Tuning up TCP/IP

Tips on setting up serious Internet accounts, with PPP and SLIP

Kishore Bhargava and I just took off from Madras, en route to Calcutta for the next leg of our "Business on the Internet" seminar tour. Though the flight feels somewhat like a one-eyed drunken sailor in a sack race, I have reasons to grin:

I am using my notebook computer in mid-air.

For a change, I am actually getting some work done on the flight, instead of looking out of the window staring at boring clouds. This is what notebook computers were designed for.

Just a year back, I would have been chained and handcuffed for even carrying it on board the flight in my hand baggage. Today, an unobtrusive announcement by the Indian Airlines stewardess just asks me not to use the computer during takeoff and landing.

Oh tempora, oh mores!

If only the others would come to their senses! Apart from Indian Airlines and ModiLuft, no other airline in India permits the use of computers on the flight. Considering that most of them position themselves against Indian Airlines by stating that they cater to businessmen, this is rather ridiculous!

Anyway, now that I have some (enforced) free time (the flight was delayed by an hour to begin with - some things never change), let me continue with my series on using the VSNL Internet accounts.

TCP/IP Accounts

In previous columns, I stated that the VSNL Internet gateways make almost no sense to business houses. Well, I need to restructure that statement - the SHELL accounts are effectively useless to them. The TCP/IP accounts can be surprisingly good value if used properly.

To re-cap - with a shell account, you can use just those services available off VSNL's menu (which apparantly has no standard - it varies dependant on the city!).

However, with a TCP/IP account, you can run whatever software you want at your end - no one can limit you there. There are plenty of excellent packages available all over the Internet, and Windows 95 even ships with some pretty decent ones that you can use to retrieve more stuff.

VSNL initially tried to sell a package called "Explore" to its subscribers, but apparently could not keep up with either support or supplies. While workable (the stuff is made by FTP Software who have been around for ages and know their business), there are plenty of freeware and shareware options that work much better.

If you still use Windows 3.x (not a very good idea these days), you will require a Winsock (Windows TCP/IP sockets) program. An excellent one is Trumpet Winsock (available from ftp.trumpet.com.au). Make sure that you get version 2.1f or later. Version 2.1 is timelimited and will stop working after 30 days unless you register it. Version 2.0b is also pretty usable, and does not time out.

However, the PPP support of all versions of Trumpet Winsock earlier than version 2.1f is kaputt - don't even try using them for PPP (PPP is the protocol used to get TCP/IP going over the serial line).

However, a little known fact is that VSNL's routers also support SLIP (another TCP/IP-over-serial-lines protocol). Older versions of Trumpet Winsock work perfectly with SLIP, so you may want to use that instead (more on this later). The same applies to OS/2 users - the Internet Diallers shipped with most versions of OS/2 3.0 Warp have disabled or defective PPP suppport.

If you use Windows 95, you are almost there. You will need another little package known as Microsoft PLUS! for Windows 95 - cheap and easily available from any Microsoft dealer. The Plus! pack has an Internet Wizard that will quickly guide you through the process of setting up your connection.

Setting up Winsock

No matter what package you use, there are certain parameters you have to set before you strike out.

You will have to set up your IP address to begin with. Because you can never know what your IP address is going to be when you connect (it is assigned to you dynamically from a pool of addresses), set this to "0.0.0.0".

Next comes your net mask. I don't want to get too technical here, so just set this to "255.255.255.0" and move on.

Some packages will ask you for your gateway address - you can usually skip this, but can also use the IP address of your remote VSNL server (shown to you when you connect).

Next comes a mission critical option - the DNS entries.

DNS (Domain Name Service) is the process that resolves internet host names to their corresponding IPaddresses. For example, if you ask your web browser to connect to "http://ece.iisc.ernet.in/monster", the DNS will lookup "ece.iisc.ernet.in" and return the IP address (which is 144.16.64.2). Without this service, you would be limited to using IP addresses instead of host names.

Until recently, VSNL used ERnet's Sangam and Soochak hosts as DNS servers. After complaints poured in from ERnet users about massive degradation of performance due to this, VSNL was forced to set up its own DNS servers. Their IP addresses are 202.54.1.30 and 202.54.1.18. These are the two addresses you should enter in the DNS fields (Windows 95 names them "primary" and "secondary" DNS servers, so enter one address in each of them, while trumpet has only one field - enter bother addresses there seperated by a space).

You will have to choose a modem or communications port (the latter is the one your modem is attached to). Trumpet Winsock users should ensure that the "Carrier Detect" box is checked.

