Nothing you do for today is likely to survive progress. To make it survive, you need to think ahead, into the future, imagine the way things could/will be done then.

Then develop solutions for that today.

Why do I bring this up?

Many “mobility products” today tend to address present day needs. We tend to take the desktop paradigm, and build products around it. We take present-day situations, and then try to invent a better mousetrap.

From my perspective, that is wrong. The desktop is a paradigm beaten to death, and if you look closely, it has never attained the kind of traction that the walkman or TV did. And the next billion people (and they are already here – we call them the “iPod Generation”) will not be interested in such an archaic approach to dealing with information, communication and entertainment (ICE).

And those billion people are our customers of tomorrow.

|Read the Rest of the Entry…

The most common question I see on mailing lists is“I bought XYZ recently, and now I can’t get it working under Linux. Can anyone help me?”

Given the fact that Linux is only a second priority for most vendors when it comes to driver support (especially for consumer items), wouldn’t it have made sense to check whether the item you are about to purchase is supported under Linux before you spend your money?

|Read the Rest of the Entry…

I have been driving (and been driven by) a number of communities over the past decade.And one thing that continues to amaze me is the effort it takes to get people to participate in any meaningful fashion.

When I ran my BBS, I was constantly trying to make people stop downloading files, and getting them to start messaging in the forums.

Today, with the Internet becoming the world’s biggest BBS, and with countless mailing lists, web forums and other modes of mass communication, I find that just about everyone likes to stay in “lurk” mode – i.e. read-only.

Then, when a community dies for lack of participation, they look for all sorts of reasons.

|Read the Rest of the Entry…

This is an old article that I wrote in May of 2001 – many months before 9/11. I was quite shocked when I re-read it recently, only to find that half a decade later, it is as relevant as it was when I first wrote it.

Since one of the reasons for this site is for it to be a single place where one can find all my old articles, I am moving it here. –ac

I have been quite vocal with my reservations about India’s “techno slavery” approach to IT business, and I definitely haven’t made any friends at NASSCOM that way.

Sure, the tech slowdown in the US *has* been a rude awakening for Indian IT companies, but I bet that we haven’t yet seen the worst of it.

|Read the Rest of the Entry…

It’s been a long time since anything happened here – but that is about to change.

First and foremost – a new interface – I decided to dump my old homebrew stuff and switch to WordPress. This will allow for comments, some additional stuff, and make my management job easier, so that I can concentrate on the writing.

|Read the Rest of the Entry…

Many companies are contemplating Internet usage, now that all their peers abroad are online. But their concepts are fuzzy. In September 1996, when the last installment of COMversations appeared in PC Quest, the Internet was still relatively new to Indian businesses. Much has changed since then, but it is still rather sad to see that not much has happened in terms of corporate acceptance of the Internet and its advantages.

However, in recent times, Indian companies have begun changing their attitude. Not willingly, one would assume. The FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) factor continues to dominate, and along with that now come the horror stories of companies that tried and failed. Well, not exactly failed, but not successful.

Much of this springs from the fact that most companies have absolutely no clue on what is required of them when one says “get on the Internet”. Ask around within the company, and you will see many different interpretations of “being connected”. Management tries to assimilate and digest these interpretations into something they can understand and deploy.

In this installment of COMversations, I will try and clear up a few issues that I keep running into when I deal with our corporate clients. I will do so by addressing the various interpretations of “Corporate Internet access”.

“The Web is the Internet”

The World Wide Web (referred to as the WWW or “the Web”) is not the Internet. It is just one of its many “layers”, and while it does play a significant role in the Internet�s growth and corporate usage, it has pretty little to offer in terms of day to day communication requirements of a company.

Unfortunately, many companies interpret “being connected to the Internet” as “everyone can surf”. This has some rather alarming implications for management. It implies that many of the employees will waste their time aimlessly surfing around on company time. It implies that the company has to invest in pretty heavy duty “pipes” (that is leased lines to the Internet) which cost the earth.

Security of the company�s local network can be compromised through external access.

A reality check is required here. However much your employees may clamour for it�Web access and the ability to surf from their desks is not a serious requirement. Few people have the ability to do focussed Web-based research, and unfortunately, this is a facility that is more often than not going to be misused.

One e-mail account for the company is enough

Oddly enough, most companies in India assume that having a single e-mail account for the firm is more than sufficient�after all, one has only one fax, right?

Wrong.

E-mail is not fax. It is as personal as a telephone extension on your desk. Try getting by with a single phone in your office, and you will see what I mean. Unless you have e-mail addresses for each key-person in your company, you will lose all benefits of having e-mail at all.

This is because of the way e-mail works. One expects a single person to read the message one sends via e-mail�the owner of the e-mail address. Because of this, one tends to assume confidentiality and will be more open in such a message than one would be in, say, a fax message, which is likely to be read by many people.

However, if your e-mail address looks something like yourcompany@giasdl01. vsnl.net.in, then it is fairly certain that this is a common address, shared by a number of people, and hence you can forget about getting any sensitive or crucial information via this medium.

