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ESnet provides a number of information and support services, which
are described below. These services are provided via a pair of duplicate
servers in ESnet's Network Information Center, which is located
at the Network Operations Center at NERSC. In general, users must
have access to appropriate client software on a local PC, MAC, or
workstation to use these services, although many services are available
via telnet or ftp. In some cases, remote-access client capability
is also provided on the NIC, with the user accessing the client
software via telnet or X-windows. In still other cases, remote client
software is made available on the ESnet NIC for users to download
and use on their local computing platforms.
Users can gain direct access to the ESnet NIC server through
a variety of network applications, from ftp and telnet to WAIS
(Wide Area Information Server), Gopher, and Mosaic (see Table
6-1).
The ESnet Network Information Center servers are the primary
information repository for the ESnet community. The information
available on these servers includes ESnet committee documents,
such as meeting notes and notices for the ESSC and the ESCC and
associated subcommittees, in addition to ESnet mailing lists,
NetNews archives, public-domain software, and files and documents
regarding the latest networking technology and research topics
All information on the ESnet NIC servers is full-text WAIS indexed.
Table 6-1. Methods of Accessing ESnet's Network Information
Center Server
APPLICATION ADDRESS
Mosaic http://www.es.net
Gopher gopher://gopher.es.net
ftp ftp://ftp.es.net
DECnet esnic:: (42158::)
NFS nfs.es.net
AFS /afs/es.net/nic
e-mail nic@es.net
The White Pages Pilot Project is part of a world-wide Distributed
Directory Service pilot project based on the X.500 standard. More
than 30 countries participate in the global pilot project, which
contains more than 1 million entries. The pilot Directory Service
contains information primarily about persons and organizations.
The information in the Directory is hierarchically structured, with
entries arranged in the form of a tree. Users can browse this tree
or retrieve information about a person, generally by knowing that
person's name and organization.
The ESnet community is well-represented in the White Pages pilot
project. Currently, there are more than 15 backbone sites represented
in the Directory, which comprises over 100,000 entries. These
entries, which are primarily descriptions of persons, include
e-mail addresses, postal addresses, telephone numbers, and other
optional descriptive information. This information can be accessed
in a variety of ways, including the use of X.500 clients, finger,
whois, e-mail, Gopher, or WWW.
Ph (Phone book) is an fully indexed, fast-access on-line white-pages
directory service developed and freely distributed by the Computer
and Communications Services Office at the University of Illinois
at Urbana. Ph primarily contains information about people, such
as e-mail addresses, postal addresses, telephone numbers, and other
descriptive information. There are over 180 Ph Servers on the Internet
today.
ESnet's Message Handling Services (electronic mail) provides fully
compliant SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and ISO/OSI X.400
mail transport services. A gateway between SMTP mail and X.400 mail
is provided to support full, bidirectional connectivity between
these two communities. ESnet's mail system supports mail list archiving
and NetNews cross-posting, as well as remote list management. All
archives are full-text WAIS indexed and are accessible via ESnet's
WWW, Gopher, and WAIS services. Remote list management is accomplished
via an Xwindow tool that allows "list owners" to build and manage
their own ESnet mailing lists.
NetNews is a global service that permits a group of people with
a common interest to easily exchange articles tagged with one or
more universally recognized labels, which are called NewsGroups.
There are public NewsGroups for almost every area of interest, from
hobbies to scientific research.
ESnet's NetNews service carries many of the public NewsGroups
available on the Internet as well as NewsGroups local to the ESnet
community. ESnet's NetNews service supports e-mail cross-posting
for any mailing list on the ESnet mail system. The NetNews service
provides for NewsGroup archiving on the ESnet Information Server.
The NewsGroup archives are full-text WAIS indexed and are accessible
via ESnet's WWW, Gopher, and WAIS Services.
Go to other ESnet services:
Network Operations Management
Network Infrastructure Services
Videoconferencing Services
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Today
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