Finally, you need to decide whether you are going to use the PPP or the SLIP protocol. Most people (anyone using Windows 95 for sure) will chose PPP, but you can also use SLIP.

In Windows 95, you also need to tell the Internet Dialer that a terminal window should be brought up after connection is made.

Right, now we are almost there. If you are a PPP user, you just need to dial the VSNL TCP/IP number, enter your user ID and password, then, at the "giasxxro>" prompt, enter "ppp", and press enter. Once the acknowledgement appears stating what your IP address is, press "Continue".

If you use Trumpet Winsock, select "Manual Dialing" and type the various modem commands required to connect to VSNL and to log in. At the "giasxxro>" prompt, type "ppp" and press Enter. Then press Escape to give control to trumpet Winsock.

You should now have a TCP/IP connection. To check this, use the "Ping" program (supplied with any TCP/IP suite, including Windows 95, OS/2 Warp and Trumpet) to check if you are getting a response from some server (try "giasbm01.vsnl.net.in"). You will know that you have been successful if you begin to see timings appearing (measured in ms). This will prove that both your TCP/IP and DNS are working - the Ping program will report the IP address of "giasbm01.vsnl.net.in" (which is 202.54.1.18).

The above procedure is fine for PPP, but SLIP is another animal.

Unlike PPP (which negotiates the IP address on its own, you have to specifically tell SLIP what IP address has been assigned to you. Unfortunately, this means that you have to resort to a script before you can get useful work done. Examples are shipped with Trumpet Winsock, please go through them and modify them as required. Make sure that your script says "slip default" instead of "ppp" in the procedure above.

Now that you are on...

If you are using Windows 95 or OS/2 Warp, you will already have some elementary TCP/IP applications, such as Telnet and FTP. If not, you will need to get some in order to foray out into the Internet wilderness. You can simply get one frrom a friend, or use the Shell account that comes with your TCP/IP account to retrieve one (all TCP/IP accounts also have a shell account - simply call the Shell account numbers and log in with your TCP/IP userid and password. You can also change your TCP/IP password from here). Use Lynx to connect to "http://ece.iisc.ernet.in/monster" and check out the Library there for some useful stuff you can download. These are just links to the files - the files themselves are not stored on our pages. Instead, selecting the links will cause the files to be transferred from their homesites - wherever in the world that may be.

Useful TCP/IP applications

Here are some definite "must-haves" for your TCP/IP suite of programs.

Netscape Navigator: The Web browser of choice. Now in version 2.0, this browser owns 75% of the market. It is free for download and personal use. Available for both Windows 95 and Windows 3.x (as well as the Macintosh), it installs quickly and easily. Also handles FTP and News reading, as well as E-Mail.

WS FTP: Probably the most usable FTP program for Windows. Again available for both flavours of Windows, this program does away with the kludgy FTP commands and allows you to click, choose, drag and drop your way through the file godowns of the Internet.

WS Archie: Don't know where a file is located on the Internet? Use this useful applet to quickly locate them. Beats telneting to busy

Archie sites and remembering sitenames. It also works great in combination with WS FTP. Once the file has been located, just click on it, and WS Archie invokes WS FTP to download it.

Eudora: The best known among the Windows based E-Mail programs. Don't leave home without it. Even allows file attachments, and handles Mime and UUencode/decode. However, this application is superfluous if you have Windows 95 and the Plus! Pack installed - this gives you Microsoft Exchange, which is a far more powerful E-Mail program. (OS/2 users will learn to love a program called PMMAIL - similar to Eudora, it is very fast, very usable and very powerful.)

Juggling Internet apps

Many people with past experience in communication will find a pleasant surprise waiting for them, once they are connected in TCP/IP mode - you can not only run multiple applications at a time (that's what Windows is for, after all) but can also have multiple connections running over the single TCP/IP link, as well! For example, you could tell WS FTP to start transferring a file, then switch over to Eudora and send it off despatching and receiving e-mail, and the start up a telnet connection to an IRC server to go into a chat session with someone - all at the same time, over the same link!

Winding down

That's about what I have space for this month. But before I sign off, I'd like to apologise to the many people who write to me via e-mail. The volume of e-mail I have been receiving from PC Quest readers has increased tremendously over the past few months, and it has become virtually impossible to answer each and every message I receive. This does not mean that I don't want you to write - your inputs are extremely valuable to PC Quest and me, because it helps shape this column into something that reflects what you are looking for.

So keep the notes, tips, comments and criticisms coming!

Cheerio!