A lot of you will be pointing your fingers at the high cost of having e-mail for everyone in your company. “How many VSNL accounts do you think we can take?” and the mind-boggling logistics “you expect all my people to dial into VSNL every hour or so to pick up their mail?” But relax, I know what I am talking about. Getting a domain (yourcompany.com) is easy as falling off a log these days. And once your have that and a little bit of mail-space on a server somewhere, you can use solutions such as good old Linux. (Yes, the same one that came free of cost on the May 1998 PCQ CD) to set up an internal mail server that exchanges mail with the outsider. And you can have hundreds or thousands of e-mail accounts�all for free. Each user in your company will have his or her own address (user@yourcompany.com). And an additional bonus�you can now have internal e-mail as well, which is a real productivity booster!

“Gotta have a Website!”

OK, so you would like to have your own Website. You would like to advertise your products, and have zillions of orders pouring in from the 70+ million people who frequent the Net these days.

Reality check: Most Websites do not earn you any money or snag any orders.

Most Websites are basically online brochures, and at the most offer information that is already available elsewhere. The business of designing and maintaining dynamic Websites that attract people is a difficult one, and unless you have the resources and the willingness to support such an activity, you would be better off not trying�it is easy to alienate the very people you are trying to attract.

If you resign yourself to that fact, you can put up a few well-designed Web pages. Spend some money and get a good job done. Don�t ask someone in your office to learn HTML and expect them to be able to put together a professional looking set of pages! Treat your Web pages like your corporate brochure�they are designed by professionals who know their job.

And try and update the pages whenever you have something new to offer, such as a new product.

Let them know!

One of the biggest crimes we have seen is that of “info-hide”. People take all the trouble of getting e-mail for everyone, and a Website, and they don�t let anyone know!

Once you have e-mail for everyone, make sure that people know about it�every visiting card and letterhead should carry this information to make sure that people know about it and use this facility.

Ditto for your Website. This is especially important if you advertise having your Web address (Universal Resource Locator) featured in an advertisement. It�s almost a guarantee that anyone reading the ad will look at the Website soon for more information. One of the most effective ways of using an URL in an advertisement was by a well known company a few years back�they had a doublespread ad in a well known business publication, which had only their URL printed in huge, bold letters and nothing else. Irresistible�everyone who read that fired up their browser just to find out what this was all about!

Winding down

As we have seen, “being on the Internet” is not such a big deal after all�it is easy to set up, and costs pittance. So why not go out and do it? You already have most of the know-how (past issues of PC Quest have detailed just about everything you need to know, and more is coming up). All it now takes is your green signal, and in a short while you will be able to drawl (in your best accent).

“Sure, we are on the Internet. Are you?”

Cheerio!

“Make hay while the sun shines” seems to be the Indian web service provider’s war cry. Time to set the record straightOne of the saddest things about anything new is that there are any number of people who’ll sell it to you at enormously inflated prices. The world wide web is no exception, and here in India, where awareness is just beginning to spread, I have been seeing people bending over backwards trying to make a fast buck by offering web-page hosting services.

One of the cruellest examples of this is our own desi VSNL – the Internet monopoly of India, who recently announced that they would offer you web pages at mind boggling prices of Rs.5,000 per page!

This episode of COMversations is therefore dedicated to putting a pin into this info-highway robbery.

To web or not to web, that’s the question…

The World Wide Web is a classic example of simple technology being used to maximum effect. There is nothing new about the technology itself – it is just a variation of TCP/IP based services that have been around since 1969, and even the page-definition standard (HTML) is a variant of a very commonly used page markup language called SGML. The hyper-link based layout of the web has been around ever since people could spell “gopher”.

What made the web so famous was the emergence of software that gracefully tied the whole thing together – the Web Browser. These days, there are effectively two of them – Netscape’s Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Both of them are designed to transfer and display pages from the Internet, full of text, graphics, colour, even sound and video.

Naturally, business sat up immediately – the fact that this cheap and effective technology could be used to target markets through advertising and customer support did not escape them. In no time at all, everyone wanted to be on the web,, no matter how big or how small the business was.

In 1995, India finally got publicly accessible Internet services through VSNL, and the demand for Indian web pages soon skyrocketed. I use my own e-mail box as a barometer for this – more than 30%” of the thousands of messages I receive monthly ask me where one could put up web pages for the company’s services, products or just corporate information. Every student wants his own personal homepage, every company wants its own website.

Enter the scalper….

Who does not know them the little men who stand at street corners not far from the cinema showing the latest Amitabh Bachchan blockbuster, hawking hard to get tickets at phenomenal prices. Sometimes, they corner the entire block of sellable tickets, so that the only way you can get to see the movie is by coughing up.

The web service market in India is not different these days. Every day a new “service” pops up out of the blue, offering various web services in various forms.

Some of them offer you pages as a sub-portion of their own pages (for example, you could be located at http://somevendor.com/homepages/scalper/yourcompany.html), basically a single page (or set of pages) that are part of the scalper’s own pages, which he would have got for a ridiculously low price of $20/month, and which he is now hawking to you at Rs.50,000 upwards! This is by far the most commonly found “service”.

The other kind of services are those who offer to register a site in your own name (e.g. http://www.yourcompany.com) where you can then put up your own pages. While this is much more desirable, the price tag is virtually always in multi-lakhs!

