Your Company and the Internet

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!

Linux and the Internet

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!

Getting more out of the Internet

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!

Datacomm Troubleshooting

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!

Search and you will find

The World Wide Web is huge, but thankfully there are ways of keeping your sanity while searching We often hear of the term “Information Overload”, or, as Kishore Bhargava likes to say, “Informing yourself to death”.

One of the most frustrating exercises these days is finding something useful on the World Wide Web. Not because there is so little, but because there is just too much. And not all of it is very useful.

We have heard stories of people who say that the Internet is a waste of time – these are probably people who blindly dive in, aimlessly floundering around this ocean of information, rarely finding what they are looking for.

Just like the game of chess or MineSweeper (a vastly underrated game that comes with Windows 3.x and Windows 95), searching for information requires both strategy and a reasonable amount of logic. Just as wildly stabbing at squares in MineSweeper very quickly gets you killed, blindly “surfing the Web” gets you about as much useful information as watching Doordarshan News.

Thankfully, there are several easily applied methods you can use to quickly find what you are looking for. They can broadly be classified into three headings: Strategy, Search Logic and Shopping List.

Strategy

Probably the first thing you should do is carefully note down just what you are looking for. This simple step is probably the most commonly skipped one. Too many people just dive in and start hunting, knowing only vaguely what they are looking for.

Sit down and carefully examine the objective:

a. Is the information you are looking for about a specific product?

If the answer is yes, then there is a good chance that you will find this information on the product manufacturer’s web site – that is, if the manufacturer has a web site. Most reputed companies do, so it is highly likely that going to WWW.COMPANYNAME.COM (where “Companyname” is naturally the name of the manufacturer) will immediately get you on the right track. For example, if you are looking for information about a Microsoft product, then www.microsoft.com is a very good place to start.

However, the manufacturer’s site may not be the best place to get the information you are seeking. Often, popular products are supported on third-party sites. For example, the best Windows 95 support site is www.windows95.com – an independent site that houses excellent information about Windows 95.

How do you find such third-party sites? Often, the manufacturer will have a list of related sites (that support their product) available on their web servers. After all, it is in their own best interests to do so.

If neither of these two approaches gets you anywhere, then you can try plan B:

b.Are you looking for more generic information?

In this case, you will have to make use of Search Engines – Web sites that are specifically meant to help you find things, based on parameters you supply.

Some of these sites are more Index Based – i.e., you get a list of indices, from which you select the item that best fits what you are looking for. This leads you to other indices, which get more and more specific until you find a list of information that is exactly (or very close to) what you are looking for. The most popular of such Index Based sites is www.yahoo.com – definitely the best place to start any search.

Other search engines are Keyword Based – you specify a few keywords that collectively describe what you are looking for, and the engines will kick out a list of addresses that seem to match your requirements. Some of these search engines are www.altavista.digital.com and www.lycos.com. Of these, www.altavista.digital.com seems to be the most comprehensive one, but these things change on a daily basis.

The third kind of search engine is the Concept Based one – here, you describe a concept rather than supply keywords, and the search engine will dig out not only addresses that matych the terms you have supplied directly, but will also show you addresses that may be related to the subject. A good example of such a site is www.excite.com – its lets you do both keyword and concept based searches.

Finally, you have the Gateway Based search engines. These aren’t search engines at all – they are just front ends to other search engines. A good example of this is www.search.com.

Search Logic

OK, now that we know where to search, let’s focus on the how to search.

Here is a classic mistake people make while searching for information:

You are looking for information about fashion. So what do you do? You go to www.altavista.digital.com, and, in the keywords field, enter the word fashion and click on the Search button.

Seconds later, AltaVista returns with some 60,000 descriptions and addresses.

Happy? Initially, yes. But then you begin to realise that these 60,000 “hits” (as they are known) are almost completely useless to you – there are just too many, and not all of them point to information that is useful to you. In fact, almost all of them are useless!

Does the above example look familiar? Some people, after experiencing this, go back to traditional ways of searching for information, expounding the theory that the World Wide Web is useless.

But what exactly went wrong over here? Is the web really useless? Or is it really the fault of your search method that is to blame?

Sit back for a moment, and consider what you are really looking for. Were you really looking for every reference there is about fashion, or were you looking for something more specific, such as “Men’s Fashion”? Then why not say so?

So go ahead, and revise the search. This time enter men’s fashion instead of just fashion. Quickly, AltaVista returns a much smaller list. Happy now?

No? You checked some of these links, and found that they either contain “men’s” or “fashion”, but very few contain are really about men’s fashion!

Well, you just discovered that AltaVista has treated your search parameters as separate words. It has located all pages that have the word “men’s” and “fashion” in them, but necessarily together or in context.

What you need to do is tell the search engine that you are looking for the term “men’s fashion”, not the individual words. You do this by enclosing the term or phrase in quotation marks, like this :

“men’s fashion”

Another pointer – always enter search terms completely in lower case. The search engine will take this as a instruction to search irrespective of case. If you use capitalisation, the search engine will find only those words that are capitalised exactly as you have specified.

Now see what AltaVista returns – pure gold! Virtually every link displayed is relevant to your query, and you quickly find what you are looking for. Many of the links you now investigate also have links to other pages, which seem interesting, and you are tempted to follow them to see what is there….

Its time for the Shopping List

Shopping List

When you are searching for information on the web, you are likely to get distracted very fast, which leads to extended “web surfing” sessions which become less and less productive, though wildly entertaining.

This is OK if you are doing this in your spare time, and have nothing better to do. But if you are searching for business related information that needs to be applied once you find it, things are different. Your employers (or even you yourself) aren’t going to be too happy if you spend enormous amounts of time online. After all, the web is supposed to be a tool, not an end in itself! The first few minutes of searching can be highly productive, but as time goes by, the productiveness begins to sink as you start following links that have little to do with your original quest.

That is why you should write down very clearly just what you are looking for – do this even before you go online. And once you have found it, put a tick mark against your list of objectives. Once every item is ticked, disconnect!

This is not a new concept. People have used this principle very effectively for ages! If you go out shopping (especially in one of these new “have-it-all” supermarkets) without a clear shopping list, you might end up “browsing the shelves”, picking up things that might interest you. In no time at all, you’ll have spent more money (or, in the case of the web, time) than you had originally planned to. This can have devastating effects on your household budget. Or your employer’s confidence in the web being useful.

For example, let’s say that your objective was to find a list of 20 fashion houses abroad dealing with men’s fashion. You want to contact them in order to explore the possibility of selling your fashion products to them. In order to contact them, you need to know who they are, and what their e-mail addresses are.

So your “shopping list” might look something like this:

1. locate 20 fashion houses dealing with men’s fashion

2. get their e-mail addresses and other contact information

Now, as you accomplish each objective, put a tick mark against each point on the shopping list. Once all of them are ticked, note down the results and disconnect.

