Using your PPP connection

Once you have a PPP connection, with whatever operating system you use, there are several programs that you will use a lot:

telnet

This program allows you to `login' to a remote computer and operate in a command line environment (often called a shell). Many facilities at UNE depend on you being able to operate in this way. Once you have such a connection, you can use many other Internet facilities such as email, Usenet, ftp, etc, from your shell. Note that Windows comes standard with a telnet client.⁹ This Microsoft telnet program is not very good as it's terminal emulation is quite bad. You may experience problems with some ``full screen'' applications. Use one one the telnet applications available from UNE or the Internet.

ftp

This program allows you to transfer files between your computer and a remote computer. The ftp program can come in several forms. You may have a graphical program like ws_ftp or you may use a command line version like the one that comes with Unix and Windows. A nice program on linux is ncftp.

You can use the command line version of ftp by, after connecting to the Internet, starting an MSDOS session on Windows, or a shell prompt in Linux, and typing ftp turing.une.edu.au (or whatever host you want) at the command prompt. You will need to enter your¹⁰ username and password for the machine you are connecting to. In the ftp program, there are several useful commands.

get filename to copy a file from the remote system to your local system.

put filename will send a file from your local system to the remote system.

dir will show a list of files on the remote system.

cd directory will allow you to change directory on the remote system.

lcd directory will allow you to change directory on your local system.

Other useful commands are mget and mput to get and put multiple files. prompt to turn prompting on or off. This is useful when you need to get or put a number of files. help will give you a list of commands that you can use in ftp.

WWW browser

This program allows you to view documents, made available for viewing, on remote computer systems. Browsers also offer support for other facilities such as email and ftp.

You can use your browser to access unit homepages. See section 5.6 for more detail about what is available on the WWW.

Note that if you are on the Internet and you have been issued with a system username and password, you can retrieve files using the FTP feature of your browser. For example, to get to your files on turing, simply enter ftp://username@turing.une.edu.au into your browser's dialog box. username in the above URL is your turing username. You will be asked to enter your turing password.

You can also use this FTP feature of the browser to upload/download files from your turing account. Simply enter ftp://username@turing.une.edu.au into your browser's dialog box. username in the above URL is your turing username. After entering your turing password you can navigate the turing filesystem and download files to your home system. You can also use the on the menu to place a file into your turing account.

For correct operation, your browser will usually have to use what is called a proxy server. If you are using UNE modems, you will need to set the following Netscape¹¹ options in , , , . Select the automatic proxy configuration and enter the following: http://www-cache.une.edu.au:8000/cgi-bin/proxy-config.cgi

If you do not use UNE as your ISP, consult your ISP to find out how your proxy setting should be done.