The third kind, now beginning to make an appearance, are the “Internet Marketing Experts” who will put up your pages as part of their own pages, which are “targeted” at business communities, and they then promise you that they will help spread the word about your pages. These services typically position themselves as marketing experts, offering complete “packages”.

The truth is…

The truth is a real eye-opener.

First of all, many people believe that getting web space is difficult. In fact, it is simpler than tuning your TV. There are literally thousands of web service providers out there (check out the “Web Presence Providers” section on http://www.yahoo.com) who will put up your pages for as little as $3 per month! That is around Rs.100 per month!

There are also lots of free services available – while not the fastest sites on the planet, they are a good place to start – www.tripod.com and www.geocities.com are two good examples.

You will need web space, of course – a place where you can put up your pages. Shopping around should result in you finding a decent place for around $50 a month for about 2 MB of web space. There are bigger and faster places, but easy does it – let’s first get our act together.

CompuServe members get 2 MB of web space free along with their basic subscription of $10 per month, a similar deal exists with America Online and Prodigy. Both Kishore Bhargava and I have had our pages on CompuServe for a long time – the servers are very fast, and it is very easy to update information. People ask me why I still use CompuServe in this age of Internet services – well, now you know. (That isn’t the only reason why we use CompuServe, but definitely one of them).

www.yourcompany.com

If you want to have your own domain (e.g. www.yourcompany.com), that can be arranged, too, and it costs about $250 to register your domain. All you need is a Internet Service Provider (ISP) who is willing to “service” your virtual domain – usually a one time payment of $50 covers that. The whole process of actually getting a domain name is ridiculously simple (check out http://www.cnet.com/Content/Features/Howto/Domain/ for more details) – the most difficult part is thinking of a name for your site!

One nice thing about your own domain name is that it can point at whatever location you currently use for your web pages. If your current provider is too slow or crowded – switch to another one, and have him service your domain name!

You can also achieve this effect by making use of a re-director service. I use POBOX.COM, which redirects my email and homepage requests to places I want them to go to. Therefore, when you send mail to achitnis@pobox.com, it actually goes to whatever e-mail address I wish to use at that moment. Telling your browser to connect to http://pobox.com/~achitnis actually takes you to my CompuServe pages. If I suddenly change my web page location or real email address, all I need to do is to change the record at POBOX (for more details, go to http://pobox.com/pobox).

Pages, pages…

One of the most ridiculous concepts currently making its rounds in India is the concept of selling web space by the page. Almost every vendor of such services tries to sell you web space at anything from Rs.500 to Rs.50,000 “per page”. VSNL joined the scalper gang when it announced a price of Rs.5,000 “per page”, with extra charges for every graphic you place on the page. Yesterday, I had a very reputed IT company dropping in on me, making me a “special offer” of Rs.1,50,000 for a set of pages!

The real picture is that outside India, no one sells “pages” – they sell web space. You contract for a fixed amount of space – typically 2-5MB to begin with. It is unlikely that you will use more than that in the initial stages. If you have seen my web pages at http://pobox.com/~achitnis – the whole complex setup occupies just under 1 MB of space! Be reasonable in your estimates – more is not always better.

Some providers rent you web space, charging you an extra amount for every thousand “hits” to the site (i.e. every time someone visits your pages, it is counted as a hit). If your site is going to get very popular (I rack up about 25,000 hits a month on my homepage), this could become very expensive. Make sure you are aware of this.

One thing is clear – if any vendor shows up at your door with a per-page pricing, show him the door. If he starts talking about extra charges per graphic on your page, call the cops.

Dollar Troubles

One major stumbling block that steers many Indian web-wannabes towards web-scalpers is the fact that virtually all the web sites we are talking about here are located outside India – in fact, almost all of them are located in the USA.

This brings up two perceived problems – that of Dollar payments, and that of maintenance.

The first problem is actually negligible. These days, all you need to do is go to the Reserve Bank of India, purchase an International Money Order for the Dollar amount, and send it to the web service provider. The RBI will have no objection to this, since it falls under the magazine subscription category. So don’t fall for the convenience of “Rupee payments” – anyone offering such a facility for web services typically charges you more than 10 times the actual cost.

Foreign Shores…

The second perceived problem, that of the site actually being outside India, is actually a laughable one. The Internet knows no political boundaries, and you can use your normal VSNL Internet account (Shell or TCP/IP) to maintain the remote site. That’s what Kishore and I have been doing for ages. Page updates are usually done by using FTP to upload pages onto the site.

But lo and behold, the India web scalper finds another “chargeable loophole” – some vendors attempt to charge you for every update to your pages. Immediately pick up the phone and dial 100 and report the perpetrator under Indian Penal Code Section 420 – he is trying to take you for a ride. You are contracting for the space, and nothing else. The vendor has no right to limit or charge you for individual page updates. In fact, no service provider outside India actually has a charge for each update. That is just a “the customer is dumb, let’s milk him” angle tagged on by the web space provider in India.

Note that almost every web space provider in India is actually only an agent for a provider in the USA. There severe disadvantages to physically locating a web server in India – the biggest one being the cost and the second one being speed. Web servers abroad are typically connected to the net via T1 (1.5 mbps) links. In India, where a 64 kbps link costs your Rs.12,00,000, a fast link is well beyond the financial capabilities of most people.