Follow this often enough, and you’ll find that the web suddenly appears as a cost and time effective tool that you and your employers will never have to criticise as being a waste of time.

Winding down

That’s it for this month. As always, I request you to keep your comments and queries flowing in. I cannot promise that I will reply to all of them, but they will help shape this column into what you want it to be.

Cheerio!

Sidebar: Accessing Search Engines

There are two ways by which you can access search engines:

1. If you have a Shell account, select the Lynx option. When the screen has settled down, press “g” and at the prompt, enter the URL (Universal Resource Locator) or the search engine, e.g. http://www.altavista.digital.com
2. If you have a TCP/IP account, fire up your World Wide Web browser (such as Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer, etc.), and type the URL into the Location field.

Rather than giving you a long list of search engines that you can access, I will point you to C|Net’s www.search.com, which is a front end for most of the popular search engines. Remember that not every search engine yields the same results – experiment a bit until you find one that suits your purposes. Some search engines are more specific in content than others. WWW.SEARCH.COM has a list of such specific engines available, too, so it might make sense to use those rather than some generic engine.

Websites that make Money

Making a website generate money isn’t an easy task, but it is not impossible. In this month’s COMversations, Atul looks at the concepts of local content websites and web advertising revenue.Too much has been written about the World Wide Web. To the layman, it sounds like the Web is the final frontier, the solution to everything. To the initiated, it is all too often the cause of a lot of gray hair, frustration and broken promises.

Is it true? Is the World Wide Web really a waste of time as far as Indian business is concerned?

There are many interpretations to the “failure” of the Web to provide Indian businesses the promised goodies, the millions of dollars and the massive exposure that they long for.

The most common one is, of course, that the reach of the Web is vastly overhyped. That the real business targets don’t really use the Web and hence do not “see” you.

The second, less acknowledged one is that Indian businesses do not really know how to tap the potential of the World Wide Web.

The true picture is probably a combination of both.

The Indian “Business on the Net” Model

Over the past year, Indian usage of the Internet has shot up tremendously. Not only have many business houses begun to seriously use the Internet as a communication and research medium, but quite a few have actually started Internet related businesses.The typical Internet related business that most Indian companies attempt to set up is that of “Business Exposure Services” or “Online Services”. The former promises to make the international business houses sit up and take notice of you by setting up world wide web pages for you (or just listing your name and address in a directory), then “spreading the word” about you. The latter attempts to emulate the typical magazine, with content that people have to pay for to be able to reach it (i.e. a subscription service).

Sadly, neither approach can really deliver on its promises.

Let’s look at the reasons why.

The Business Exposure Service Model

It is surprising how many people think that by simply putting up WWW pages about their company, they will be inundated by enquiries and orders for their products or services.The “Business Exposure Service” Model capitalises on this belief.

It is true that pages on the web are a great resource of information for people looking for your product or service. Once they find you, your ability to give them this kind of information plays the leading role. If the visitor to your pages feels that sufficient information has been presented, he/she may actually get in touch with you to explore doing business with you.

However, the current breed of “Business Exposure Services” offered in India are far from fulfilling this need.

For one, they are usually extremely limited in nature, and do not offer the kind of flexibility businesses require to make this kind of setup pay for itself, let alone generate money.

I am not going to get too deep into this – I have addressed the topic in a previous article (“The Truth about Webpages”).

Let me leave it with saying that in order to “make money” off this kind of service is extremely difficult, and requires tremendous amount of interaction and constant updation. I will address the issue of “corporate web sites” in another article in the future.

The Online Service (Subscription) Model

The concept of “pay per view”, i.e. paid for online services, doesn’t work because of the vastness of the Internet and the World Wide Web. An Internet user who is denied access to the content offered by a site can usually very quickly find similar information elsewhere – for free. It is virtually impossible to create a “unique content” scenario that someone would pay for.Is the concept of an “online magazine” then doomed to failure?

Not at all, as long as the “online magazine wannabes” understand how the traditional printed magazine model works.

No printed publication (or at least very few of them) ever breaks even on the basis of subscriptions or even stand-sales. In fact, these magazines could probably distribute their issues free and save money – the sales and distribution process itself is very expensive!

The real money spinner for these magazines is, of course, advertising. Without advertising, none of these magazines (or other publications) would exist.

This creates a rather familiar “chicken or the egg” paradox. You need lots of advertisers to break even (or even make profits), but people won’t advertise in your publication unless you have a very broad (or focussed) audience.

Now let’s look at the online magazine model again.

Advertisements work

It is clear from the millions of advertisements one sees all over the World Wide Web that the concept of online advertising works – otherwise advertisers would spend their money elsewhere. The amount of advertising one sees on a site is usually directly proportional to the popularity of the site – more people visit it, hence it makes more sense to advertise there than on less frequented sites. And you very rarely see advertising in subscription services – mainly because the audience is limited.The message is therefore clear. Access to your site should be free, and content should be interesting or useful enough to draw in the crowds (and make them come back again and again).

Information Services

This throws a major wrinkle in the path of most potential online magazines – suddenly, the “magic” of being online is not enough. You actually have to do some hard work, create online magic, write meaningful, entertaining or useful articles (or articles that are all three), etc. This itself is not always easy – in fact, it is virtually impossible these days. Creative writing is an artform that is perfected over years, and to hold such writers in your fold is almost as difficult as finding them in first place.Is it hopeless, then?

No, it isn’t.

I analysed my own web usage the other day, just to see what it is that draws me back to a particular site or web page, over and over again.

You won’t believe which pages topped the list – AltaVista’s search pages (http://altavista.digital.com) and IndiaWorld’s airline schedule pages (http://www.indiaworld.co.in/open/info/flights.html)!

Neither site offers anything but raw information – they perform services that are useful to me, and I will return to them over and over again because of this.

It is hardly surprising then that you see advertisements at AltaVista these days, and it won’t be long before the airline schedule pages at IndiaWorld start sporting these little (sometimes annoying, yet livable with) ads that you can click on to get more info about the products.

As web usage increases, and as the web becomes the warehouse of information it has always promised it would become, more and more people will turn to the web to get information about everyday things.

A classic example of such a potentially high-interest area would be information about a particular city – i.e. local content.

Local Content

I know of several pages world wide that get an exceptionally high number of hits because they offer “local content”. Anything from movie listings (which ones are running, where, phone numbers for bookings) to restaurants (types, quality, addresses, phone numbers, reviews) to local transport rates and timings is defined as “local content”.Sites offering high amounts of “local content” get the best of both worlds – frequent visitors from both within as well as outside the city. The former use the site as a daily reference point for information about their city, while the latter would use the site to gather information about the city before travelling there.

This makes such sites especially attractive to advertisers, both local (for example restaurants) as well as national or international (brand name products, for example). Therefore, by offering such informational services for free to readers, the service provider can almost guarantee high advertisement revenues.

Everyone wins.

Advertisement types

Ads being the main revenue generator, it is important that you make sure early on that you can, in fact, cater to them. To understand this, let’s look at the types of advertisements you can cater to.1. Static Ads:

These are ads that are fixed for a particular page. This means that everytime someone visits the page, the same ad will be seen.

This is probably the first kind of ad you will be catering to, mainly because you won’t have too many ads to display in first place. Typically, someone will pay you an amount of money to display his ad at the top (or bottom) of a particular page, for a particular period of time. Dependant on the popularity of the page, this could be a fairly long period (say a month or two) if you do not yet have too many visitors to that page, or a short period (maybe a few days or a week) if you have pretty heavy traffic.

2. Rotating Ads:

Rotating (or dynamic) ads are much in vogue these days, especially with heavy traffic sites. They allow you to cater to multiple advertisers at the same time, and thereby generate more revenue.

The way this works is that each time the page is displayed to someone, the next ad from a database of ads is displayed in the advertisement spot. When all available ads have been shown, the queue wraps around, starting with the first ad.

This requires some pretty complex setups – you need to both maintain an ad database on the site, as well as have the mechanism that rotates the ads for you everytime someone summons up the page.

Not every website can cater to this (it basically requires something known as CGI Programming) – most definitely not the kind most commonly being offered in India (where you are basically a sub-site to another site, without your own domain). Make sure that the CGI programming facility is available to you before you contract for the site.

Bottomline

The bottomline? It is perfectly possible to generate revenue from websites, provided of course that you are clear about what needs to be done.Local content sites offer the biggest draw here. Of course, like every web based project, it will require constant updating, upgrading and attention. But if you do it right, you will find that it works, and works well.

Just make sure that you do not fall to the prey of greed – subscription services usually fail (unless they are have some really high-value content, such as share prices for example). Remember that almost anything you have to offer is available free of charge elsewhere on the web, which makes your “pay per view” approach meaningless.

Winding down…

OK, time to wind down. Before I go, let me wish all my loyal readers a Happy New Year. COMversations has come a long way since the first episode in January 1993, and with your valuable feedback, I hope it will continue to provide my readers the kind of information they are looking for.

The Internet and You

COMversations returns with more tips and tricks to help you through CyberSpaceHi there, and welcome to COMversations ‘96! It’s been a year since the last COMversations episode hit the pages of PC Quest, and a lot has happened since we last met.

For those who came in late….

COMversations first appeared in January 1993 issue of PC Quest. Those were “the dark ages” when a modem was considered a white elephant in India. Until December 1994, this column attempted to introduce readers to new things in the field of datacommunication, as well as give them helpful tips and tricks to make them more productive online.

There was no COMversations in 1995 for the simple reason that nothing new was happening on the Indian Datacommunication scene.

Well, things have changed. In August of 1995, India “got” the Internet (whether is really did is debatable – in fact, we shall debate it in the future). Many of us spend huge amounts of time “surfing the net” (a term I dislike intensely), hopping aimlessly from place to place in the search of Electronic Nirvana.

And hence, COMversations is back!

Let’s get on with it

Getting an Internet account

A year ago, getting onto the Internet from India was a task best left to magicians or millionaires. These days, the task is as trivial as hopping across to the nearest VSNL office and paying them Rs.6,000 for an account.

But hold everything – VSNL has so many types of accounts! Which one should you choose?

The account types fall into two basic categories : “Shell Accounts” and “TCP/IP Accounts”. (I’ll be discussing them in detail a little later).

Shell accounts cost Rs.5,000 (plus Rs.1,000 registration charges). The subscription amount covers 250 hours of access.

TCP/IP accounts cost Rs.15,000 (plus Rs.1,000 registration charges). Again, the subscription amount covers 250 hours of access.

Within each category, VSNL provides a number of classes (like in the Government, where one is classified as an employee belonging to Class 1, 2, 3….). All the classes provide exactly the same content – i.e. the quantity and quality of services offered are the same. What changes is the price tag.

If you sign up as an individual, Shell and TCP/IP accounts cost you Rs.5,000 and Rs.15,000 respectively. If you sign up as a company, you pay Rs.25,000 for either, with no additional benefits.

Since VSNL is violating MRTP rules (charging differentially for the same quality and quantity of service) anyway, you should therefore do the smart thing – sign on as an individual, using a personal cheque or DD or even cash. If you are in fact representing a company, get the amount reimbursed from the company.

With that behind us, let’s proceed to the selection of type of account.

Shell or TCP/IP?

Shell accounts limit you to the text-only tools provided by VSNL – Telnet, FTP, Lynx (character-based World Wide Web Browsing) and E-Mail.

TCP/IP accounts let you use any of the thousands of Internet tools that are available without any restrictions at all from VSNL, and they are usually graphically based.

So which do you go for?

If your requirement is just basic Electronic Mail, don’t even consider the TCP/IP accounts unless you have prior experience with such things and can afford paying Rs.10,000 more for the same thing. The reason is that the e-mail facilities of VSNL are pretty good even at Shell account levels, and definitely beat taking an account with a commercial e-mail vendor who charges you on a per-message basis. With a VSNL Shell account, you do not pay for each individual message – you pay only for the 250 hours of access time that are covered by the Rs.5,000 subscription charge.

The Shell account is a great and cheap introduction to using the Internet, and if you do not have any Internet experience at all, this is definitely something you should try first. Remember that you can upgrade at any time to a TCP/IP account by paying the additional Rs.10,000.

If you are familiar with the Internet, and have the need to go beyond the functionality of a Shell account (such if you want to do Graphical Web Browsing or wish to use TCP/IP-based facilities that are not available in the Shell account), then you could consider taking a TCP/IP account.

With a TCP/IP account, you still have to dial into the VSNL computer, but instead of using facilities available on VSNL, you make use of programs that reside on your local hard disk, such as Netscape, FTP for Windows, IRC, etc.

A TCP/IP account is also easier to use for plain E-Mail because you can use programs such as Eudora or Microsoft Exchange for Windows 95 to send and receive mail. However, you may not be able to justify the additional Rs.10,000 just for this feature.

There is possibly one more additional reason for you to get a Shell account rather than a TCP/IP account – if you are not located in a city where VSNL has a direct dial-up hub. In such a case, you would be using INET or GPSS to access the VSNL Internet Gateways, and inspite of what VSNL will try and convince you of – TCP/IP over INET or GPSS is virtually impossible.

The bottom-line is that you will probably be better off “getting your feet wet” on the Internet with the cheaper Shell account option, upgrading to TCP/IP only if you really need to.

The Modem Game….

When I first started this column way back in 1993, I did so with an article on how to buy a modem. I am not going to repeat all that again now, but here are a few pointers:

Buy a cheap modem (where cheap applies to both price as well as quality) and you will probably have a lousy time online. VSNL is not very comfortable with setting modems, and though it uses great modems at their end (Motorola Codex 3266), those modems are pretty badly set. Which means that if you come along and connect with a bad modem, you are going to wish you never heard of the Internet.

If you haven’t already bought a modem, buy one that your local BBS uses. BBS Sysops usually have gone through many generations of modems, and when they use one consistently, there is usually a very good reason for it. Call him/her up and ask them.

If you do not have the luxury of a BBS in your city, you are stuck with trial and error. I cannot recommend any specific brands – the best brand is the one that you have actually tried from your place. Don’t settle on the first one that works – try at least three before you decide.

A cheapo 14,400 bps modem will cost you around Rs.8-10,000, a really great one will cost you around Rs.15,000. If you can afford it, buy a V.34 28,800 bps modem (cheap ones will cost you around Rs.20,000, really good ones will cost you around Rs.30,000). VSNL does not yet offer 28,800 bps access, but indications are that they will, and pretty soon, too.

You do not have to invest in a 16550 based serial card, but the presence of one will definitely make life simpler for you at high speed.

And, as always, stay away from internal card modems – a good external modem will prove its worth very quickly.

Software

If you have a Shell account, you will need a good Terminal Emulation communication software. I strongly recommend the shareware program Telix, but the HyperTerm program that ships with Windows 95 is also good. Stay away from Windows 3.x’s Windows Terminal!!! That program is lousy, as are programs like BitCom and older versions of QL2Fax.

In general, communications under Windows 3.x is an exercise in futility – stick to DOS based programs for Shell access. Under Windows 95 most communication programs run decently. Under OS/2 Warp, they soar.

Make sure that whatever program you select has VT100 Terminal Emulation and supports Zmodem file transfers. A good scripting facility is also highly desirable, as is the ability to capture ASCII text appearing on your screen.

When it comes to TCP/IP, you are looking at a different class of programs. Here you basically leave the DOS world – what you require is Microsoft Windows and something called WinSock – a program layer that talks TCP/IP to the remote host.

The most common used under Windows 3.x is Trumpet Winsock, but you have a catch 22 situation here. Trumpet Winsock Version 2.1 or later work only for 30 days without registration. Version 2.0 works forever, but the required PPP support (that is needed to connect on TCP/IP mode to VSNL) is faulty and does not work.

Rather than struggle with archaic stuff like this, upgrade to Windows 95, which has built-in TCP/IP support and works like a charm. It is also extremely easy to set up, provided you also have the Windows 95 PLUS! Pack. Without the Plus pack, you’ll find things rough going.

OS/2 Warp with the Bonus pack is also usable and very easy to set up.

OK, once you have established the TCP/IP connection, you need TCP/IP clients such as FTP, Telnet, E-Mail, etc. These are easily available in the shareware domain on many FTP sites. If you are using Windows 95, you’ll find that most of them are already on your hard disk. The same applies to OS/2 Warp.

Winding Down

OK, that’s how much space I have this month. Next month, I will take you by the hand and take you through the actual process of connecting to the Internet – including some useful tips you won’t be able to live without.

Before I leave you, let me point you at my own Web pages on the World Wide Web. The main gateway to my pages is at http://pobox.com/~achitnis, and from there, you will be able to reach other sites, including the wellknown View from the Ground pages that Kishore Bhargava and I maintain on the web. Do drop by!

Cheerio!

+++ATH0

(click)

NO CARRIER

Using the VSNL Shell Account

How to connect to the Internet and use the VSNL Shell account – with a few useful tips…Welcome back.

Last month, I explained what sort of Internet accounts you can get in India (at the moment – things are likely to change soon now that the government has lifted the barrier on private Internet providers).

This month, I am going to address the actual connection process, and also give you a few hints on how get the most out of such a connection. We will be specifically discussing the VSNL Shell Account this month.

Before you connect…

Connecting to the Internet in with a Shell account is pretty easy – you dial the number of your Internet gateway using your modem, log in using your account name (User ID) and password, and you are on.

But hold on – let’s make sure that we have all our settings in place before we do that.

First of all, check your modem. Is it an error-correcting one? It better be – trying to connect without MNP or V.42 is an exercise in frustration.

If you are using an external modem (as you should be), make sure that your serial cable that connects your modem to your PC is a good one. Specifically, ensure that the 9 critical wires on the 25-pin side of the cable (which connects to the modem) are properly connected to their counterparts on the other end of the cable (which connects to your PC). The 9 critical wires are those that are connected to pins 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 20 and 22. If you are using a cable with a 25-pin connector at each end, then these should be connected in a one-to-one fashion (i.e. pin 2 is connected to pin 2 on the other end, etc.). If you are using a 9-pin connector at the PC end of the cable, make sure they are connected in the following fashion:

25-pin 9-pin

2 -> 3

3 -> 2

4 -> 7

5 -> 8

6 -> 6

7 -> 5

8 -> 1

20 -> 4

22 -> 9

Some modem vendors try to get away with an incomplete cable – make sure that this is not the case with your cable. If it is, get a replacement before you try anything else.

Next, make sure you have the right communication software. Many of you are still using DOS and/or Windows 3.x. In this case, stay away from Windows-based communication programs and stick to DOS programs. If you are using Windows 95 or OS/2, Windows-based programs are feasible – the ones shipping with these two operating systems are pretty decent. For the moment, I assume you are using a DOS based program, specifically the one called Telix.

Configure the communication program so that your terminal speed is no more than 19200 bps, that terminal emulation is set to VT100 (or VT102), and that Hardware Flow Control (RTS/CTS) is enabled.

Next, use this program to configure your modem. Ensure that the modem is set for Hardware Flow Control (usually AT\Q3). Set the modem so that it does not get cut off by the 5 minute beep (ATS10=200) and also set the dial time-out to 90 instead of the default 45 (ATS7=90). Save these settings (AT&W) so that you do not have to repeat this everytime.

Connecting to the Internet

When you connect the first few times, I strongly suggest that you do so at 2400 bps instead of 9600/14400. The reason is that if your modem or line quality is not very good, you will have a disappointing time. Force your modem to connect at 2400 by making the appropriate setting in the modem (ATS37=6 in most cases, ATB6 in Motorola FasTalks at AT&N14 in ZyXEL modems).

Now you are ready to call into the Internet. But just before you dial, take a second to open a capture (log) file. In Telix, press Alt-L and enter a filename (e.g. SESSLOG.CAP). From now on, everything that appears on your screen will also be saved in this file.

Now dial the Internet number by typing ATDP followed by the correct number (if you have Tone Dialling available on your line, use ATDT instead). You can also make an entry in Telix’s Dialling Directory (Alt-D) and use that to dial instead.

