| 9600 bps | V.32 |
| 14.4 Kbps | V.32bis |
| 28.8 Kbps | V.34 |
| 33.4 Kbps | V.34bis |
| 56 Kbps | X2 and K56 |
This document describes how to use the Rutgers University computer facilities from home. It is part of a documentation set aimed at faculty and students in the New Brunswick Computer Science Department. It assumes that you have created an account on one of our Unix systems.
Note: This document is formatted using a style sheet. If possible, it should be viewed and printed from Netscape 4 (Communicator), or Internet Explorer 4, or later. Older browsers won't see the proper formatting. A PDF version of the document is also available. This has somewhat better fonts and formatting, and is better for printing.
This document is http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/LCSR-Computing/athome.html
In order to work at home, you need a terminal or computer, and a modem. (Rutgers currently does not support other types of remote access, such as ISDN.)
There are two different ways to use a modem: with a terminal or terminal emulator, and with dialup networking.
At this point we believe that all computer science users should be using dialup networking. Appropriate software is available for both Macintoshes and PC's. Thus this document no longer has detailed instructions on how to set up terminal emulation. The next paragraph is all we're going to say about that.
If you must use your PC as a terminal for some reason, we recommend using Kermit. (You can get a copy of Kermit from the Information Center or one of the public student labs.) For a PC, unless you purchase the Windows 95 version of Kermit, you'll probably want to use the DOS version in a DOS window. Configure your modem and Kermit to use hardare flow control, parity "space" or "none", 7 bit data, 1 stop bit, full-duplex.
Rutgers maintains sets of modems in New Brunswick (actually Piscataway), Camden, and Newark, which you can dial. The Computer Science Dept. also maintains a small number of modems of its own in Piscataway. You can reach computer science dept. computers from any of the general RUCS modems, as well as its own. To find the phone numbers, do "man dialups" on any Rutgers Unix system. (The numbers change often enough that it does not make sense to put them in this document.)
If the Rutgers dialups are unavailable (or unappealing), you might use an Internet Service Provider (ISP). These are commercial services that maintain facilities similar to the Rutgers modems. Unlike Rutgers, you'll have to pay to use them. However if you live far from one of the Rutgers phone numbers, you may find an Internet provider less expensive in the long run. A number of our users in New York are now using such services. Internet providers vary greatly in how they charge, and also in how well they are connected to Rutgers. If you use the system a lot, you will be better off with a provider that uses a flat monthly charge. Many providers make both a monthly charge and a charge per hour or minute for when you use the system.
You may want to try several services, or talk to people from Rutgers who are using them. The quality of their connection to Rutgers varies greatly, depending upon how close they are to Rutgers on the Internet. This distance has nothing to do with physical distance. A provider could be right next to the Rutgers campus, and connections might still be routed through California.
Many of the instructions in this document and the associated documents
apply to Internet providers as well as Rutgers modems. However you
should also get documentation from your provider.
1.1 Recommended hardware
Dialup networking isn't useful unless your modem is at least 9600 bps. Such modems are inexpensive enough that you should update if you have an older modem. A 56kbps modem is recommended.
The rest of this section is intended to help you decipher some of the terms used in modem ads and documentation. If you have a modem installed and working, you probably don't need to know all of this.
There are a number of standards currently
in use. The most common are
| 9600 bps | V.32 |
| 14.4 Kbps | V.32bis |
| 28.8 Kbps | V.34 |
| 33.4 Kbps | V.34bis |
| 56 Kbps | X2 and K56 |
We do not recommend and do not support older 28.8K technologies, such as V.FC. (These were proprietary standards, done before the final international standard, which is V.34.) If you have one of these modems, we suggest contacting your vendor about upgrading it to V.34.
Many V.34 modems can go slightly higher than 28.8 Kbps, using V.34bis. We support this. Some newer modems claim 56 Kbps. Unfortunately this is not yet a standard. There are two different competing 56 K proposals, known as X2 and K56. When a standard is adopted, we will support it. Until then, some of our modems support X2, some K56, and some neither. For speeds over 33.4K (the maximum with the extended versions of V.34), you're on your own. If you do buy a modem that supports 56K, make sure that the vendor commits to upgrading it to the standard when the standard is finalized.