Therefore, you could actually benefit from a web-scalper’s visit – find out who his actual provider is, then contact the provider directly in the USA and strike a deal at a fraction of the cost.

Getting the word out

As discussed earlier, some services in India offer to spread the word about your pages, at an extra cost. What they are actually doing is to simply register your pages with all the various search engines available on the web – something your can do yourself in under an hour.

Just visit each search engine (check out www.search.com for a list of them), and make use of the “Add URL” option to register your pages with that search engine. In due time, the search engine will “visit” your page and index it. Just make sure that you have a good description of your pages and services at the very beginning of the home page, since search engines typically present that first paragraph along with the page URL if it matches the search criteria of a search engine user.

Other ways of spreading the word is to incorporate your web address (the URL – Universal Resource Locator) in all your email, letters, visiting cards, advertisements, press releases, etc. In fact, these are probably the best known ways to ensure that people find out about your web pages.

The real cost

Finally, let’s talk about the really expensive, and often overlooked, part of maintaining web pages.

Creating web pages is actually very easy, and most people can learn to do it in under an hour. But just having the ability to create pages does not automatically give you the ability to make good looking pages.

Face it – not everyone was born an artist. My pages survive because of their content – if one would go by their looks, I’d get at the most a dozen hits a year. Recognising this, I opted for the KISS (keep it simple, stupid!) principle – I avoided all sort of extra graphical gimmickry apart from the bare necessities.

However, that won’t do for everyone, especially a company trying to establish an online presence. Too many companies have permanently scarred their images by putting up amateurical, badly designed pages, with either too many graphics, or none at all, with too much text, bad English, suspect Grammar, etc.

This is the time to call in Web Designer – someone who will design your pages for you, create the framework you will use to make information available, etc.

Now these Web Designers are not always cheap. In fact, they can be outrageously expensive, but unlike the scalper web service provider, this expense is justifiable. Being creative, and having the ability to produce good looking pages for you is the work someone with an artistic slant. Not everyone is blessed with this ability, and probably the worst are the website providers themselves.

If you really need to spend money, spend it on a good Web Designer. Choosing one is easy – every Web Designer should be able to give you a list of Web URLs of pages he has already designed. Have a look at them (using a TCP/IP account and a browser such as Netscape) and compare them to other pages you have seen. Some unscrupulous people actually give fake references – pointing you to pages they claim to have designed, which is actually not true. If the prospective web designer’s name is not shown anywhere on the pages, feel free to email the owner of the web pages you are looking at, asking if the pages were indeed designed by the web designer who claims to have done so.

Also remember that a good web designer will concentrate on the art, not the service. Beware of people offering “all-in-one” deals where they will host your pages as well as design them – I have heard horror stories in that department.

Signing off

Whew, this turned out much longer than I had anticipated.

Before I sign off – I receive tons of requests from people to list their web addresses on my pages. You must understand that I can do so only if there is a very good reason to do so (for example, if your pages contain information that could be of interest to visitors apart from company specific information). So please keep that in mind before sending me a note about it.

Cheerio!

+++ATH0

NO CARRIER

Now that people have Linux in their hands, let’s get them on the Internet! In March ‘96, almost 50,000 people across India received Linux on their PC Quest CDs. And the amount of mail I have been receiving about it is, frankly, amazing! And the most common question people have is “How do I connect to the Internet with Linux”, “How do I set up a web server using Linux?”, etc.This month, I am going to address both issues, because they go hand in hand.

A little background

Linux needs no introduction anymore, not after PC Quest March ‘96. However, let me reiterate a few points here:

1. Linux comes to you “Internet Ready”. All the required tools are built in and ready to be used. All you need is to set it up, change a few parameters here and there, and get up and going.
2. For space reasons, we couldn’t put all of the Linux Slackware CD onto the PC Quest CD, which means that a few things were left out. One of them is the NCSA HTTPD web server, used by virtually every Linux web server in the world. This has now been rectified – you can download it from PC Quest (011-6221734) or CiX (080) 3341137, as well as from the Internet (of course).
3. You can set up a Telnet/FTP/Web/E-Mail server with no other software than what we supplied you, and, provided you have a TCP/IP account (PPP/SLIP), you can get your server up and running and accessible virtually instantaneously, making this a perfect solution for a small to medium sized business.

That out of the way, let’s get the show on the road.

Making Linux Net-ready

Nothing to it. If you have installed Linux according to my instructions in the March issue (if you missed it, check the article on my web pages http://pobox.com/~achitnis), and installed TCP/IP along with it (remember, I asked you to do that), then you are almost set. Just to make sure, log in as root and run the command ping localhost which should give you a stream of ping results (stop them with ^C).Run the command netconfig. This will ask you a few questions (you may have gone through this before, but let’s do it again), answer them as follows:

1. When asked for Hostname, enter a name of your choice. Remember, unless you actually register your hostname, this name has no meaning. For example – my machine is known as cybercom. Remember to stay in lower-case.
2. You will be asked about your domain. I use iisc.ernet.in, you would use giasxx01.vsnl.net.in (where “xx” is your city code).
3. When asked about “Loopback only”, answer NO.
4. You will be asked for an IP address. You do not have a real address at this time, so use 192.168.1.1.
5. At the question of Gateway, enter the same address as above.
6. Next you will be asked for a Netmask – enter 255.255.255.0.
7. You will now be asked for a Name Server – enter 202.54.1.30 if you are on VSNL, or 144.16.11.1 if you are on ERnet.

