, and health care information, Data-Star's strength is its collection of European information, newspapers and newswires.
SciSearch is a reference database of over nine million stories from 4500 newspapers and magazines. Data-Star is strong on pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, and automotive industries.
Other databases: Current Patents Fast Alert, Flightline (with stories about air transport), The Turing Institute Database on artificial intelligence, Information Access (international market data), parts of SovData, Who Owns Whom, Telefirm - Directory of French Companies, etc..
Access through Internet: telnet://rserve.rs.ch [192.82.124.4]. Contact: http://www.krinfo.ch/
is owned by British Telecom and is a network of data centers in many countries. Dialcom is selling its services through many agents (like EsiStreet for the music industry, and CGNet for agricultural research).
Some selected services: The Official Airline Guide, news (Financial Times Profile, Newsbytes, AP, UPI, and Reuters), mail (Dialcom400), fax services and several conference type offerings (like Campus 2000 for the education market).
Most Dialcom users are unable to exchange mail with the Internet, but mail can be sent to users of SprintMail, IBM Mail, AT&Ts Easylink, MCI Mail, Compania Telefonica Nacional de Espana, and some other X.400 systems.
Contact: Dialcom, 6120 Executive Blvd., Rockville, MD 20852, U.S.A. The British service Telecom-Gold is a subsidiary of Dialcom UK. In North America, contact BT North America at tel.: +1-408-922-7543. In Europe, contact British Telecom.
CGNET can be reached through the Internet. Write postmaster@cgnet.com for more information.
The Dialog Corporation is a commercial service comprised of the traditional DIALOG and DataStar services supplemented by Profound and DIALOG Select. It is owned by M.A.I.D. (http://www.maid.com).The DIALOG service (previously owned by Knight-Ridder Information, Inc.) has more than 450 databases online (1995), covering almost every discipline. Besides offering significant science and technology databases, Dialog boasts a large online collection of full-text sources, including 3,000 journals, newsletters, reports, newspapers, plus a large collection of intellectual property files covering patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
Their list of sources includes the San Francisco Chronicle in full-text, Newsbytes, Information Access, the Japan Technology database, most major global news wires, Trademarkscan, USA Today, Teikoku Databank from Japan.
Dialog has gateways to other services, like CompuServe and iNet, making the databases available to a larger market. Many databases are also available on CD-ROM. The service had 155,000 users at the end of 1993 according to SIMBA Information.
Web address: http://www.dialog.com. Access is also possible by telnet://dialog.com (192.132.3.254).
Web: http://www.dimdi.de/
covers around 5,500 business and financial information sources . This includes a mix of newspapers (96), newswires (42), market reports, and company financials. (1998). Their Publications Library is a vast searchable database that includes all Dow Jones's publications. Also, DJI offers a comprehensive clipping service: continuous email notification of news items or articles or articles added to the Publications Library on topics and in publications selected by the user.
Web address: http://ip.dowjones.com.
Web address: http://www.dnb.com/
European Commission Host Organization. On the Web: http://www.echo.lu/
ECHO's I'M GUIDE provides information about online services within the European Common Market. These includes CD-ROMs, databases and databanks, database producers, gateways, host organizations, PTT contact points, and information brokers in Europe.
For information contact: ECHO Customer Service, BP 2373, L-1023 Luxembourg. Tel.: +352 34 98 1200. Fax: +352 34 98 1234.
Declared bankrupt on Aug 2, 1996 (Luxembourg). Closed.
is based in Milwaukee (U.S.A.). In January, 1995, it had over 300 incoming phone lines, and more than 650,000 files available for downloading (including the complete selection from PC-SIG California). Large conferencing board.
The service focuses on owners of IBM compatible computers (MS/PC-DOS, Windows, OS/2, Windows, Unix), Apple Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST through over 200 conferences.
You can access EXEC-PC through telnet://execpc.com. Annual subscription fee. You can sign on while online. Unregistered users get some free minutes per day. Web address: http://www.execpc.com/.
is an amateur electronic mail network founded in 1984 for automatic transfers of files from one place to the other at night, when the telephone rates are low. FidoNet are in countries all over the world, and consists mainly of personal computers (IBM/Amiga/Macintosh...).
FidoNet systems exchange documents by using a modem and calling another FidoNet system. Communication can be either direct to the destination system (calling long distance) or by routing a message to a local system.