Modems should generally also have error control and compression, preferably V.42 or V.42bis, though we also support MNP.
You should avoid modems that use "RPI". These modems implement
portions of their functionality via software. Unfortunately, this may
make them incompatible with dialup networking and other advanced
features. Such modems should be clearly labelled "RPI". If a modem
says that it works only with Windows, I'd be suspicious that it is of
this kind.
2. Setting up Dialup Networking
Rutgers has put together a package called Runfree. This contains the software you need for dialup networking under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. For instructions on installing and using Runfree, see http://www.nbcs.rutgers.edu/RUNfree
For Windows 95, we do not recommend installing Runfree. Indeed, if you attempt to install Runfree on Windows 95, you may well create serious problems. Windows 95 has fairly good networking builtin, including basic utilities such as telnet, FTP, ping, and tracert. About all you need in addition to this is Netscape. That is available as a separate package on floppies from the Information Center (or you can get it over the network directly from Netscape).
Setting up dialup networking in Windows 95 is non-trivial. You'll probably want some instructions. We have two sets of instructions: The Runfree documentation has a section on setting up Windows 95 networking. There is also a separate document "Setting up Dialup Networking under Windows 95". These two documents are very similar, except that the Runfree document is more graphical. (It shows screen shots of the major menus and dialog boxes.) Which you use is a matter of preference, and sometimes depends upon the capabilities of the printer you're using to print the document.
For the Macintosh, see the Macintosh section of the LCSR web page: http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/LCSR-Computing/index.html , or use Macintosh Runfree.
If you're using Windows 3.1, Windows 95, or the Macintosh, you probably don't need any more from this section. Refer to one of the documents just mentioned for the details. The rest of this section is for people running other operating systems, or people who want to know technical details.
We do not recommend using plain MS/DOS for access. OS/2, Windows NT, and Linux all come with the necessary software. Since we don't have separate documents for them, the following sections give some hints.
Whatever your operating system, at some point you're going to be asked to supply a usename and password in order to connect. Our modems require you to "login" to them. You use the same username and password that you'd use on our Unix servers. This means that you may need to login twice: once when you connect to the modem and set up dialup networking, and once when you telnet to one of our machines and login. This section is only talking about the first: connecting to the modem and setting up your network connection.
You must have an account on one of our Unix machines before you use our modems. For the RUCS modems you need an account on rci, ici, andromeda, pegasus, clam or crab. For Computer Science modems you need an account on remus, paul, or athos.
When you set up a network connection, you need to give your username in a slightly odd form, which combines your actual Unix username with the name of the system. E.g. if you have account on pegasus, you would use a username like smith@pegasus. This is just for connecting to the network. Once you get to pegasus, your username is just smith (or whatever).
Here's a list of the possible forms of username.
Note that New Brunswick users must specify eden-dialup if they use eden and rci-dialup if they use rci. Those using the computer science department modems must use one of the three forms listed.
When you are finished using dialup networking, please make sure you hang up the phone. Your software should have a command you issue or a window you bring up to close the connection and hang up the phone. The first few times you use the software, verify that it does actually hang up the phone when you tell it to close the connection. It's considered very unfriendly to hog a line for hours at a time.
Setup instructions will often ask for information about our network.
See
http://info.rutgers.edu/Techdir/config.html for the answers
to some of the most common questions.
This page contains information about determining
your IP address, netmask, etc. It will refer you to a second
page,
http://info.rutgers.edu/Techdir/registry.html ,
which lists the various servers your software may
need to know about. In particular, it lists the recommended
DNS (name server) addresses.
2.1 Operating system details
Once you get the basic network software working, you'll probably want to get additional software. A basic set includes telnet, FTP, and Netscape. Telnet is a terminal emulator. It allows you to connect to one of our computers and login. FTP lets you copy files between our computer and your PC. Netscape is an interface to the World-Wide Web.
Runfree will automatically install this software for Windows 3.1. The other systems include telnet and FTP as part of their basic network software. You can get Netscape for Windows95 and NT from the Information Center in Hill Center. OS/2 Merlin and most Linux distributions come with a good enough browser to let you get started. (If you prefer Netscape, you may want to use that browser to connect to http://www.netscape.com and get the current version of Netscape.)
