Access Services The major services discussed here are electronic mail, news, Gopher, World Wide Web (W3), OASIS, phone directories, and dial-up access. The software for using these services is available for general use at CAC labs and is also distributed for use on personal computers. See the chapter titled "Access Software" for instructions on how to obtain software. Electronic Mail Electronic mail (e-mail) is information that is sent electronically from one computer user to another. E-mail is a fast, convenient way to handle correspondence. Once you learn the basics, you'll find it an easy and fun way to communicate with friends and colleagues at Penn State and around the world. The CAC provides a POP (Post Office Protocol) server that holds your e-mail until you request it. When you connect with a POP client your mail files are moved to your own computer where you can read them, reply to them, or store them. The CAC also provides a mail forwarding service in conjunction with an electronic phone directory. A single e-mail address can be given to your correspondents (in the form userid@psu.edu) and you can have mail forwarded from there to whatever system you are currently using. The recommended clients for e-mail are Eudora for the Macintosh, PC Eudora for Windows, and NUPop for DOS. News Usenet, also called Netnews, is a worldwide electronic bulletin board and conferencing system that is accessible through the Internet. This system contains thousands of newsgroups from which you can select topics of interest and read articles that have been posted by others. The interactive nature of Usenet has made it extremely popular with students and faculty, who use it as a forum to discuss topics of interest. The CAC provides a news server that is used with "news reader" client software that uses NNTP (NetNews Transfer Protocol). Articles from chosen newsgroups are copied to your personal computer where you can read, save, or reply to them. You can send replies privately or publicly or post your own articles, questions or opinions. The recommended clients for Netnews are InterNews for the Macintosh, WinTrumpet for Windows, and Trumpet for DOS. Gopher Gopher software provides menu-based access to Internet resources. Combining features of electronic bulletin board services and searchable databases, Gopher can help you locate resources such as class and exam schedules, course descriptions, events calendars, library catalogs, research databases, journals, weather maps, and much more. There are several Gopher servers at Penn State that can be found through the "primary" server maintained by the CAC. Again, a client program connects to the servers and displays choices to you. Files are either viewed on or copied to your personal computer. The recommended clients for Gopher are TurboGopher for the Macintosh, HGopher for Windows, and PC Gopher for DOS. World Wide Web (W3) W3 servers provide a network of information delivered with "hypertext" and "hypermedia." Instead of picking items from a menu, you can click on highlighted phrases or icons that are linked to other items which can be text, graphics, sound or video. W3 is developing rapidly because of the advent of client programs such as Mosaic and Netscape that support W3, Gopher, FTP, and Netnews. The recommended clients for using W3 are Netscape for the Macintosh and Netscape for MS Windows. (As of this writing, Mosaic is available in CAC labs but may soon be replaced by Netscape.) Versions of Netscape are available and working, but we haven't repackaged them in a complete easy-to-install form. You can find them on the FTP server ftp.cac.psu.edu in pub/access/test. OASIS OASIS (Open Access to Student Information Systems) is intended to provide a convenient, yet controlled, method for Penn State students to directly view and in some cases update their own administrative data. This access ranges from viewing your unofficial transcript and course schedule to updating your local address. The Macintosh OASIS client was developed by the Office of Administrative Systems at Penn State using the Mandarin tool kit. The Mandarin tool kit was developed by Cornell University with support from Penn State and MIT. Further enhancements are being made by the Mandarin Consortium, a collection of more than fifteen institutions of higher education including Penn State. OASIS retrieves a student's administrative data by connecting to a remote server maintained by the Office of Administrative Systems. The requested data is then transported to the client and displayed for viewing and, in some cases, updating. The current version can ¥ display a student's course schedule for both the current semester and any future semesters for which the student is pre-registered; ¥ display grades by semester; ¥ display an unofficial transcript (undergraduate, graduate, medical); ¥ display a student's home, local, and emergency contact addresses; ¥ provide an update option for any local address changes and provide instructions on how to go about updating home and emergency contact addresses; ¥ display course descriptions (from the university course catalog); ¥ display available course sections by campus and semester; ¥ display the status of a student's loan checks; and ¥ display financial aid information. At University Park, OASIS is available in Shields Building, the HUB, and on Macintosh computers (except Macintosh SE's) in CAC labs. OASIS can also be installed and used on your personal computer with a modem or backbone connection. To use OASIS at CAC labs, double-click on the "Launch Pad" icon. Then click on the "Login to OASIS" button, and enter your Access Account user ID and password. Instructions for using OASIS are displayed on the screens that appear when you log into OASIS. Phone Directories The CAC maintains an on-line telephone directory system called PH (short for phone). This directory contains information for Penn State students, faculty and staff. The PH server is updated weekly to provide more current and complete information than the printed directories can. PH can display a person's e-mail address, home and work addresses, phone numbers, campus, department, title, and other information. The directory is accessible to everyone on the Internet, and people may use it to find your e-mail address. University Libraries Many Internet resources and databases can be accessed through Penn State's Library Information Access System (LIAS). A copy of the brochure Remote Access to LIAS can be obtained at Pattee Library, by calling (814) 865-2112, or by sending electronic mail to swk@psulias.psu.edu. Dial-up Access Dial-up service allows an individual with a computer, modem, and phone to connect to the Penn State network and the global Internet. This connection has all the capabilities of a "hardwire" connection such as Ethernet but is not as fast. The dial-up access phone number (814) 863-7777 connects you to the CAC information access server. Older services providing asynchronous terminal access, such as 865-2424 or 863-0459 (commonly used for connection to PSUVM) remain available, but are completely unrelated to this service. Recently the Office of Telecommunications (OTC) and the Center for Academic Computing (CAC) announced additional locations and numbers for dial-up access to the Penn State network and the Internet from locations other than University Park. These numbers, each with eight modems, are functionally equivalent to the University Park service at (814) 863-7777 in providing an authenticated connection for a wide variety of network applications. This project is supported by OTC, CAC, and the administration of each campus. See the technical notes for a list of locations and phone numbers. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a method for transferring files between computers attached to the Internet. Programs supporting FTP allow users to easily move files from one Internet-connected computer to another. The recommended programs for using FTP are Fetch for the Macintosh, WS_FTP for Windows, and NCSA/Clarkson/Rutger's or Waterloo's FTP for DOS. Telnet Telnet is a procedure for creating a terminal connection with a remote computer. Through Telnet you can access worldwide computing resources. You must use Telnet to log into the Access Server to change your Access Account and PH passwords. The recommended programs for using Telnet are NCSA Telnet and Brown's TN3270 for the Macintosh, QWS3270 or McGill's TCP3270 for Windows, and Clarkson's Telbin and TN3270 for DOS. Clients and Servers It is important to understand that network services are provided by several different computers, and that you no longer "log into" a single machine to do different things. Now, for a particular task you connect to a server (a program) with the right kind of client (another program). The client and server converse in a well-defined language or protocol. One server may be running on a different computer than another. For example, the access server (access.psu.edu) provides dial-up connections and a menu for changing your password. The mail server (email.psu.edu) holds and delivers your e-mail. The news server (news.psu.edu) stores news articles, and delivers to you the ones you choose to read. These all run on different computers today, but might be on the same or another computer tomorrow, and you'll never need to know the hardware was changed.