Once you connect to the Internet (in this case via VSNL’s Gateway Internet Access Service), you will be prompted for a User ID and a Password. Enter them exactly as told to you by the Service Provider (remember that case is important – PRASANTO is not the same as prasanto or Prasanto – ditto for the password).

Online to the Internet

One you are connected and logged in, you will be shown a menu of options (VSNL has promised to give full shell access Real Soon Now, but for the moment you are still stuck with the menu).

Now, pay attention. If you are connected to a VSNL site other than Bombay, your VSNL user shell may have a horrible bug that could lock you out of your account if you are not careful. Follow these steps exactly to avoid this:

1. Select the KERMIT option from the menu.
2. Type this command : del shell.sem
3. After you get a confirmation that the file has been deleted, type exit to quit from the Kermit program.
4. If you do not follow these steps and lose the connection at some point (without specifically logging out), you may find that you cannot log in again and will have to call the 24-hour VSNL HelpDesk (which works from 9 to 5) to get the account released.

Exploring

Right, now you are all set and can explore the various options available to you in the VSNL menu.

There aren’t too many choices to be made here. You have an Electronic Mail facility, you can use telnet to connect to other computers, ftp to transfer files from other computers and Lynx to browse the World Wide Web in text mode.

Here are a few tips that should speed up operations for you.

Electronic Mail

VSNL does not provide you with any way to download all your mail in one shot. But there is a way by which you can do this. Here are the steps:

1. Select the Download with Zmodem option.
2. Some sites will now show you a list of files in your directory. Press Enter until, you are asked for a filename.
3. Now type in the following very carefully: /usr/spool/mail/userid, where userid should be replaced with the name of your account (the login name you use to log in). For example, if your userid is “prasanto”, enter /usr/spool/mail/prasanto.
4. Now the contents of your e-mail file will begin to transfer to your computer. (If you have not enabled Auto-Zmodem download in your communication package, you will have to start the transfer manually by pressing PgDn and selecting Zmodem).
5. When the transfer is completed successfully, verify that the file is now on your disk (it will be a file with a filename the same as your userid – in this case prasanto). You can do this by dropping down to DOS (in Telix this is with Alt-J) and using the DIR command to check it.
6. While you are there, rename the file to a unique name (I use the convention yymmdd.eml, where yy is the year, mm is the month and dd is the day. For example, email I download on the 10th of January, 1996, would be renamed to 960110.eml). This step is important because the next time you download a mailbox, the same name would be used and your existing mail-file could get over-written.
7. Now return to your communication program by typing EXIT.
8. Now select the KERMIT option from the VSNL Shell Menu and delete the mail on the VSNL host by typing the command del /usr/spool/mail/userid (remembering to replace userid with your own login name).
9. Now you can log out of VSNL and disconnect, then read you mail at leisure offline, using a text editor or a word processor.

Posting a message is cumbersome on VSNL – here is a way to speed things up:

1. First of all, before connecting, create your message using a pure-ASCII text editor (such as NE, my own Teddy or the Windows Notepad). Save it as a file.
2. Next, connect to VSNL, and select the E-Mail option. Choose to Compose a message. Now you will be asked the address to which the message is to be sent. Enter it exactly as it has been told to you (for example, my address is atul@iisc.ernet.in).
3. Next, enter a subject for the message.
4. Finally, your cursor will enter the message text area on the screen. Don’t type anything now. Instead, press PgUp, which will bring up the Upload menu in Telix, and select ASCII. You will be asked for a filename – enter the name of the file in which you have saved the prepared message. Telix will now quickly send the prepared text to VSNL. At the other end, the E-Mail editor will think you are the fastest typist on earth, and will accept the text as if you have typed it yourself online.
5. Once the message transfer is complete and the transfer screen disappears, press Ctrl-X to send the message on its way.

A better way to FTP

Most people will use the FTP facility offered in the VSNL menu to transfer files from remote computers to the VSNL computer. Here is a smarter way to do it:

1. Select the Lynx – Browse the World Wide Web option from the menu.
2. Once the screen settles down, press “g”. You will be asked for a URL. Here enter the site you wish to connect to, prefixed with ftp://. For example, if you wish to connect to ftp.microsoft.com, enter ftp://ftp.microsoft.com. Press Enter.
3. Now Lynx will connect to that site, and will show you a scrollable menu of directories and files available there. Navigate to the directory you are interested in, and highlight the file that you want. Now press Enter to download it to the VSNL computer.
4. Lynx may now ask you what to do with the file – select Download.
5. The file will now begin transferring to the VSNL computer. When it is complete, it will ask you what to do with it – select Save. It will ask you for a filename – the default is the original filename of the file, and pressing Enter now will accept it as such.
6. Now Select “q” to quit from Lynx, and use the Zmodem Download option from the VSNL shell menu to transfer the file to your computer.

Accessing the UseNet

VSNL had promised UseNet (Newsgroups) access in its brochure, but appeared to have changed its mind later. Bottomline is that there is no convenient way to access the thousands of Newsgroups that form the heart of the Internet.

Well, where there is a will. There is a way…

1. First of all, you need to configure the E-Mail program to read news. To do this, start the E-Mail facility,a nd choose Setup , then Config.
2. Scroll down to the item that says NNTP Server and press “a”. Enter the following exactly as shown: news.uni-stuttgart.de
3. Press enter, then “e” to exit from the configuration process. Then Quit from the E-Mail program.
4. Next, you need a file that contains the various newsgroup names, called .newsrc – which is actually just a text file that you can create yourself. It is simply a list of newsgroup names, each followed by a colon “:”.For example:….
   comp.os.linux.announce:
   comp.os.linux.answers:
   comp.os.linux.development.apps:
   comp.os.linux.development.system:
   comp.os.linux.development:
   comp.os.linux.hardware:
   comp.os.linux.misc:
   comp.os.linux.networking:
   comp.os.linux.setup:
   ….

   You can create a file with your favourite newsgroups, and call it .newsrc (the initial dot is important), and place it in your VSNL home directory.

5. Now get back into the e-mail program Pine.
6. Select Folders.
7. Cursor down to the News groups item and press Enter.
8. A little while later, the newsgroups will appear and you can select one. This will cause all the message topics in that newsgroup to be retrieved – unfortunately, this can take some time. Be patient.
9. Finally, select the messages you want to read.

Have fun!

Winding down

OK, that’s it for this month. Next month I’ll give you more tips on how to make your life on the Internet a little easier.

In the meanwhile, let me know how you fare! Got any tips you think others should know about? Found any interesting places to visit? Let me know via E-Mail,a nd I’ll try and cover them in future articles.

See you soon.

Introducing the INTRAnet

Proprietary network technologies are history. If you want to survive, look at INTRAnets – very, very seriously“Could you pick up my messages please?”

