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Renew your Passport: New revised second edition now available

By Daniel Updegrove

Internet," "Mosaic," "World-Wide Web," - these terms appear with increasing frequency in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Key academic and administrative information services at Penn assume familiarity with Telnet, Kermit, Gopher, FTP, Whois, and PennInfo. In the past few months alone, the Library has introduced new electronic resources, numerous departments and individuals have created WWW "home pages," 2,000 additional students have joined ResNet, and Penn's upgraded Internet connection has become almost three times faster. All predictions are for more rapid change in the future....

Yet you may still be looking for the "on ramp" to the Information Superhighway (or worse, feeling like "road kill"). Could you use an up- to-date, well-organized overview of electronic resources and tools available via PennNet and the worldwide Internet? A guide that clarifies the electronic services available, on campus and via dial-up, using Penn-specific terminology?

Look no further. The updated and enlarged PennNet Passport, your guide to networking at Penn and beyond, is now available for only $4 at both Wharton Reprographics and the Bookstore. The attractively designed and coil-bound 54-page Passport contains three major sections: "PennNet Access," "Network Tools and Services," and "DCCS Network Services." In addition, you'll find a glossary, a listing of campus computing labs keyed to a campus map, and details about the hardware and software you need for IP (Ethernet/SLIP) access to PennNet.

Access

If you don't know the difference between asynchronous and IP access to PennNet - or, more importantly - how that difference affects what you can and cannot do on the network, then you'll find the section on PennNet access invaluable. It not only helps you understand how to use your network connection; it helps you understand why you might wish to upgrade your connection in the future. You'll also find a list of ISC- recommended software for Macintosh, Windows PC, and DOS PC access to PennNet; information about network IDs and passwords; and step-by-step instructions for connecting to PennNet via modem.

Tools

The largest section of the guide is devoted to introducing you to the primary tools and information services available on PennNet and the Internet. You'll learn about Telnet, electronic mail, NetNews, and the file transfer capabilities available to you via Kermit and FTP.

Which brings us around to information resources. The reason you're trying to learn about the network is to get information. The network tools section provides you with an overview of those resources: the Library's PennLIN Gateway, PennInfo, and the many Gopher and World-Wide Web services available. You'll find out how to access them using either Telnet or one of the client/server software tools. You'll find out about Mosaic, home pages, WAIS, and the ever more important Universal Resource Locator (URL), which has quickly become the most convenient, shorthand way to refer you to addresses of information resources. Last but not least, you can test your new-found skills accessing a few of the resources in the Internet sampler and check out recommendations of, and important caveats about, the latest crop of commercially available Internet books.