This section is designed primarily for people who want additional software, or want to see what alternatives are available. We'd like to warn you that information in this section is based on various newsgroups. We have not tried a lot of this software ourselves.
Before trying the software listed here, you might want to look
at the collection maintained by our Microcomputer Support Group,
http://mssg.rutgers.edu/ftp/. It has most of the PC network software
that we recommend.
3.1 Getting information and software via the web
We're going to assume that you have a copy of Netscape or other web browser, and that you know how to use it. We believe that a web browser is now the best tool to get software from the network.
There are two major ways of getting software from repositories on the Internet: via a web page, and "anonymous FTP". When software is distributed via the web, you should be given a URL (Universal Resource Locator), e.g. "http://info.rutgers.edu/index.shtml" With most browsers, you type this into a box near the top of the window.
The other common way to access resources on the net is "anonymous FTP". Here's what this means: FTP is a program designed to copy files from one machine to another. FTP normally needs a username and password for the other machine, to verify that you have a right to access it. However there are special provisions for public software. If you're making a program available to the whole world, it's not reasonable to expect everyone to have a username and password on your machine. So many systems allow you to access them using the username "anonymous". That gives you access to their public repository. If you are asked for a password, give your email address.
Most web browsers now support anonymous FTP. So if
you are told "Use anonymous ftp to public.rutgers.edu, and get
/pub/foo", you would normally go into your web browser, and
give it the URL "ftp://public.rutgers.edu/pub/foo" Normal
web URL's start with "http:". The "ftp:" tells your browser
to use anonymous FTP. If /pub/foo turns out to be a file,
your browser will get it for you. If it's a directory, it
will show you the directory. You can then look at it and
pick what file you want to get.
3.2 ZIP archives
If you're using a PC, many of the files you get will be "ZIP archives". So if you don't already have a copy of one of the unzip programs, we suggest that you start by getting pkunzip.exe from mssg.rutgers.edu. (These instructions only work for PC users. The Macintosh has an equivalent of ZIP, but you'll need to get it from a Macintosh software collection -- for instance "StuffIt", handles Zip files.)
To do that, give the following URL to your browser: http://mssg.rutgers.edu/ftp You'll see a number of useful utilities. One of them is PKZip. If you click on "PKZIP", your browser will copy it to your system. The result will be a program called pkz204g.exe. (The number may be different by the time you do this.) This is a program, which you should run. When you run it, it will unpack itself into several different utilities. The one called pkunzip is what you want. Put it somewhere in your path, e.g. in c:\windows.
You'll need pkunzip (or another unzipper) to process files whose names end in .zip. .zip files are "archives", that is, a single file that contains lots of little files inside it. pkunzip is a program for pulling all the little files out of the archive. Generally the way I deal with Zip files is as follows:
This will create lots of new files. Hopefully one of them will be something like README, and will contain instructions. If the filename is something simple, like README, you can use type and more to look at it, e.g. "type README | more". If it ends in .wri, you'll need to use write, e.g. "write readme.wri". If it ends in .hlp, you'll need to use winhelp, e.g. "winhelp readme.hlp", or winhlp32 under Windows NT.
Sometimes files are distributed as "self-extracting". These are like .zip files, except that you don't need a separate program like pkunzip to unzip them. Instead, they are shipped as .exe files. When you run the file, it unzips itself in whatever directory you're in. Here is a list of some of the most important software that you can find via FTP or the Web.
The following links point to online information about the separate news readers:
For those who prefer a more specialized mail reader, The most commonly recommended free mail readers seem to be Pegasus and Eudora Light. (There is also a commercial version of Eudora.) Pegasus has been used a lot at Rutgers, but Eudora seems to be the most common mail reader at other universities. Here's where to get information on them:
The two I'm familiar with are "winsite" and "papa". So many people use these archives that it's often hard to get connected. Generally they have arranged "mirrors", other sites that get copies of the whole archive. It is normally easier to get to a mirror than to the main site.
Here's more information on how to get to winsite and papa: