- What kind of hardware and software do I need to have a direct connection (ie use TCP/IP protocol) to the Internet?
- Regardless of whether you using Classic or Open Transport networking there are some common hardware and software requirements: a program that implementes the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) TCP/IP Protocols a direct connection to an Ethernet or TokenRing network, PPP dialup connection, or a connection to a LocalTalk network with a DDP-IP router such as a Shiva FastPath, Cayman Gatorbox, Webster Multigate, or Compatible EtherRoute TCP.
-
- Both Classic Networking and Open Transport use a TCP/IP Control Panel plus a PPP extension. MacTCP 2.0.6 (Classic Networking) requires a Macintosh Plus or later CPU and System 6.0 or better and became part of the OS with System 7.5. TCP/IP (Open Transport) became part of the MacOS with 7.5.3 and needs OT/PPP 1.0 or better.
-
- Both programs provided a standard interface to TCP/IP network hardware, and makes it possible for more than one TCP/IP based application to run on a Macintosh at any one time. For example, you can simultaneously use a Telnet program, an FTP program, and share a filesystem via NFS when you use MacTCP or OT to provide the interface to your TCP/IP network.
-
- For more detailed information regarding connecting a Macintosh to a TCP/IP network using MacTCP consult Eric Behr's report on MacTCP. This report also provides a lot of useful information for first-time Macintosh networking administrators.
-
- For those interesting in using Open Transport please consult Mark Sproul's and Apple's Open Transport sites.
-
-
-
- What are SLIP, CSLIP and PPP?
- SLIP stands for Serial Line Internet Protocol. SLIP was a "non-standard" for framing IP packets and shipping them over a serial line (e.g. a cable, or a pair of modems), thus allowing a home machine to dial up and become part of the Internet. Effectively, SLIP turned a serial port into a logical Ethernet port. PPP (see below) has effectively replaced SLIP as the standard of choice for Internet connections.
-
- CSLIP stands for Compressed SLIP. CSLIP reduces the size of the headers in IP packets by eliminating a certain amount of redundancy. This improves interactive performance.
-
- Synergy Software offers a CSLIP MacTCP extension with its VersaTerm/VersaTerm-PRO packages. If you already own Versaterm, SLIP is a $20 upgrade. If you buy the complete VersaTerm package, you will also get an FTP server and client, a Telnet connection tool, and MacTCP. Performance is comparable to that of MacSLIP.
-
- PPP stands for Point-to-Point Protocol. PPP has been stated as a standards-track protocol by the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Activities Board. PPP can support both synchronous and asynchronous connections and protocols that are not IP-based (such as AppleTalk). It provides specifications for error detection, feature negotiation, escaping control characters, etc. As a result PPP has become the defacto standard for connecting to the Internet with FreePPP being the most popular extension for Classic Networking.
-
-
-
- Do I have to know anything about Unix to use the Internet?
- For the most part the answer to this question is no though there are some Unix and Internet protocals you should know about. The ones followed by a * you need to be aware of.
-
- DNS (Domain Name Server) *
- desinates the servers that translates domain names to IP numbers. If this server has problems then you cannot use domain names at all and have to use IP numbers. Two Mac programs that do DNS lookup are DNS Lookup and MacTCP Watcher.
-
- NNTP (Net News Transfer Protocol) *
- a protocol used to transfer articles between a central news server and many client machines over TCP/IP or a serial link. Used by about every MacOS newreader program available.
-
- SMTP (Simple-Mail-Transfer-Protocol) and POP (Post-Office-Protocol) *
- These are two protocols for transfering electronic mail between machines that have a TCP/IP interface or equivalent. Without these you cannot send or receive e-mail.
-
- NFS (Network File System)
- file sharing protocol used by many UNIX workstations. The average Internet surfer doesn't need to worry about this as most file transfers involve FTP not NFS. The one commecrcial product that allows NFS to be used on the MacOS is: PathWay Client NFS from Attachmate
-
- UUCP
- UUCP (Unix-to-Unix-Copy) is a protocol originally intended to be used to transfer files between Unix machines over telephone lines. As with NFS it can be safely ignored by the average Internet surfer.
-
- Is there a UNIX program that will convert between BinHex and MacBinary?
- Yes, there are at least two that will handle BinHex 4.0, MacBinary, and other conversions. macutil and mcvert are distributed as UNIX shar archvies and can be found in the unix directory at InfoMac sites. Source code is included (of course) so you will need a C compiler to build the programs. Be warned all of these programs are old and are no longer supported by their authors.
-
- * macutil is a collection of utilities for manipulating Macintosh files in MacBinary or BinHex format, or over AppleDouble, AUFS, or CAP servers. It includes three programs:
-
- hexbin - a program to convert BinHex 4.0 to MacBinary; it also converts uuencode (and UULite) files to their native binary format; support for .dl, .hex, and .hcx formats (all predecessors of BinHex 4.0) also exists
-
- macsave - a MacBinary filter program to convert between various MacBinary representations, including a single .bin file, three separate .data, .rsrc, .info files, and AUFS format. macsave also allows one to "peek" inside MacBinary files
-
- macunpack - a program that decompress PackIt, Compact Pro, StuffIt (Classic format), Diamond, DiskDoubler, LHarc/MacLHa, .Z (UNIX compress) and Zoom It also decodes BinHex 5.0, MacBinary, and uuencode.
-
- Support for password protected and/or multi-segment archives of various types is minimal or non-existent.
-
- The various authors of the macutil utilities are too numerous to list here; consult the README files that come with the package for the details.
-
- * mcvert allows you to convert BinHex files to MacBinary files and vice versa. In addition, you can create MacBinary files with empty resource forks from normal files, as well as perform other transformations. mcvert can also decode PackIt archives.
-
- mcvert was originally written in 1987 by Doug Moore, but had many many new features and a better interface added by Joseph Skudlarek.
|
|