“Please get me a printout of the latest sales figures”

“I think we should print a company-wide newsletter”

“Please put this on the notice board”

Where do you think you get to hear the above statements?

Right, in the technically challenged CEO’s office.

It is a crying shame that in a technically advanced 21st century style world of corporate communication technology, CEOs and top management still rely on 17th century technology for their decision support material.

This can be most terrifying when you hear people talking about “trickle down” of technology, meaning that it is used at the highest levels first, and eventually by the entire company. Assuming that this is true for a company, one can see trouble ahead.

In reality, this “trickle-down” of technology usage does not exist – in fact “Trickle Up” is probably more like it.

But even trickle up does not seem to reach the places where it would really make a difference – at the top management and CEO levels.

One of the biggest stumble-blocks has always been the learning curve – CEOs often just simply do not have the time to learn to use the ever-changing applications that the rest of the company may be using. Nor do they wish to look silly asking someone, so they dismiss it with a “I pay people to do this for me”.

But it need not be like this!

A perfect world

You, the CEO, walk into your office. You switch on your PC, which starts up the single application available on it that interfaces with all the data-sources you need to refer to. A single front end that lets you, at a click of a mouse button, access information, reports and data generated by your company that you can use in your decision making process.

You choose to see this month’s sales figures. Click. There they are. Let’s have a look at last month’s sales figures to judge performance. Click. OK, now let’s review how the competition has been doing in the same period. Click.

OK, now let’s check the notice board for any items of interest. Click. Interesting, the specs for the new model of a product are now finalised, and are open to comment. More details available here…Click. Someone has also put up reviews of the competition’s equivalent product. Click.

The latest issue of the company’s newsletter is now available. Click. Finance department has written a strongly worded article about telephone costs of the company. Details available here…Click. Ouch, apparently the marketing department is the biggest offender on this front. A breakup of the costs is available…Click. Hmmm, this needs a memo right from the top. A direct link to the internal e-mail system is available, all it requires is a …Click.

Time to check out the messages received. Click, and up comes the integrated e-mail system, which quickly retrieves all messages and displays them. Hmmm, lots of it – let’s sort this on basis of the sender…Click. OK, now one can conveniently read the messages, and reply to the ones that demand immediate attention. Someone else could handle some of them better. Click to forward the message to this person, along with a few covering comments.

Utopia? Science Fiction?

In fact, this is the real world – this is something you can do today, implementing it at minimal cost. What we have just described is all possible using technology that first evolved on the Internet, but very quickly moved into the closed perimeters of the office, to become known as The INTRAnet.

A little bit of history

To understand where the INTRAnet came from, we must first look at its origins: the mother of all networks – the Internet.

Though many presume the Internet to be a fairly recent phenomenon, it actually started off in the late 1960’s, and has been growing ever since. But until the early 1990’s, few people actually used the Internet for anything even remotely resembling business.

In 1993, things changed a lot, with the introduction of a new technology, called the World Wide Web. Actually, this technology wasn’t actually new – it just bound together existing technologies into a new form. But the Web (as it is referred to today) made a startling difference to the usage of the Internet – it was “human compatible” and could be used by just about anyone without any formal training.

Instead of arcane, text based Unix commands and heavily technical operations, all a user needed to get going was a computer of some sort. Then he needed an Internet connection, a mouse, and one single application that allowed access to all the information that made the Internet the biggest information source in history – the Web Browser.

To navigate the Web, this was sufficient – even the keyboard (every CEO’s nightmare) became an optional accessory, used only very rarely. It was entirely possible to search for, and find, useful information on the Web without so much as touching the keyboard!

This was every CEO’s dream come true. Many of them, who so far had shied away from using computers themselves in the office, happily set up and used a computer at home to access the Internet.

The Net within…

It wasn’t long before they began wondering why they couldn’t use this kind of technology back at the office. If corporate information would be this easy to find, access and use, they wouldn’t hesitate to use computers at work, too.

The ease by which their bosses took to the World Wide Web wasn’t lost on the Information Systems people who were responsible for delivering company information to the management. And even the vendors who were so far catering to the Internet in terms of software and hardware soon realised that a massive new field was opening up here – the use of Internet technology to deliver internal information over the local area network.

And with that, the concept of the INTRAnet was born.

Once the idea was in place, setting things up was so simple, it seemed ridiculous that no one had thought of it before.

Most companies already had LANs in place. Effectively, that meant that all the required hardware was already up and running. All that was needed were the applications, and a bit of standardisation.

The main application (at least the front end) was already in place, and had gained acceptance – the Web Browser. And Netscape and Microsoft were just falling over themselves producing newer and more powerful versions, at costs that ranged from free to about $50 – laughable, considering the cost of most corporate applications.

The backend (the web server) was a different story – they were available, but at pretty high costs, and usually not for “low end” platforms like PCs or PC servers. The Internet was built around powerful Unix machines such as the powerful workstations and servers produced by Sun, and these machines meant big bucks. Naturally, applications written for them were priced proportionally.

But that soon changed. Companies like Netscape started producing web server software for the PC platform (typically for Windows NT or Windows 95), and Microsoft, in recent times, even bundles and automatically installs a web server with Windows NT.

More pieces falling into place.

The final hurdle was the protocol used for communication on the network. The Internet uses the protocol known as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), while most LANs used Novell’s IPX or Microsoft’s NETBEUI. The traditional operating systems used on the user’s PCs (DOS or Windows 3.x) did not include any network support, and definitely not TCP/IP.

The arrival of Windows 95 changed all that. For one, it included TCP/IP as a natively installable network protocol, and, even better, allowed the simultaneous use of several protocols at once, including IPX, NETBEUI and TCP/IP.

That was the clincher. Every piece was now in place, and very soon, the first few internal web pages started making their appearance on corporate LANs.

The INTRAnet had arrived.

Growing Up

As the demand for INTRAnet technology implementations grew in corporate circles, so did the demand for applications that catered to this new field.

The absence of tools designed specifically for this market was no issue at all. Since INTRAnets employed exactly the same technologies used on the Internet, and with the incredible growth experienced by the Internet itself, applications were available in abundance, and their numbers grew every passing day.

The same HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language – the code used for building web pages) editors used to design those glorious web pages for the Internet were used for the production of in-house web pages. The same web browsers, the same tools and utilities…this market was exploding.

It didn’t take long for software companies to realise which side of the bread was buttered. As new versions of their applications (word processors, spreadsheets, database programs) started appearing, they brought with them built-in Internet (and thereby INTRAnet) capabilities. No longer was it necessary to hand-code an HTML page from existing text. To produce a web page from an existing word-processing document, all the user had to do was to save the document as HTML, and the job was done!

