Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet | Page 4

(RFC-990, Assigned Numbers). Finally, as the Internet and technology
have grown, some RFCs have become unnecessary. These obsolete
RFCs cannot be ignored, however. Frequently when a change is made
to some RFC that causes a new one to be issued obsoleting others, the
new RFC only contains explanations and motivations for the change.
Understanding the model on which the whole facility is based may
involve reading the original and subsequent RFCs on the topic.
-3-
(Appendix B contains a list of what are considered to be the major
RFCs necessary for understanding the Internet).

The Network Information Center
The NIC is a facility available to all Internet users which provides
information to the community. There are three means of NIC contact:
network, telephone, and mail. The network accesses are the most
prevalent. Interactive access is frequently used to do queries of NIC
service overviews, look up user and host names, and scan lists of NIC
documents. It is available by using
%telnet sri-nic.arpa
on a BSD system and following the directions provided by a user
friendly prompter. From poking around in the databases provided one

might decide that a document named NETINFO:NUG.DOC (The Users
Guide to the ARPAnet) would be worth having. It could be retrieved
via an anonymous FTP. An anonymous FTP would proceed something
like the following. (The dialogue may vary slightly depending on the
implementation of FTP you are using).
%ftp sri-nic.arpa Connected to sri-nic.arpa. 220 SRI_NIC.ARPA FTP
Server Process 5Z(47)-6 at Wed 17-Jun-87 12:00 PDT Name
(sri-nic.arpa:myname): anonymous 331 ANONYMOUS user ok, send
real ident as password. Password: myname 230 User ANONYMOUS
logged in at Wed 17-Jun-87 12:01 PDT, job 15. ftp> get
netinfo:nug.doc 200 Port 18.144 at host 128.174.5.50 accepted. 150
ASCII retrieve of NUG.DOC.11 started. 226 Transfer
Completed 157675 (8) bytes transferred local: netinfo:nug.doc
remote:netinfo:nug.doc 157675 bytes in 4.5e+02 seconds (0.34
Kbytes/s) ftp> quit 221 QUIT command received. Goodbye.
(Another good initial document to fetch is
NETINFO:WHAT-THE-NIC-DOES.TXT)!
Questions of the NIC or problems with services can be asked of or
reported to using electronic mail. The following addresses can be used:
[email protected] General user assistance, document requests
[email protected] User registration and WHOIS updates
[email protected] Hostname and domain changes and
updates [email protected] SRI-NIC computer operations
[email protected] Comments on NIC publications
and services
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For people without network access, or if the number of documents is
large, many of the NIC documents are available in printed form for a
small charge. One frequently ordered document for starting sites is a
compendium of major RFCs. Telephone access is used primarily for
questions or problems with network access. (See appendix B for
mail/telephone contact numbers).

The NSFnet Network Service Center
The NSFnet Network Service Center (NNSC) is funded by NSF to
provide a first level of aid to users of NSFnet should they have
questions or encounter problems traversing the network. It is run by

BBN Inc. Karen Roubicek ([email protected]) is the NNSC user
liaison.
The NNSC, which currently has information and documents online and
in printed form, plans to distribute news through network mailing lists,
bulletins, newsletters, and online reports. The NNSC also maintains a
database of contact points and sources of additional information about
NSFnet component networks and supercomputer centers.
Prospective or current users who do not know whom to call concerning
questions about NSFnet use, should contact the NNSC. The NNSC will
answer general questions, and, for detailed information relating to
specific components of the Internet, will help users find the appropriate
contact for further assistance. (Appendix B)

Mail Reflectors
The way most people keep up to date on network news is through
subscription to a number of mail reflectors. Mail reflectors are special
electronic mailboxes which, when they receive a message, resend it to a
list of other mailboxes. This in effect creates a discussion group on a
particular topic. Each subscriber sees all the mail forwarded by the
reflector, and if one wants to put his "two cents" in sends a message
with the comments to the reflector....
The general format to subscribe to a mail list is to find the address
reflector and append the string -REQUEST to the mailbox name (not
the host name). For example, if you wanted to take part in the mailing
list for NSFnet reflected by [email protected], one sends a
request to
-5-
[email protected]. This may be a wonderful
scheme, but the problem is that you must know the list exists in the first
place. It is suggested that, if you are interested, you read the mail from
one list (like NSFNET) and you will probably become familiar with the
existence of others. A registration service for mail reflectors is provided
by the NIC in the files NETINFO:INTEREST-GROUPS-1.TXT,
NETINFO:INTEREST-GROUPS-2.TXT, and
NETINFO:INTEREST-GROUPS- 3.TXT.
The NSFNET mail reflector is targeted at those people who have a day
to