That’s it for the moment. One word of warning – if you have created entries in the file /etc/hosts, backup this file before you run netconfig, because the file will be deleted.Shut down Linux and reboot, then check whether you can ping your host by name (for example, I would run ping cybercom.iisc.ernet.in). If you get back ping results, you are ready to move.

Now use your communication program (minicom) to connect to your TCP/IP dialup number. Log in, and at the router prompt (e.g. giasro04>) type “ppp” and press . Make sure that your get a message telling you what the remote IP address is and what your address is. The values themselves are not important, since they may change with every call. I just want you to be sure that you get such a message. After you get it, you can hang up, and proceed with the installation.

Now change to the /etc directory, and create the following script file. You can use VI for this if you are comfortable with it, else use the “joe” editor, which is pretty much WordStar-like.

You have to change a few settings here. One of them is your COM port (by default, it it set to “cua02″, change it to “cua0″ (cua-zero) for COM1 and “cua1″ for COM2. Unless you have a 16550 serial port, change the 38400 to 19200.

Change the phone number in the right place to the TCP/IP dialup number for your area, and also change the username and password.

Save this file as /etc/ppp.dip. You can also pick up this file from http://ece.iisc.ernet.in/monster/library.

The Dialup script

#!/usr/sbin/dip

main:

get $mtu 1500

# Ip number of the slip router

# Used for the point to point type connection

# Set the desired serial port and speed.

# Remember that Com1 is cua0 and Com2 is cua1

port cua1

speed 38400

parity N

databits 8

stopbits 1

# Reset the modem and terminal line.

flush

send rnrn

# Initialization for the modem

send ATZr

wait OK 2

send AT&c1&d2&n0x1s10=200s7=90r

wait OK 2

if $errlvl != 0 goto error

# Dial our PPP server from local phone

# Change xxxxxxx to your local dialup number

send atdtxxxxxxxr

wait CONNECT 90

if $errlvl != 0 goto error

login:

# We are connected.  Login to the system.

wait sername: 10

if $errlvl != 0 goto error

# REPLACE uuuuuuuu with your login name.

send uuuuuuuur

wait assword: 20

if $errlvl != 0 goto error

# REPLACE pppppppp with your password.

send ppppppppr

# Some VSNL sites need this...

send pppr

# Now we wait for the assigned IP addresses.

# First comes the remote IP address (of the router)

wait is 10

get $rmtip remote

if $errlvl != 0 goto error

# and now we get our IP address....

wait is 10

get $locip remote

if $errlvl != 0 goto error

done:

# That's it! Now let's make sure that IP packets are sent
by default

# to this new connection (which is called ppp0, by the
way)

default

# The following let's you know what's happening

print PPP to $remote with address $local

print Run ping $remote to check the connection.

# And now switch into PPP mode and start communicating

mode PPP

goto exit

error:

print PPP to $remote failed.

exit:

# End of script

OK, now that we have the script installed, all you have to do is run it with the “dip” program, which you do by running the commanddip /etc/ppp.dip

If all goes well, you should get a message that you are connected and what your IP addresses are. It will also ask you to run the “ping” command with the server IP address to make sure that you are indeed connected. Doing so should give you a stream of ping results – you can cancel this with ^C.

If you do not get ping results, you may need to run this command:

route add -net default dev ppp0

before things begin working.

Checking out your IP connection

Once you have the IP connection up and running, you can try a few things. The first one you could try is to use the “telnet” command. If you are connected to VSNL, try the commandtelnet giasXX01.vsnl.net.in

where XX is your city code (”dl” for Delhi, “bm” for Bombay, etc.). In a few seconds, you shouldbe connected and will be asked for your login name. Enter your login name and password, and you will be in your VSNL Shell account.

If this does not happen, you may have goofed with the DNS (Domain Name Server) configuration. Use your editor to edit the file /etc/resolv.conf, and make sure that your proper DNS addresses are show there. They should look something like this:

domain vsnl.net.in

nameserver 202.54.1.30

nameserver 202.54.1.18

If this is not the case, edit the file until it looks like the example above. Save the file, then try the telnet command again.

Once you have things working, try an FTP (like “ftp sunsite.unc.edu”), this should also work.

Now for something more thrilling – if you have another phone line, call up a friend who as a Internet account, and ask him to telnet to your IP address (that’s what is reported to you when you connected). Make sure you have created an account for your friend – use the “adduser” command for this. He will receive a login prompt, where he gives the user id and password you have given him.

That’s it! He is logged into your system!

In the same fashion, he can also FTP to your system to send and receive files, and he can also “talk” to you (use the “talk” command for this.

You can find out who is logged in and doing what with the “w” command.

Do disconnect the PPP connection, run the command “dip -k”. Make sure that everyone is logged off before you do this!