Each computer connected to FidoNet is called a node. In November 1995, it had over 35,000 nodes in 96 countries (source: FidoNet host table). The number of nodes used to be growing at about 40 percent per year, but this levelled off when the Internet's strong growth started. In 1997, it had around 30.000 nodes.
Most nodes are operated by volunteers, and access is free. FidoNet is believed to have over 2.56 million users (1994/Matrix News).
Conferences (called ECHOs or Echomail) are broadcasted between interested nodes, and may thus have thousands of readers. The selection of echomail conferences on a given FidoNet board can be as unique as the rest of the system. A typical FidoNet Echomail conference gets 50 to 100 messages each day. Any connected BBS may carry 50, 100, or more echomail conferences.
In addition to, electronic mail, Fidonet distributes programs, pictures, and text files. NetMail is Fidonet's simple, person to person, electronic mail message system. FidoNet users can also send and receive mail through the Internet.
The list of member bulletin boards, the Nodelist, may be retrieved from most boards. Each node has one line on this list, like in this example:
,10,Home_of_PCQ,Warszawa,Jan_Stozek,48-22-410374,9600,V32,MNP,XA
The commas are field separators. The first field (empty in this example) starts a zone, region, local net, Host, or shows a private space (with the keyword Pvt).
The second field (10) is the node number, and the third field (Home_of_PCQ) is the name for the node.
The fourth field (Warszawa) is a geographical notation, and the fifth field (Jan_Stozek) is the name of the owner. The sixth field is a telephone contact number, and the other fields contain various technical information used in making connections.
FidoNet has six major geographical zones: (1) North America, (2) Europe, including Russian Asia, (3) Australasia, (4) America Latina, (5) Africa, (6) the Asian Pacific.
For information, contact the International FidoNet Association (IFNA), P.O. Box 41143, St. Louis, MO 63141, U.S.A., or postmaster@fidonet.fidonet.org. Web address: http://www.fidonet.org/.
You will also find interesting information about FidoNet at
http://owls.com/~jerrys/fidonet.html
has full-text articles from Financial Times in London, from several European databases (like the Hoppenstedt database with more than 46,000 German companies), and the Japanese database Nikkei.
Profile is available through Telecom-Gold, and can also be accessed through other online services. Clipping service. CD-ROM. Contact: FT Profile at tel.: +44-932 761444. Web address: http://www.ft.com.
General Electric Network for Information Exchange was initially set up as a joint venture between GE and Ameritech. It is now owned by IDT Corp., USA.
GEnie gives access to many databases and other information services. It has gateways to Dialog, Dow Jones, and claimed around 400,000 users in 1993. The figure in January 96 was just 55.000 (source: IISR).
Web: http://www.genie.com.
Online service operated by General Electric. Available in over 32 countries. GEIS' QUIK-COMM service integrates multinational business communications for public and private mail systems. Its services include Telex Access; and QUIK-COMM to FAX, which allows users to send messages from their workstations to fax machines throughout the world. Web address: http://www.geis.com
German online service (tel.: +49 69 920 19 101). Offers information from Novosti (Moscow), data about companies in the former DDR, the Hoppenstedt business directories, and more.
International computer network providing low-cost telecommunications to nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union. Email, fax, telex, public conferences.
Write to: GlasNet, Ulitsa Sadovaya-Chernograizskaya, dom 4, Komnata 16, Third Floor, 107078 Moscow, Russia. Email: support@glas.apc.org. Web: http://www.glasnet.ru/.
is a North American outdial service (see Chapter 13) owned by G-A Technologies, Inc. It has an information BBS at +1-704-334-9030.
The Institute for Automated Systems Network was the first public switched network in the xUSSR. Its main goal is to provide a wide range of network services to the scientific community in the xUSSR, including access to online databases, a catalog of foreign databases, and conferencing (ADONIS).
was announced in July 1994 as a worldwide value-added network (VAN). It incorporates the Advantis network, offers network access in nearly 100 countries around the globe, connects to 5,500 customer networks, and has 1.9 million individual users worldwide (1994).
Its IBM Internet Connection gives users access to the full range of Internet services (World Wide Web, Gopher, FTP, Newsgroups, Telnet and E- mail), and OS/2 Warp provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for the user.
For information:
Asia Pacific: IBM Japan, Ltd., IBM Global Network, 19-21, Nihonbashi Hakozaki-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 103, Japan.
