The Online World Part 13

The annual rate of increase in the number of messages is over 30% and increasing.

If a given email service charges you US$30 per hour, it will cost you a meager US$0.075 to send one typewritten letter (size A- 4, or around 2,200 characters). See chapter 15 for a breakdown of this cost.

If you live in Norway, and send the letter by ordinary mail to a recipient in Norway, postage alone is US$0.53 (1992). The cost is seven times higher than using email.

To send the same letter from Norway to the United States by ordinary mail will cost 11 times more. This letter takes several days to reach the destination, while email messages arrive almost instantly.

Often, you can send email messages to several recipients in one operation - without paying extra for the pleasure. Compare this to sending to several parties by fax!

You do not have to buy envelopes and stamps, fold the sheet, put it into the envelope, and bring it to a mailbox. Just let the computer call your favorite email service to send the letter.

The recipient does not have to sit by the computer waiting for your mail. Upon receipt, it will be automatically stored in his mailbox. He can read it when he has time.

The recipient can print it locally, and it will be a perfect doc.u.ment, no different to one typed in locally. He can also make corrections or comments, and email onwards to a third party. In this way several people can work jointly on a report, and no time is it re-typed from scratch.

When you receive several messages in the morning, you can very quickly create replies to them one at the time at your keyboard, and then send them in one go. No need to feed five different pieces of paper into a fax machine or envelopes for five different people.

Where you can find a telephone, you can also read mail. In most countries, communicating through email is easy and economical.

By the way, the simple but miraculous thing about email is that you can quote easily and exactly the point to which you are replying. This is a revolution in communication, no?

How to send email?

------------------- This is what it normally takes for a CompuServe user to send me a message:

Type GO MAIL to get to the "post office," and then type COMPOSE.

"Start writing," says CompuServe. Type your message manually, or send a file (text or binary). Type /EXIT when done.

"To whom?" asks CompuServe. You enter: "Odd de Presno 75755,1327," or just my mailbox number (75755,1327).

CompuServe asks you to enter Subject. You type: "h.e.l.lo, my friend!" Your message has been sent.

A few seconds later, the message will arrive in my mailbox. If I am online to CompuServe at the moment, I will probably read it right away. If not, it will stay there until I get around to fetch it.

Above, we used the term "normally takes to send." Please note that many users never ever TYPE these commands! They use various types of automatic software to handle the mechanics of sending and receiving mail (see Chapter 16).

Other systems require different commands to send email. Ulrik at the University of Oslo (Norway) is a Unix system. So is The Well in San Francisco. On such systems, mail is normally sent using these commands:

Type "mail [email protected]". When the computer asks for "Subject:," enter "h.e.l.lo, my friend!"

Type your message or send it. When done, enter a period (.) in the beginning of a line. Ulrik will reply with "Cc:" to allow you to 'carbon copy' the message to other people. If you don't want that, press ENTER and the message is on its way.

While I wrote this book, I had to go to j.a.pan. A simple command allowed me to redirect all incoming mail to CompuServe.

As a result I could read and send mail by calling a local CompuServe number in several j.a.panese cities.

Though the commands for sending email differ between systems, the principle is the same. All systems will ask you for an address and the text of your message. On some, the address is a code, on others a name (like ODD DE PRESNO).

Most systems will ask for a Subject t.i.tle. Many will allow you to send copies of the message to other recipients (Cc:).

Some services allow you to send binary files as email. Binary files contain codes based on the binary numeration system. Such codes are used in computer programs, graphics pictures, compressed spreadsheets and text files, and sound files.

Many online services let you send messages as fax (to over 15 million fax machines), telex (to over 1.8 million telex machines), and as ordinary paper mail. We have tested this successfully on CompuServe, MCI Mail and other services.

On CompuServe, replace "Odd de Presno 75755,1327" with ">FAX: 4737027111". My fax number is +47 370 27111.

On MCI Mail type "CREATE:". MCI asks for "To:," and you type "Odd de Presno (Fax)". MCI asks for "Country:". You enter "Norway".

By "RECIPIENT FAX NO" enter "37027111" (the code for international calls). The country code for Norway, 01147, is added automatically.

By "Options?," press ENTER. When MCI Mail asks for more recipients, press ENTER. Type your message and have it sent.

To send a telex, you'll need the recipient's telex number, an answerback code, and the code of the recipient's country. If the message is meant for telex number 871161147, answerback ZETO, and country Russia (country code SU), enter ">TLX:871161147 ZETO SU"

when sending from CompuServe.

By entering ">POSTAL", CompuServe will send your mail to a business a.s.sociate in California or Brazil as a professional laser- printed letter. It will take you through the process of filling out the various address lines. The letter may well arrive faster than through ordinary mail.

When the recipient is using another mailbox system -------------------------------------------------- When the recipient is using your mailbox service, writing addresses is simple. Not so when your email has to be forwarded to mailboxes on other online services.

The inter-system email address consists of a user name, a mailbox system code, and sometimes also routing information. The problem is that there is no universal addressing format. Finding out how to write a given address may be surprisingly difficult.

Some services are not set up for exchange of email with other services. This is the case with my bulletin board, the Saltrod Horror Show. To send mail to a user of this system, you'll have to call it directly and enter it there. This bulletin board is not connected to the outside world for exchange of mail.

