----------------------------- - 1. What is the Internet ? - ----------------------------- The Internet is technically the successor to the Defense Advance Research Projects Administration Network (DARPANET). This was an early network of research labs, defense contractors, and government agencies that experimented in linking local area networks together. DARPANET was succeeded by the National Science Foundation Network - NSFNet. In the mid 1980s, NSFnet grew to connect most university campuses in the United States. Aside from the history, the Internet has since grown phenomenally. Today some estimate as many as 3.200.000 host systems on nearly 7000 networks in 50 countries are connected to the Internet either directly, or via some form of e-mail gateway. As a result, it has become the common e-mail bus for the online world. What does this mean to you? It means you can send electronic mail from this BBS to virtually any network or e-mail system in the world - including overseas locations, at no additional charge. All you need is the correct Internet mail address. And the recipient can respond - and you will receive your mail right here. Internet is a collection of networks throughout the world. All these networks are connected to each other and they all use the same communication protocol, i.e. TCP/IP. This permits all machines connected to one of these networks to communicate with each other. The total number of computers connected in the world is now about 3.200.000 and the number of hosts connected to the Internet is doubling each year. The Internet has become popular for its ease of use of electronic mail (E-mail). Knowing the e-mail address of someone, you can mail messages all over the world. But next to this communication mechanism, Internet is known for its sources of free information. Fileservers all over the world can be reached to ask for the latest updates on programs, sources (free- or shareware), but also on agriculture, the Dow Jones or movies. Most of this information is for free. Internet is also a very democratic society : you can discuss via News on almost any subject you can think of in an interactive way. News contains more than 6000 different subjects. ----------------------------- - 2. Info about E-mail? - ----------------------------- Electronic Mail (E-Mail) ---------------------------- The primary interest in Internet connections revolves around the use of e-mail. Internet allows individuals with e-mail access to send messages of course. But more than that, over the past few years most other networks have developed gateways to the Internet. IB-BBS offers Internet-style (rfc-822) electronic mail services to its IVP users. IB-BBS is gated into Internet by using UUCP (unix to unix copy) connections with INTERPAC. The bottom line is that you can send messages to anyone with an Internet E-mail box, or a connecting network. Compuserve, mci mail, at&t mail, america online, genie, dialog, sprintmail, and networks in europe, the soviet union, and japan and over fifty other countries all have Internet connections. The cost of sending or receiving Internet e-mail to/from anywhere on the globe is the same. If you have a friend in Japan with an Internet mailing address - go for it. No extra charge! The cost for this service consists of a base subscription and a Volume-based cost. The base subscription is 1500 belgian francs for 1 year or 1000 Fr if you are already a VIP member on our BBS (and it lasts for more than 6 month to go). The volume-based cost is 0.2 bef / kilobyte (sent or received!!) but you can send/receive 250 kb e-mail for free every month! This ought to be enough for normal use.  Note: The Internet network has also several other uses besides E-mail. IB-BBS can only provide you with Internet E-mail and Usenet NEWS. To offer services like the World Wide Web or FTP we would require a permenent network connection through a leased line and IB-BBS can not (yet) suply you these services. READ AND SEND MAIL ------------------ How do i address an Internet e-mail message? Item W on the IVP Internet menu puts you in a private e-mail board, setup specifically to handle Internet mail messages. This works like a normal IB-BBS message area. Enter the desired address at the regular to prompt. And likewise the subject at the subject: prompt. No special addressing requirements other than the usual problem of Having the correct Internet mail address. No particular requirements for formatting the text either. This gives you the possibility to send mail to all Internet users in the world (there are more than 30.000.000 users in the world). But, you have to know the mail address of your partner. This is basically a private e-mail area. That means that other callers cannot read the e-mail you send or receive. But note that the system operators do have the ability to read all electronic mail on this system, and while not a particulary curious lot, they will from time to time look over electronic mail messages in the course of routine maintenance. As a result, these messages cannot be considered to be truly private. The area features an in box and an out box. This is pretty much self explanatory. Incoming mail to you from the Internet goes in the in box and a copy of those messages you send is kept in the out box. You can of course copy messages freely into your cubbyhole function as well. You can reply to a received Internet e-mail message by simply pressing R as in any other message area. CAN I RECEIVE INTERNET MAIL ON THIS BBS? Yes, you can, as soon as you subscribe as an IVP menber (1500 Fr/Year) IF SO, WHAT'S MY INTERNET ADDRESS ON THIS SYSTEM? What does this mean to you? It means you can send electronic mail from this BBS to virtually any network or e-mail system in the world - including overseas locations, at no additional charge. All you need is the IVP status and the correct Internet mail address. And the recipient can respond - and you will receive your mail right here.  SO WHAT IS YOUR ADDRESS? Your.Name@ibbbs.be EXAMPLE: Logon name on IB-BBS - Firstname Lastname Internet address - Firstname.Lastname@ibbbs.be Notice the space between Firtname and Lastname has been replaced by a period. This is a common Internet convention. Spaces are discouraged and you should replace them with a period. If your name has more than two parts then replace every scape separating the parts by a period. Once you got your IVP status, you can check your personal E-mail adress by using option in the IVP Internet menu of this BBS. It does NOT matter whether the addres is used in upper case letters (capitals) or lower case. The software we are using to implement this Internet mail feature, was designed specifically for this purpose. When replying, you can now use the normal REPLY function and the Internet address will be captured from the incoming message so you can reply just as you would on any other message area. ----------------------------- - 3. Info about USENET News - ----------------------------- USENET (User's Network) News is named after the USENET-network of Duke University and the university of South California. Since its start in 1979 Network News has become the largest "bulletin board" system in the world; it allows the exchange of texts, notes, programs, Q&As (called "articles") ... between millions of users. These news articles are largely written by persons who participate in a group discussion on a specific subject (a newsgroup). At the moment there exist more that 7000 newsgroups. Some newsgroups have a moderator that filters before distributions, in other newsgroups the participants decide what appears in the newsgroup. News is a kind of bulletin board system in which you can ask or answer questions, or find software. News is divided in groups. Each group discusses a certain subject - this can be about the latest HP Deskjet printer, a political subject like the foreign affairs policy of Bill Clinton or a discussion about your favourite music. Please follow the rules of News when posting (psting = sending something to news). It will be read by some thousands of people. Be concise, to the point and polite ! Normally you read the messages of a newsgroup during a few weeks (months) before you begin to ask a question. Otherwise you could get some answers like 'RTFM' (Read The Fucking Manual). The level of most technical newsgroups is quite high. Some of the readers/writers are real specialists in the domain of the subject of the newsgroup. Mostly you can find also FAQ's (Frequently Asked questions) published weekly or monthly in the Newsgroup. These FAQ's give already the answer to most basic questions.