Internet v/s INTRAnet

Trying to differentiate the Internet from INTRAnets is more or less an exercise in futility. The two use the same technology, the same applications and the same concepts – one could say that they are identical twins, born four years apart.

But there are subtle differences that differentiate the two.

The biggest difference is the issue of bandwidth.

The Internet is forever starved of bandwidth – things just don’t seem to move fast enough. Users are typically connected to the Internet using 28.8K dialup modems, 64K/128K ISDN and leased lines or 1.5mbps T1 lines. Therefore, the design of the network needs to include this bandwidth factor – make things too big, and they slow down when they hit the bottlenecks of the Internet.

In sharp contrast, INTRAnets have more than enough bandwidth available to them. Even the slowest LAN today boasts of 10mbps Ethernet speeds, while more modern LANs offer 100mbps and faster speeds.

Therefore, and application designed to run fast on the Internet will be greased lightning on an INTRAnet.

However, the opposite is not always true. An application, or a heavy duty, multimedia rich HTML page may work just fine on an INTRAnet, but could choke on the Internet’s lack of bandwidth.

The other difference is, of course, accessibility and security. The Internet is an open place – anything published there is essentially for public viewing. INTRAnet based information, on the other hand, is secured and contained within the company – the information is not accessible to people on the outside. This is an important difference – without it, the INTRAnet would become meaningless as one would not be able to trust it to protect the information it contains from snoopers, competition and other prying eyes.

The cheque is in the mail

Most people assume that the term “INTRAnet” essentially means an in-house website.

In reality, that is not true. Just like the Internet does not consist of by the World Wide Web alone, INTRAnets incorporate many technologies.

The most powerful one, and the one that really makes an impact that can be measured in real money, is the concept of in-house electronic mail.

In the past, electronic mail on the LAN was an expensive affair. Using proprietary products from various vendors, it was possible to establish an e-mail network, but it would be anything but “standards based”. No product could interact with another without expensive add-ons, and no product worked quite the same way.

The Internet, and thereby INTRAnets, changed all that. The Internet uses just one mail protocol (SMTP – Simple Mail Transport Protocol), and it is in use worldwide. It is, in fact, as much a standard as TCP/IP is today for networking. SMTP mail server software made by different vendors use the same protocol, and therefore can interact effortlessly.

SMTP based e-mail also does away with proprietary front-ends and closed mail architecture, and slashes prices to almost nothing. One of the most popular e-mail applications, Eudora, is free for personal use, while Windows 95 incorporates the Exchange Client for free. Any e-mail program can be deployed in an Internet or INTRAnet setup, provided it follows SMTP for mail delivery (and a similar protocol, POP3, for mail receipt by end-users). In fact, most web browsers today incorporate e-mail capabilities, rapidly evolving into that dream scenario – “one application does it all”.

Setting up an in-house e-mail server is usually a question of picking up any of the many offerings available today (typically costing far less than their proprietary predecessors.) This is then installed on one of the LAN servers (usually, a dedicated machine is not required), and pointing the e-mail client software on the users’ machines to that server.

In fact, provided you have a spare machine available for the purpose, you can use a freeware operating system like Linux (a Unix-like operating system) as a mail server for free! Linux includes all required programs, server software, etc. This is a solution we at Exocore Consulting often resort to, resulting in massive short term and long term savings for our clients.

The other major advantage that immediately emerges is the fact that external (i.e. Internet) mail can easily be linked into the internal setup, thereby creating a completely seamless solution. No more worrying about compatibility issues, or expensive gateways!

The Future: Full Service INTRAnets

While the basic concept of INTRAnets incorporate specific functionality, such as internal web services, file transfers and electronic mail, things are rapidly moving beyond that.

Already, INTRAnets are evolving towards offering services that have traditionally been the domain of proprietary Network Operating Systems such as Novell NetWare and Microsoft Windows NT, including file and print services. These enhanced INTRAnets are now becoming known as “Full Service INTRAnets”.

Forrester Research defines a Full Service INTRAnet as follows:

“A corporate TCP/IP network which delivers reliable, feature-rich applications that share five core, standards-based services — directory, e-mail, file, print, and network management. ”

This may sound futuristic, but as the following timeline shows, it is already work in progress.

So what does all this mean? If you guessed “non-proprietary networks” and “vendor independence”, you are well on your way to realising the benefits of INTRAnets.

Traditionally the incompatibility between services offered by proprietary network operating systems from different vendors is so great, it isn’t funny. Too many systems managers have had to battle with issues ranging from simple file exchange (different network operating systems use different file access methods) to planning for growth (proprietary NOSs translate into big bucks for the vendor at the higher end).

By embracing standards (true standards, not “vendor defined wannabe standards”), the INTRAnet gives managers the freedom to look elsewhere for solutions, without having to worry about compatibility between existing setups and those in the future.

The implementation of an INTRAnet

If you are at this point not quite convinced about the feasibility of INTRAnets, then this point may just do it:

Implementing an INTRAnet today does not require doses of black magic. As the accompanying articles about migrating to INTRAnets will show you, it is simplicity in itself, with absolutely minimum intrusion into your existing setup. Given a basic LAN, you can deploy a basic INTRAnet overnight on top of your existing facilities, and can graduate to a “Full Service” INTRAnet as you get comfortable with it.

Considering all the advantages, the only thing one can say is what has been nicely summarised by Forrester Research:

“By 2000, smart companies will utilise the Full Service Intranet for all the networking services they used to rely on proprietary NOS to provide. Companies that fail to grasp this will be at a significant competitive disadvantage.”
– Forrester Report (March 1996)

E-Mail – The 7 Deadly Sins

How to really mess up a great conceptIn June 1995, Kishore Bhargava and I were planning a seminar tour. We were finalising the “story line” of the seminar – with me sitting in Bangalore and Kishore in Delhi.

In a span of about 2 hours, we sent each other almost 50 messages, occasionally dragging in other friends into the discussion, seeking advice and suggestions from them. It was almost a real time conference, and looking at the saved messages today, I marvel at what we achieved.

Today, when virtually anyone can have an e-mail account, thanks to VSNL’s low priced Internet services, the number of messages we PC Quest columnists and editors receive daily is staggering. Before VSNL’s services came into the picture, I used to receive something like 20-30 messages a day – today that number sometimes crosses a hundred messages. PC Quest receives close to 4000 messages a month from readers alone! The input from our readers has helped us make our magazine what it is today.

Electronic Mail is probably the real “world shrinker” – not air travel. Using electronic mail you can, in a couple of seconds, send a message to someone anywhere in the world, and it costs you virtually nothing. And people can send you a message equally quickly. The wonderful world of the Internet makes this possible today, since messages are usually delivered in a few seconds.

However, the ease of sending and receiving mail has brought along its own problems. And almost all of them arise out of improper usage. I refer to them as the Seven Deadly Sins, and am documenting them here as a warning.