Europe/Middle East/Africa: IBM Global Network, IBM Eurocoordination SA, Dept 8625, Tour Descartes, 92066 Paris La Defense, France.
United States/Latin America: Advantis, P. O. Box 30021, Tampa, FL 33630, USA. (Voice: 1-800-455-5056). Email: info@advantis.com
On the World Wide Web, connect to http://www.ibm.net/ibmnet.html. You can also try from "the top" at http://www.ibm.com.
offers outdial services to North America (ref. Chapter 13). Contact: i-Com, 4 Rue de Geneve B33, 1140 Brussels, Belgium. Tel.: +32 2215 7130. Fax: +32 2215 8999. Modem: +32 2215 8785.
is a network for exchange of conferences between bulletin boards in U.S.A., Canada, Scotland, England, Norway, France, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and other countries.
is a privately owned vendor of packet data services with local operations in over 50 countries, and access from more than 135 countries. Contact: Infonet Services Corp., 2100 East Grand Ave., El Segundo, CA 90245, U.S.A.
The name comes from "inter-networking," which is the process of connecting multiple host computers and their associated networks together to create a larger network.
What started as ARPANET, was by July 1996 a large group of over 134,000 interconnected independent networks in 175 countries supporting mail, news, remote login, file transfer, and many other services (http://www.nw.com). All participating hosts use the TCP/IP protocol.
While electronic mail and the World Wide Web are the net's most popular applications, users also have access to ftp and telnet. Ftp gives interactive access to remote computers for transferring files. Telnet gives access to a remote service for interactive dialog. You can telnet several bulletin boards through Internet, like telnet://conrad.appstate.edu. (Login as "info"). See Appendix 6 for more.
It is not possible to calculate the number of interconnected networks any more, but by July 1997, hosts in 214 countries provided net connectivity.
There are other major wide area networks, such as the BITNET and DECnet networks that are not based on the TCP/IP protocols and are thus not part of the Internet. However, it is possible to communicate between them and the Internet via electronic mail because of mail gateways that act as "translators" between the different network protocols involved. See The Matrix below.
In July 1998, there were over 36.7 million host machines. In January 1993, the number of hosts was 1.3 million, and in July that year, 464,000 were reachable (For details: see http://www.nw.com).
The number of users is claimed to double every year. In January 1994, the Internet Number FAQ estimated some 16 million users. Two years later, Matrix News (http://www.mids.org/mn/) estimated 36 million users of computers who could distribute information by interactive TCP/IP services (like WWW, and FTP), and 57 million users who could access information by interactive TCP/IP services.
By June 1998, the Internet had an estimated 129.5 million users, according to Nua Internet Surveys (http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online.html). By November 1997, the number was 86 million users.
As of August, 1991, more than half the registered networks on Internet were commercial.
In addition, private enterprise networks have an estimated 1,410,000 hosts using TCP/IP (Source: The Internet Demographic Survey, January 1994.) These offer mail exchange with the Internet, but not services such as Telnet or FTP to most parts of the Internet, and are estimated to have some 7.5 million users.
One important feature of the Internet is that no one is in charge. The Internet is essentially a voluntary association. Somehow it all works.
Some of its direction comes from a group of volunteers called the Internet Society (http://info.isoc.org/) run more like a council of elders than a business.
No one organization collects fees from Internet users or networks. Each user and service pays its own way. There are rarely any additional charges for sending and receiving electronic mail (even when sending to other networks), retrieving files, or reading Usenet Newsgroups.
For more on the Internet, check out the sources listed at the end of Appendix 6. For more statistics, try http://www.cyberatlas.com. For history, try http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html, and http://www.ccit.arizona.edu/internet/inthist.html.
The Matrix is also called "WorldNet." It includes all the networks in Internet, and in addition a long list of networks that can send electronic mail to each other (though they may not be based on the TCP/IP protocol). Think of it as a larger network using the Internet as a telephone exchange.
The Matrix includes Internet, BITNET, DECnet, Minitel (France), Usenet, UUCP, PeaceNet, IGC, EARN, Uninett, FidoNet, CompuServe, Alternex (Brazil), ATT Mail, FredsNaetet (Sweden), AppleLink, GeoNet (hosts in Germany, England, U.S.A.), GreenNet, MCI Mail, MetaNet, Nicarao (Nicaragua), OTC PeaceNet/EcoNet, Pegasus (Australia), BIX, Portal, PsychNet, Telemail, TWICS (Japan), Web (Canada), The Well, CARINET, DASnet, Janet (England), X.400, SprintMail, and many more.