Logging off

Right, now that we know how to create an IP connection to your Internet provider, we need to look at more things, like how to access the World Wide Web, how to send and receive E-Mail, how to set up a Web Server of your own, how to set up an FTP site, etc.That’s the subject of discussion over the next few months, so stay tuned!

Cheerio!

Looking beyond what VSNL has to offerOne of the pitfalls of writing for a monthly magazine is that you sometimes get caught in a “time warp” – by the time your words appear in print, things have changed.

Such was the case with the February episode of COMversations. As the magazine went to print, VSNL decided to change its Internet operations dramatically – at least in Bombay. By the time you read this, the changes will probably have appeared in other cities as well.

My apologies to those who got affected by this.

Bug Fixes

In last month’s COMversations, I showed a way of getting to read newsgroups via VSNL’s shell accounts. Since then, the site I mentioned (luzskru.cpcnet.com) has apparantly started rejecting connects from VSNL. So use the alternative site shts.seed.net.tw instead. The rest of the procedure remains the same.

Those users who are on the Bombay VSNL server cannot delete their files because VSNL decided that its users are unworthy of the “rm” command used to do this. The truth is that VSNL has simply renamed the command to “mrr” – don’t ask me why. Anyway, to delete a file, type “mrr filename”.

Doing Business via VSNL

I receive calls almost everyday from people who wish to get their businesses onto the Internet. Almost all of them are looking at VSNL’s Gateway Internet Access Services (GIAS) as the platform to achieving this.

Well, I have bad news for you – it is simply not possible to do any serious business via the GIAS – at least not in its present form. The problem is that it basically offers you connectivity to the Internet in a very limited form. I like to refer to these services as “toys” – and with very good reason. They allow you to “play around” on the Internet, but when it comes to doing serious business, they are just plain useless.

The problem is, of course, that while you can see things on the Internet using VSNL’s services, people can’t see you. The most common way these days to make people aware of your existance is through World Wide Web Homepages, but VSNL has made no such provision for its users – not even for the ones paying through their noses for TCP/IP accounts.

However, not everything is lost. There are ways by which you can advertise your presence, by contracting with “almost free” services abroad (it will be a long time before we see such services here in India).

Getting WWW pages (almost) for free

One such place is WWW.TRIPOD.COM. This service allows you to put up upto 100K of webpages for free! Just use your browser (like Lynx) to connect to www.tripod.com, and follow instructions. Be aware though that you have just a single page at your disposal, and that you are limited to text-based stuff (though text-enhancements such as boldface, italics and various “headline” styles are available to you).

You need to know how to build an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) page, though. This is actually quite easy. I suggest that you pick up a copy of “HTML for Dummies” (published by Pustak Mahal) from your local bookstore. Most people will be productive in a few minutes. To test your pages locally, you will need a web browser (such as Netscape) which you can download from the web (try home.netscape.com). Once you have things in shape, get online to www.homeless.com and paste in your page – that’s all there is to it.

Getting more Internet Services…

There are several “freenet” services available on the Internet that will give you shell accounts that you can use much more intelligently than VSNL’s toys. One of them is ARBORNET.ORG. Use Telnet to get there, and follow the instructions. Once you have created yourself an account, you will be able to do much more than with VSNL’s services.

Using a services such as Arbornet has several advantages, but one really nice one is that you can use it as a permanent mail address. All you have to do is to create a file named “.forward” in the home directory, that contains a single line of text – your forwarding e-mail address.

For example, supposing your current “real” e-mail address is XYZ@GIASDL01.VSNL.NET.IN, you put this single line of text into that file (a simple “echo xyz@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in>.forward” is enough to do this). Now, any mail received at Arbornet will be forwarded to your “real” e-mail address. If you change your Internet Service Provider (ISP) tomorrow, all you have to do is to change the contents of the .forward file, and mail will begin going to your new address. Now, all you have to do is to publicise your email address with reference to Arbornet, and need never need to worry again about losing your mail. If at any time you lose access to your primary Internet account, you simply use another account to telnet to Arbornet – all your mail messages are also stored as copies over there!

Another similar service is pobox.com. POBOX is just a mail-forwarding service, and is free for a limited time (after that, you have to pay a ridiculously small amount). It also has a few other great features, including domain registration (they can register a domain name such as MYCOMPANY.COM for you), so that all mail addressed to “user@mycompany.com” is automatically forwarded to an e-mail address of your choice! Very professional, and very cheap! Our editor, PKR, has been using this service for some time and is all smiles. Use your web browser and connect to pobox.com to check out more details.

An alternate Indian Internet provider – ERnet

Recently, the Indian Government decided that VSNL wasn’t going to be the only Internet provider in India. This throws up some interesting possibilities, and one became immediately apparent when ERnet, India’s first “real” presence on the Internet, announced that it was no longer going to restrict itself to Educational institutions only.

ERnet has been around since 1988, and offers much more effective services to its clients. With restrictions on commercial services lifted, ERNet can now offers a much wider range of effective business-oriented services, including web services, UUCP-based mail accounts (considered to be the primary business requirement when it comes to the Internet) and more. They also offer VSAT based services to those locations that are out of reach of regular telephone networks.