Sin #1: Flames

World War I was triggered by the assassination of Duke Ferdinand, World War II by Hitler’s annexation of Germany’s neighbours. World War III will probably triggered by an inappropriate e-mail message.

Picture this:

You are upset with someone. You put together a quick, nasty message, get online and send it off to the victim of your ire.

Seconds later you realise that you shouldn’t have done that, because the note will probably destroy your relationship with that person. But it is too late – in those few seconds, the message has been delivered and can no longer be stopped. The message is already in the addressee’s mailbox, and there is nothing you can do to prevent him from reading it, getting upset and terminating his relationship with you.

A nasty message like this is called a flame – a message in which you violently disagree with someone, and might even stoop so low as to abuse him.

The way to avoid this is simple – allow a message written in an angry state of mind cool for an hour or two before you send it. Before you actually send it, read it once more, and make sure you still mean what you said in the message.

Sin #2: Excessive (or Pointless) Quoting

Most E-Mail programs (including VSNL’s Pine program) have an option for quoting a received message in a reply you write. This is convenient when you are replying to some points or questions you have received.

However, many people just miss the point when it comes to quoting. Many just write their replies, and attach a fully quoted copy of the original message at the bottom of their reply. This unnecessarily adds to the message size, and serves virtually no useful purpose, and is called Pointless Quoting.

Quoting becomes useful when you intermingle the quoted text with your reply. Here is an example:

> Will you attend the meeting?
Yes, I will, but I will probably come in a bit late.

> Where is the report on the Western Sector?
I had e-mailed it to PKR for his comments. He will probably
pass it on to you later today.

> Have you played Quake yet?
Yes, and got motion-sick.Talk about virtual reality - those
butterflies in my stomach were real!  

As you can see in the example above, lines from the original message are quoted (with a leading “>” mark), while the answers follow each question/point.

Some people simply quote back the entire message, “breaking in” at appropriate points to add their replies. This is called Excessive Quoting. You should only quote as much as is required to jog the memory of the person who is reading it. This should never be more than two lines.

Sin #3: Delayed Replies

E-Mail makes sense only if you reply to the sender immediately. Many newcomers to the e-mail scene do not actually reply to a message for some time, having been spoiled by postal delays that have always been easy to blame.

In the world of e-mail, people expect a reply, and virtually instantaneously (or at least as soon as you have read the message). Non-receipt of a reply is taken as a sign of the message not having reached (an increasingly rare situation these days) or that you aren’t interested in replying.

When you receive an e-mail message, reply immediately, even if it is just to day that you have received the message and will be replying in a day or two, after you have gathered the required information. Keep the flow and momentum going – if you “break the stride” of e-mail communication, you could be signalling that further communication with you is useless.

Sin #4: Account Sharing

Unless you are also in the habit of sharing your toothbrush with others, never ever share your e-mail account with others, nor use someone else’s account for sending your messages.

E-Mail is something that is considered very personal. Should your correspondent feel that more than one person can read messages sent to your account, he will probably not ever send you a message offering you a job with twice the salary you are currently earning, nor will he ever tell you anything private or in secret (like a business tip that he doesn’t want others to know that it originated from him).

Make sure you have your own e-mail account, with your name in the “From:” line. It is very easy to detect a shared account – it usually is in a company name, or the name of the signatory and the name in the “From:” line don’t match.

Sin #5: Massive Attachments

This may have happened to you in the past – it has definitely happened to me. One morning, I send my PC out to retrieve my mail, and one hour later, it is still retrieving it. Often, my connection drops, causing me to lose mail. At other times, it is simply frustrating.

Someone has sent me a message with a megabyte sized attachment that I haven’t asked for.

This is almost the worst possible offence you can commit with e-mail – sending a massive file attachment.

File transfers using e-mail are not uncommon, but there are limits of tolerance. Internet norms have it that no message should exceed 40KB in size. Some gateways on the Internet have real physical limitations when dealing with messages exceeding 64K (for architecture reasons). And most important of all, the person who receives the file may not be equipped to handle such a massive attachment.

Recently, a client of mine managed to hold up his entire e-mail batch for two days while several 500K messages were in the pipeline – the receiving gateway refused the entire batch meant for that site.

Don’t get caught in such a situation when you are sending file attachments. First of all, make sure that the receiver is equipped to handle such large messages, and make sure that he can decode the message back into a binary file. E-Mail messages are exclusively 7-bit ASCII text, which means that the binary file enclosure will be converted into text using the uuencode or MIME process. Ensure that the receiver has such decoding capabilities.

Many good e-mail packages (such as Eudora) have an option that will automatically break a large message into several parts. Use this option. The different parts will be received by the recipient, and he can then put the parts together and decode the whole file.

Sin #6: Unsolicited Joke-a-Day

Also known as the DA (Daily Atrocity) problem, this is a syndrome that bites many “newbies” (newcomers on the net). Essentially, what they do is every now and then (usually once or twice a day), they send some funny message they have received (or found on the net) to a bunch of people – usually without checking with them first.

What these people do not realise is that they aren’t the only once doing the hapless recipient this “favour” – in the past, I have had the same joke sent to me by several people – on the same day!

Even worse, these people, in their complete ignorance, usually mail these messages with the e-mail addresses of all the recipients in the “To:” or “CC:” field, which means that everyone who receives these messages now has a ready-made mailing list which he in turn can use to unleash his Daily Atrocity!

Two points – first of all, never send such unsolicited mail to people without checking with them first. And secondly, never put the list of e-mail addresses in the “To:” or “CC:” fields where they can be seen by everyone – put them in the “BCC:” (Blind Carbon Copy) field instead, which effectively suppresses the display of the e-mail addresses being targeted.

Sin #7: Junk Mail

Probably the worst possible thing you can do is overdo it. In recent times, many inconsiderate and ruthless users of e-mail have begun mass-mailing people on VSNL, offering their wares or services.

VSNL itself has been pretty docile about it, and has even been contributing to the cause by regularly sending system bulletins to all users – complete with all addresses in the “To:” field. This, of course, gives an unscrupulous vendor all he needs to do his mass mailing.

Recently, such an incident took place at Bangalore, which caused many users (and me) to take VSNL to task for not doing something about it. VSNL has finally agreed to take harsher action – probably to the extent of suspending the offending user’s account for a couple of months.

However, this may not be sufficient. The real action has to come from you. You should immediately reply back to the offender, thanking him for pointing out the product/service that will hence be blacklisted by you. Additionally, you should immediately put up a note on your company’s bulletin board, and circulate a memo, asking all departments to take note of the blacklisting of the vendor’s product or service.

Winding down

These then are the seven deadly sins of Electronic Mail. Make sure you note them down carefully – by avoiding them, you will become a more productive e-mailer, and a cherished and trusted correspondent.