These peripheral networks create a larger Matrix Internet that reaches 155 countries (January 1995), and provide many millions of people with lowest common denominator email connectivity.
Matrix News estimated that 71 million users were able to exchange email with other users on the Matrix, versus 27.5 million as of October 1994 (see http://www.mids.org/mids/howbig.html).
A privately owned vendor of packet data services, who has operator-owned nodes in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Holland, Spain, Sweden, England. Contact: AT&T Istel. Tel.: 0527-64295 (in England).
A British-based publisher of corporate directories with affiliates all over the world. Their databank covers over 70 countries (1996). Its directories are available on Dialog, LEXIS-NEXIS, and others. More details in Chapter 11. Web: http://www.kompass-intl.com/.
Email: postmaster@mcimail.com. Web addresses: http://www.mci.com/, and http://www.internetmci.com.
MSN started in September 1995. They claimed 250,000 members by mid October, 1,000,000 members in March, 1996, and 2.3 million customers in July 1997. The service has relationships with long distance carriers to provide local access numbers in 50 countries. It's access software is localized in 26 languages. Web address: http://www.msn.com/.
Owned by Reed Elsevier plc. (London, United Kingdom). Lexis is a full-text legal information service offering more than 45 specialized law libraries, covering all areas of law practice. Nexis focuses on full-text news and business information. Over 8,700 sources of news and business information (1997).
Web: http://www.lexis-nexis.com/. Access: telnet://lexis.meaddata.com. Terminal type = vt100a. (If characters do not echo back, set your terminal to "local" echo.)
Contact: Metasystems Design Group, 2000 North 15th Street, Suite 103, Arlington, VA 22201, U.S.A. Tel.: +1-703-243-6622. Telnet access at telnet://tmn.com. WWW: http://www.tmn.com/
French videotex service marketed in several countries by France Telecom. It is based on a special videotex graphics display format (Teletel), has over 25,000 services, and appears like a large French online hypermarche. In October 1998, it claimed over 35 million users.
Internet mail and full TCP/IP. Access requires software for emulating Minitel menus and function keys (free), or any VT100 compatible terminal. Connect to telnet://minitel.fr. Payment required.
Access to the French Minitel network is also available via the Infonet international packet data network on a host-paid and chargeable account basis. Information: http://www.minitel.fr.
Japan's next largest online service. It had around 1,77 million users by the end of 1996 (up from 660,000 in February 1994). Your communications system must be able to display Japanese characters to use the service. PC-VAN has gateways to GEnie, Dialog and the Internet.
See Usenet.
Information: administrator@newsbytes.com and http://www.nbnn.com. News at http://www.newsbytes.com/.
For years, it was the world's leading online vendor of full-text business and professional newsletters. Taken over by Telebase in September 1997 and integrated with its Brainwave service.
Offers access to over 1.000 industry-specific newsletters and trade publications within 30 industry classification groups (1995). Live gateway access to Dun & Bradstreet business reports, TRW Business Profiles, and more.
For a fee, you can read individual newsletter issues, and search back issues of individual newsletters or publications within an industry classification.
Access Brainwave at http://www.newsnet.telebase.com/.
had 2 million subscribers by September 1996, and is Japan's largest online service. To use it, your communications system must be able to display Japanese characters. Offers Newsbytes in Japanese.
Nifty-Serve (http://www.niftyserve.or.jp/) is jointly operated by Fujitsu and Nissho Iwai Trading in a licensing agreement with CompuServe.
Online Computer Library Center, Inc. is a nonprofit computer library service and research organization whose computer network and products link more than 21,000 libraries in 63 countries and territories (1996). It serves all types of libraries, including public, academic, special, corporate, law, and medical libraries. Web address: http://www.oclc.org.
See Orbit.
is a North American videotex service. It had 1.4 million subscribers in June 1996. Email from the Internet to Prodigy users: Send to for information: admin@prodigy.com. Web: http://www.prodigy.com
A member of the France Telecom Group. Offices in Washington, Paris, London and Sydney. Specialized in patent, trademark, scientific, chemical, business and news information. Web address: http://www.questel.orbit.com
Also called PcRelay-Net. An international network for exchange of email and conferences between more than 8,500 bulletin boards. The Relaynet International Message Exchange (RIME) consists of some 1,000 systems (1992).
means 'Russian Electronic Communications.' This company provides email, other network services, a gateway to Internet, and access to Usenet.