If your favorite system lets you send mail to other services, make a note about the following:

* You need to know the exact address of your recipient, and whether he's using this mailbox regularly. Many users have mailboxes that they use rarely or never. For example, don't try to send mail to my mailbox on Dow Jones/News Retrieval.

I only use this service sporadically.

Think of the easiest way for a recipient to respond before sending a message to him or her.

* You need to know how to rewrite the recipient's address to fit your system. For example, you may have to use a domain address to send through Internet, and a different form when sending through an X.400 network. (More about this later.)

* The recipient's mailbox system may be connected to a network that does not have a mail exchange agreement with your system's network(s). Sometimes, you can use a commercial mail relay service to get your message across (see chapter 9).

Users of the Internet can send messages to recipients on the Dialcom network through the DASnet relay service.

* Sometimes, you need to know how to route a message through other systems to arrive at its destination. For example, a message sent from the Ulrik computer in Oslo must be routed through a center in London to get to Dominique Christian on the Difer system in Paris (France),

Internet -------- is the name of a computer network (here called "INTERNET"), and a term used of a global web of systems and networks that can exchange mail with each other (here called "Internet").

INTERNET is a very large network that has grown out of ARPANET, MILNET, and other American networks for research and education.

This core network has many gateways to other systems, and it's when we include these systems and their connections that we call it the Internet. Others call it WorldNet or the Matrix.

Internet users can exchange mail with users on networks like EUnet, JANET, Uninett, BITNET, UUCP, CompuServe, MCI Mail, EcoNet, PeaceNet, ConflicNet, GreenNet, Web, Pegasus, AppleLink, Alternex, Nicarao, FredsNaetet, UUNET, PSI, Usenet, FidoNet and many others.

We therefore say that these networks are also "on the Internet."

If you have access to the Internet, you can send email to users of online services all over the world. You can send to people using Bergen By Byte and Telemax in Norway, TWICS in Tokyo, and Colnet in Buenos Aires.

Now is the time to take a closer look at the art of addressing mail through the Internet.

Domain name addressing ---------------------- On the Internet, the general form of a person's email address is:

[email protected]

My main, international Internet mailbox address is:

[email protected]

You read the address from left to right. First, the local name of the mailbox (my name abbreviated). Next, the name of the mailbox system or another identification code (in this case EXTERN, to show that I have no affiliation with the University), the name of the inst.i.tution or company (here UIO or "Universitetet i Oslo"), and finally the country (NO for Norway).

People have sent mail to my mailbox from New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, Peru, India, China, Greece, Iceland, and Armenia using this address.

Some users must send their messages through a gateway to the Internet. In these cases, the address may have to be changed to reflect this: Users of AppleLink use [email protected]@INTERNET# . Those on JANET use [email protected] On SprintMail, use ("RFC-822": , SITE:INTERNET) .

CompuServe subscribers use >INTERNET:[email protected] .

The core of these address formats is "[email protected]", in one way or the other.

We call this basic addressing format a Domain Naming System.

"EXTERN.UIO.NO" is a domain. The domain may also contain reference to the name of a company or an organization, like in twics.co.jp, compuserve.com, or IGC.ORG. The CO, COM, and ORG codes identify TWICS, CompuServe and IGC as companies/organizations.

To send mail from the Internet to my CompuServe mailbox, use:

[email protected]

Normally (except on AppleLink), a domain address can only contain one @-character. When an address has to be extended with gateway routing information, replace all @-characters to the LEFT in the address by %-characters. Here is an example: BITNET uses a different addressing method ([email protected]). Let's a.s.sume that you are subscribed to the club for lovers of j.a.panese food ([email protected], see chapter 6). You have a mailbox on INTERNET, and want to send a recipe to the other members using the address J-FOOD-L.

On some Internet systems, you can simply use the address: [email protected] , and your mailbox system will take care of the routing for you.

If this addressing method doesn't work, you can use different gateways into BITNET depending on where you live. The preferred method is to route through a gateway near to you. If living in North America, you may route CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU using the following address:

[email protected]

The rightmost @ in this address is maintained. The one to the LEFT has been replaced with a %. The term ".BITNET" tells the gateway machine where to forward the message.

The following will happen: First, the message will be sent to system CUNYVM at the EDUcation site CUNY. CUNYVM investigates the address, and discovers that the message is for BITNET. It cuts off all text to the right of "JPNKNU10," and replaces the % with an @.

The message is forwarded to the mailbox J-FOOD-L on the BITNET system JPNKNU10 at the Kinki University in j.a.pan.

Bang addressing --------------- "Bang" is American for "exclamation point" (!). The UUCP network uses this variation of the domain addressing scheme.

Example: User Jill Small on Econet in San Francisco used to have the address pyramid!cdp!jsmall . Read this address from right to left. The name of her mailbox is to the right. The name of the organization is in the middle. "Pyramid" is the name of the network.

Some email systems can use bang addresses directly. (Note that the ! character has a special function on Unix computers. Here, you may have to type the address as pyramid!cdp!jsmall to avoid unwanted error messages. The character tells Unix to regard the next character as a character, and not as a system command. This character may also have to precede other special characters.) Other systems do not accept bang addresses directly. Here, the users must send such messages through a gateway. The American host UUNET is a frequently used gateway. If routing through UUNET, you may write the address like this:

[email protected]