ERNet is not cheap, but if you are a business house serious about getting online, check them out. Having been around for so long, they have much more experience in what they are doing (in fact, even VSNL is heavily dependant on ERnet for some of their Internet activities!)

Send a message to info@doe.ernet.in for more details about ERnet. This is an automated message service that will respond with an introductory message giving you some useful information about ERnet and its services, as well as pointers towards other sources of information. You can also check out their web pages at http://mahavir.doe.ernet.in.

Logout

OK, that’s it for this time. A word of thanks to all the readers who send me e-mail pointing me towards interesting web sites, and sharing tips and tricks they have come across. Keep them coming!!

Many of you have written asking where they can get more tips and tricks. The answer is, of course, via the PCQO BBS (+91-11-6221734) and my own CiX BBS (+91-80-3341137) – that’s where all the savvy Internet travellers hang out sharing their secrets. Give it a try!

Cheerio!

The online world brings along its own unique problems. In this article, I address some of the more common ones.Last month, I had promised to look at more Linux connectivity options. However, a massive bombardment from readers with all sorts of datacomm problems forces me to change this month’s topic – this month, I will answer some of the more common questions I get bombarded with on a daily basis via E-Mail.

Modem troubleshooting

Q: My modem keeps returning “No Dialtone” when dialling, even though I can hear the dialtone.

A: A very common problem. Most modems are designed to detect American-style dial tones. Unfortunately, here in India there is no real standard, and most modems simply do not detect the dial tone at all! To fix this, change your modem’s initialisation string so that it includes X1 (X-one) instead of the X2 or X4 you may find there. It would also be a good idea to add the X1 command to the dialling prefix , so that says “ATX1DT” (if you use tone dialling) or “ATX1DP” (for pulse dialling) instead of the more usual “ATDT” or “ATDP”.

Q: My modem dials fine, but as soon as it hears the first ring at the other side, it disconnects with a “BUSY” message! What’s going on?

A: Probably the next most common problem I come across. The answer is that your modem recognises the Indian ring-back signal as an American BUSY tome, and disconnects. If you have set your modem as shown above, this will not happen, however, if your modem does recognise Indian dialtones, change the Initialisation and dialling strings to include X2 instead of X1 or X4. This problem is also the scourge of most online services (such as BBSs or Internet Service Providers) – someone dials in and immediately disconnects, while the service’s modem tries for upto 90 seconds to handshake with a non-existing modem! This can easily be fixed by the service provider – set your modem to answer after two rings instead of one (ATS0=2).

Q: I have a high speed modem, but it keeps disconnecting or freezing every now and then.

A: The better the modem quality, the less likely it is that this will happen. Cheap “Glue ‘n’ Go” modems tend to exhibit this on a regular basis. The answer is naturally to buy a good modem (where “good” is not defined as “cheap/economical/affordable”). However, if you have already bought the modem, try reducing the speed of the modem from its default 28800/14400 bps to 9600 or even 4800 bps. If the modem still cannot hold onto the line or keeps retraining (that’s the “freezing” part), then I am afraid all you can do is buy another modem. This is why PC Quest keeps insisting that you buy a modem only after trying it out in real-life conditions from your site.

Q: My modem disconnects every 5 minutes – on the dot!

A: The DoT beeps you on the line once every 5 minutes. This causes the modem to disconnect. Try setting your modem to ATS10=200&W – this may fix it. Good modems will retrain at that moment and resume the connection, bad modems will disconnect no matter what you do. By the way – be careful not to set the S10 register to 255 – this causes the modem never to hangup! You may think that this is exactly what you want, but remember that the remote modem will have given up after a max of 20 seconds anyway, so you are uselessly keeping the line open. Also note that your modem must have re-training enabled – some modems have this turned off by default (usually through the AT%E0 command – it should be AT%E1).

Q: How do I know whether my internal modem has disconnected the line properly?

A: The only way you can be sure is to try to dial again immediately after disconnecting, or, even better, pull the phone line plug out of the modem. Internal modems are notorious for this – some don’t hang up even though the connection has been terminated. This is why we keep stressing that an external modem is better than an internal modem.

Q: My modem dials fine, connects to the remote service, gives me a “CONNECT” message and immediately disconnects.

A: Your modem is a non-error correcting type – it does not have MNP or V.42 error correction – and the remote service has set its modems not to allow non-error correcting connects. This is very common with most service providers. The only solution you have is to buy a modem with error-correction in hardware.

Q: My modem is rated for 57600 bps, but when I transfer a file, I get throughputs of only 1500-1600 bytes per second! Why am I not getting the rated 57600 bytes per second?

A: First of all – “bps” stands for “bits per second”, not “bytes per second”. In asynchronous communication, every 8-bit byte requires two additional bits to be transferred, so you end up with 10 bits per byte. Therefore, 14400 bps actually means (14400/10)=1440 bytes per second. Next, there is no dialup modem rated at 57600 bps – this figure refers not to the modem-to-modem connect speed but to the modem-to-PC connect speed. Modems are rated at 14400 or 28800 bps. This is known as the “DCE” (Data communication Equipment) speed. The “57600 bps” is the “DTE” (Data Terminal Equipment) speed, which is typically set to 2-4 times higher than the DCE speed to derive the benefits of modem data compression, if and when applicable. The transfer speeds you report (1500-1600 bytes per second) indicate that your modem is a 14400 bps modem, and the transfer speed is quite acceptable.