In early 1992, RELCOM had regional nodes in 25 cities of the xUSSR connecting over 1,000 organizations or 30,000 users. It now has 200,000 users (2/1994). RELCOM has a gateway to IASNET.
Financial online service. Over 309,000 subscribers (July 1995). Main Web site: http://www.reuters.com.
Operated by Sovam Teleport, a joint venture of Global TeleSystems Group, Inc. (formerly SFMT), USA, and the Institute for Automated Systems (Russia). Web: http://www.online.ru/.
A large, commercial vendor of email services with local nodes serving customers in 108 countries through its SprintNet network (1991). Sprint offers extensive Internet interconnection service worldwide. It extends the TCP/IP service to commercial customers under the name SprintLink.
Internet mail to the SprintMail user 'T.Germain' can be sent to T.Germain@sprint.sprint.com, or user@organization.sprint.com.
For information, contact SprintMail, 12490 Sunrise Valley Dr., Reston, VA 22096, U.S.A. WWW: http://www.sprintlink.net/
The Scientific & Technical Information Network is operated cooperatively by Fachinformationszentrum (FIZ) in Germany, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) of the American Chemical Society (ACS), and the Japan Information Center of Science and Technology (JICST). Databases in Science, Technology, Patents, and Business.
Web address: http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de/stn.html. Telnet access at: telnet://stnk.fiz-karlsruhe.de/ and telnet://stnc.cas.org/.
An international network for exchange of conferences and mail between SuperBBS bulletin board systems. Contact: SuperNet World Host through FidoNet at 2:203/310 (+46-300-41377) Lennart Odeberg.
is a Dialcom network. Internet email to TCN is only possible if either the sender or recipient has registered with DASnet. The email address would be: TCNxxx@das.net (where xxx is the TCN number).
Bulletin board for people with disabilities in Japan, or with "shintaishougaisha," which is the Japanese term. Call: +81-3-205-9315. 1200 bps, 8,N,1. Your communications system must be able to display Japanese characters to use the service.
International outdial service. Contact: INTEC America, Inc., 1270 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 2315, New York, NY 10020, U.S.A. In Japan, contact Intec at 2-6-10 Sarugaku-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101. Fax: +81-3-3292-2929.
English-language Japanese online service with PARTIcipate, Caucus and Usenet netnews. Half the users are Japanese. Others connect from U.S.A., England, Canada, Germany, France, South Africa, and Scandinavia.
The NUA address is: 4406 20000524. Telnet to telnet://twics.com.
New users can sign on as GUEST for information. You can also write info@twics.com, or send mail to TWICS/IEC, 1-21 Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160, JAPAN. Web address: http://www.twics.com. Foreign users have free access (1992).
opened on September 1, 1995. Phone: +44-1749-333366, Internet e-mail sales@ukonline.co.uk.
Web address: http://www.umi.com
North American conferencing service using PARTIcipate software. NUA address: 031105130023000. Enter SIGNUP when online the first time and follow the prompts. (1991)
UUCP (UNIX to UNIX Copy) is a protocol, a set of files and a set of commands to copy files from one UNIX computer to another. This copying procedure is the core of the UUCP network, a loose association of systems all communicating with the UUCP protocol.
UNIX computers can participate in the UUCP network (using leased line or dial-up) through any other UNIX host. The network now also has many MS-DOS and other hosts, and consisted of 18,800 hosts in October 1994 (source: UUCP map) serving more than 564,000 users (source: Matrix News).
The UUCP network is based on two systems connecting to each other at specific intervals, and executing any work scheduled for either of them. For example, the system Oregano calls the system Basil once every two hours. If there's mail waiting for Oregano, Basil will send it at that time. Likewise, Oregano will at that time send any mail waiting for Basil.
There are databases with connectivity information (UUCP maps), and programs (pathalias) that will help you decide the correct routing of messages. However, many UUCP hosts are not registered in the UUCP map.
EUNET is a UUCP based network in Europe. JUNET is an equivalent network in Japan. There are many gateway machines that exchange mail between UUCP and the Internet. Among these, UUNET.UU.NET is among the most frequently used (http://www.uu.net).
Usenet, Netnews, or just "News" are common terms for a large many-to-many conferencing (only) system distributed through UUCP, Internet, FidoNet, and BITNET. The European portion of Usenet is called EUNET (European Unix NET).
This grassroots driven "network" has grown out of the global university and research domains. It is a service rather than a real network. It is not an organization, and has no central authority.
In 1993, Usenet's newsgroups were carried by over 69,000 host computers (sites) in five continents, and had over 1,991,000 users (source: Brian Reid). In January 1995, Reid estimated 16.5 million users. In February, the number of sites were estimated at 260,000 (source: The Internet Index). Many of these sites also have access to the Internet.
The local administrator of each node in the network decides what newsgroups to receive and make available to its users. Few systems offer access to all of them.
NetNews is organized in groups of 'conferences'. Each classification is organized into groups and subgroups according to topic. As of June 1, 1993, there were 4500 newsgroups and 2500 regional newsgroups. Several sites are carrying over 2600 topics. In July 1995, there were over 15,000 newsgroups. In December 1996, PC/Computing estimated the number of newsgroups at over 28,000.
On a typical day in December 1993, 43,000 Usenet articles were posted. In November 1996, 754 megabytes of information were posted daily to Usenet.
The groups distributed worldwide are divided into seven broad classifications:
"comp" Topics of interest to both computer professionals and
hobbyists, including topics in computer science, software
source, and information on hardware and software systems.
"sci" Discussions marked by special and usually practical
knowledge, about research in or application of the
established sciences.
"misc" Groups addressing themes not easily classified under any
of the other headings or which incorporate themes from
multiple categories.
"soc" Groups primarily addressing social issues and
socializing.
"talk" Groups largely debate-oriented and tending to feature
long discussions without resolution and without much
useful information.
"news" Groups concerned with the news network and software
themselves.
"rec" Groups oriented toward hobbies and recreational
activities.
Also available are many "alternative" hierarchies, like:
"alt" True anarchy; anything and everything can and does
appear. Subjects include sex, and privacy.
"biz" Business-related groups
"clari" Newsgroups gatewayed from commercial news services and
other 'official' sources. (Requires payment of a fee and
execution of a licence. Visit http://www.clari.net/
for information.)
Most Netnews hosts offer both global and local conferences. These include Australian and Australasian (aus), and Jewish (shamash) newsgroups; groups coming from BITNET (bit), /CL-Netz (cl), Z-Netz (z-netz), and Fidonet (fido) ; German (de), Japanese (fj), French (fr), Norwegian (no), Cyrillic (relcom), and Finnish (sfnet) language groups; United Kingdom (uk) groups, Taiwan (tw), Microsoft (microsoft) and more.
Many newsgroups can be read through bulletin boards, commercial online services, or through gateways from connected hosts (like from some BITNET hosts).
A full list of available groups and conferences is normally available from hosts offering Netnews, and on NETNEWS servers. There is a Master List of Newsgroup Hierarchies (not the names of the newsgroups themselves) at http://www.magmacom.com/~leisen/master_list.html. Each hierarchy is accompanied by a brief explanation of its affiliation, purpose or topic areas. You can also locate newsgroups at http://www.liszt.com/news/.
The FAQ "What is Usenet?" is regularly posted to news.admin.misc, and news.answers. Also, make sure you check out the Usenet Info Center Launch Pad at http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-b/home.html.
An online book titled "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet" is at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/. At Planetweb Galactic (http://www.jtr.com/search.htm), you can search the contents of Web FAQ texts.
Owned by Dialog in the U.S.
The Whole Earth Lectronic Link is a commercial online service (U.S.A.). It has its own conferencing culture, and is an interesting starting point for those wanting to "study" what makes the Silicon Valley area so dynamic.
The Well has over 200 hosted conferences, public and private, about 8,000 members (January 1994). The service can be reached by telnet://well.com. Web address: http://www.well.com/. You can subscribe online. Email: info@well.com
ZiffNet markets its services through CompuServe (ZiffNet and ZiffNet/Mac), Prodigy, and its own online service in the U.S.A. Their offerings include the Ziff Buyer's Market, the ZiffNet/Mac Buyer's Guide, Computer Database Plus, Magazine Database Plus, Newsbytes, and the Cobb Group Online. Estimated number of users: 230,000 (1994).
Contact: Ziff Communications Company, 25 First Street, Cambridge, MA 02141, U.S.A. Tel.: +1-617-252-5000.