Q: My modem power supply keeps blowing up, and the vendor blames it on my electrical environment, and demands a service fee everytime he has to fix the power supply.

A: There have been instances where certain modem manufacturer’s power supplies have blown out consistently. One thing you must understand is that in virtually all cases, the modem power supply is just a transformer block – any rectification is done inside the modem. If the power supply blows up, it is almost certainly a design failure, for which you cannot be blamed. If your modem vendor attempts to charge you for such repairs, you are being taken for a ride, and can take the vendor to court. The modem power supply is covered by the modem warranty, and you are not liable for repair/replacement charges in case the unit malfunctions.

Communication Software Troubleshooting

Q: My communication software does not work with my modem.

A: Modems are “black boxes” that do not care what communication software you are using. Communication software cannot control the quality of the modem connection – that is a hardware and phone line related issue. If you say that your software does not work with your modem, it is probably only a case of setting the software to suit the modem. If you cannot achieve this, simply change the software. No modem vendor can dictate what kind of software you use with his modem.

Q: I get a lot of CRC errors while transferring files

A: If you are using a highspeed modem, you are almost certainly seeing a problem with flow control. Modern communication no longer uses software XON/XOFF (^S/^Q) kind of flow control, but uses something known as “Hardware Flow Control” (RTS/CTS). You must set your software to use hardware flow control. Another issue is that of your serial port – if you do not have a 16550A based serial port, you cannot set your terminal (DTE) speed greater than 19200, no matter what your modem vendor or other “experts” may say. Set your terminal speed to 19200 bps and see if that improves things. If you are working with a slow machine (say a 386 or a slow 486) and are working under Windows, it is likely that you will see problems even with terminal speeds of 19200. Get out of Windows and use a DOS based program such as Telix or Procomm Plus instead.

Q: I cannot transfer files using Procomm

A: Procomm version 2.4.x or earlier do not have Zmodem – the default transfer protocol used by virtually all services these days. Get a communication program that supports Zmodem.

Q: I use Hyperterm under Windows 95, but I cannot resume crashed transfer even though I use Zmodem to download the file.

Unfortunately, the Hyperterm program supplied with Windows 95 does not suppport crash recovery. An update is available over the internet at http://www.hilgraeve.com/htpe.html. This update also fixes a whole lot of other problems.

Q: When I start a download, the status panel comes up and the transfer immediately crashes.

A: Check your default download path. If this points to a non-existent directory, you will observe this problem. The easiest way to fix it is to blank out the default download path completely and try again.

Q: I am unable to download/upload files from VSNL’s GIAS using Zmodem

A: VSNL, in its infinite wisdom, uses damaged versions of the sz (send Zmodem) and rz (receive Zmodem) program. There is very little you can do about it. A method know to work sometimes is to invoke the sz program with the following parameters : sz -e -l 1024 -L 1024 filename. Similarly, you can invoke the rz command like this : rz -e -b

Q: When I connect to an online service, I get all sorts of junk characters on my screen.

A: You have almost certainly not enabled the VT100 terminal emulation mode required to connect to VSNL, or the ANSI-BBS mode required for most BBSs. Enable it and the problem should go away.

Q: When I connect in TCP/IP mode to the Internet using Windows 95, I am able to work for a long time, but then everything stops working, even though the connection is alive and there are no retrains.

A: Microsoft recently admitted that there is a memory leak problem in the Windows 95 kernel that would cause TCP/IP connections to stop responding if you have been having very dense TCP/IP traffic that opens and closes a lot of sockets. A fix is available from www.microsoft.com.

Q: I have a TCP/IP account, and I also have Netscape, but I cannot ’surf the Net”.

A: You also need to install TCP/IP software before you can use Netscape. Examples are the Windows 95 TCP/IP support, Trumpet Winsock, etc.

Q: When I connect in TCP/IP mode, Netscape keeps coming back with “Host not found”.

A: Your DNS settings are wrong. If you are connected to VSNL, the settings should be 202.54.1.30 and 202.54.1.18. Make sure that your DNS is set to these addresses and not to 144.16.1.1 and 144.16.1.100 that VSNL used to use earlier.

Whew!

That’s it for this month. Space is at a premium for columns like mine. Before I sign off, here is a WWW address that you should find useful in determining what your connection problems are:

http://web.aimnet.com/~jnavas/modem/faq.html

This is John Navas’ Modem FAQ – an excellent resource for people needing to know more about modems, especially high speed ones. He also debunks a lot of modem myths, and has a lot of useful links to other communication-related resources. Check it out!

By the way, here is a little “in-your-face” for all those people who kept saying “why buy a V.34 28.8K modem – there will never be 28.8K services in India”. Well, almost every BBS in the country now sports a 28,800 bps modem, and as we go to press, VSNL has set up 28,800 bps modems in Delhi and Calcutta, with the other cities to follow in quick succession.

With that, the era of those troublesome 14,400 bps modems finally comes to an end. And as for those old 2400 bps modems . . . the less said the better!

Cheerio!