Network Working Group
Request for Comments: 1689
FYI: 25
Category: Informational
RARE Technical Report: 13
August 1994

J. Foster, Editor
University of Newcastle upon Tyne

A Status Report on Networked Information Retrieval: Tools and Groups

Produced as a collaborative effort by the Joint IETF/RARE/CNI Networked Information Retrieval - Working Group (NIR-WG)

Status of this Memo

This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

The purpose of this report is to increase the awareness of Networked Information Retrieval by bringing together in one place information about the various networked information retrieval tools, their developers, interested organisations, and other activities that relate to the production, dissemination, and support of NIR tools. NIR Tools covered include Archie, WAIS, gopher and World Wide Web.

1. Introduction

As the network has grown, along with it there has been an increase in the number of software tools and applications to navigate the network and make use of the many, varied resources which are part of the network. Within the past two and a half years we have seen a widespread adoption of tools such as the archie servers, the Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), the Internet gopher, and the Worldwide Web (WWW). In addition to the acceptance of these tools there are also diverse efforts to enhance and customise these tools to meet the needs of particular network communities.

There are many organisations and associations that are focusing on the proliferating resources and tools for networked information retrieval (NIR). The Networked Information Retrieval Group is a cooperative effort of three major players in the field of NIR: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Association of European Research Networks (RARE) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), specifically tasked to collect and disseminate information about the tools and to discuss and encourage cooperative development of current and future tools.

The purpose of this report is to increase the awareness of NIR by bringing together in one place information about the various networked information retrieval tools, their developers, interested organisations, and other activities that relate to the production, dissemination, and support of NIR tools. The intention is to make this a "living document". It will be held on-line so that each section may be updated separately as appropriate. In addition, it is intended that the full document will be updated once a year so that it provides a "snapshot" report on activities in this area.

Whilst the NIR tools in this report are being used on a wide variety of information sources including files and databases there remains much that is currently not accessible by these means. On the other hand, the majority of the NIR Tools described here are freely available to the networked Research and Education community. Tools for accessing specialised datasets are often only available at a cost.

It should be noted that in many ways networked information retrieval is in its infancy compared with traditional information retrieval systems. Thesaurus construction, boolean searching and classification control are issues which are under discussion for the popular NIR Tools but as yet are not in widespread use. However it should be said that, with the vast amount of effort that is currently going into the NIR field, rapid progress is being made. Much work is currently being done on expanding some of the NIR tools to include handling of multimedia information services. Progress has also been made in the discussions on classifying and cataloguing electronic information resources.

2. How the information was collected

The information contained in this report was collected over the network from the contacts for each NIR Tool or Group using two templates:

the NIR Tool Template, included in Appendix A;
the NIR Group Template, included in Appendix B.

The contents of these templates were discussed by the NIR WG in Boston (July, 1992) and subsequently on the email list. (See the Section on the NIR-WG for details of how to join this mailing list.) The initial draft report was discussed at the NIR Working Group in Washington (November, 1992) and updated and added to at subsequent WG meetings. Before the final submission as an RFC the individual templates were reviewed by independent reviewers from around the world. Their efforts are acknowledged in Section 9.

The NIR Tool template was used to collect the information necessary to identify and track the development of networked information retrieval tools. This template asked for information such as how and where to get the software for each NIR Tool, documentation, demonstration sites, etc. The main part of the template has been completed by the main individual responsible for the tool. Sections of the template (e.g., on clients) may have required completion by others.

The NIR Group template requested information on the aim and purpose of the group, the current tasks being undertaken, mailing lists, document archives, etc.

3. What is covered?

In the current report you will find information on the following NIR tools:

Alex
archie
gopher
Hytelnet
Netfind
Prospero
Veronica
WAIS (including freeWAIS)
WHOIS
World Wide Web (including MOSAIC)
X.500 White Pages

Appendix D covers "Forthcoming Attractions":
Hyper-G
Soft Pages
WHOIS++

and the following NIR Groups:

CNI: Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Architectures and Standards Directories and Resource Information Services TopNode for Networked Information Resources, Services and Tools
CNIDR: Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval
IETF: Integrated Directory Services (IDS) Integration of Internet Information Resources (IIIR) Networked Information Retrieval (NIR) joint IETF/RARE WG Network Information Services Infrastructure (NISI) OSI-Directory Service (OSI-DS) Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Whois and Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS)
IRTF: Internet Research Task Force Research Group on Resource Discovery and Directory Service (IRTF-RD)
NISO: Z39.50 Implementors Group
RARE: Information Services and User Support Working Group (ISUS)
USMARC/OCLC: USMARC Advisory Group; OCLC Internet Resources Cataloging Experiment (USMARC/OCLC)

Appendix C contains a list of the relevant email lists and Appendix D contains information on "Coming Attractions" which are NIR tools not yet in widespread use.

4. Updating Information

Updates on and additions to the information contained in this report are welcome. CNIDR have agreed to host the report and to accept updates to individual templates from the template maintainers. Send updates using the appropriate template (from Appendix A or Appendix B of this report) to:

nir-updates@cnidr.org

The current templates and this report may be retrieved from the UK Mailbase Server:

Via anonymous ftp (use your email address as the password):

URL: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/nir/files/tool.template
URL: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/nir/files/group.template
URL: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/nir/files/nir.status.report

or via gopher or World Wide Web to mailbase.ac.uk

or via email:

Mail to: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk

Text of the message:

send nir tool.template
send nir group.template
send nir nir.status.report

5. Overview of the types of NIR Tools

The following is an overview of major networked information retrieval (NIR) tools available on the Internet. There are many excellent books which discuss the Internet and NIR Tools in detail. Such books include "The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog" by Ed Krol and published by O'Reilly and Associates, Inc and "The Internet Guide for New Users" by Daniel Dearn and published by Meckler.

The number of these NIR tools is large and growing quickly. Certain techniques reappear regularly and seemingly different tools may perform similar tasks, allowing a simple classification of projects encompassing most of the existing tools and services.

The classification presented here is only one possible ordering. The goal is to define in broad outlines what can be done with particular tools, realizing that users will always find novel unanticipated ways of applying them.

Interactive Information Delivery Services (Gopher, World Wide Web)

Basic Internet services such as electronic mail and anonymous FTP can be used to share information across the Internet, but neither allows simple browsing and neither is particularly easy for the newcomer to learn to use. Gopher and the World Wide Web (W3) are two recent developments that attempt to make it easier to distribute information over the Internet. Both allow the user to browse information across the network without the necessity of logging in or knowing in advance where to look for information.

The Gopher project was first developed at the University of Minnesota to provide a simple campus-wide on-line information system. Gopher represents information as a simple hierarchy of menus and files. It has limited capability to recognize different types of files, allowing, for example, the display of selected types of image files. Gateways to other services are provided (usually in a manner that is transparent to the user). The underlying Gopher protocol is simple, and has facilitated the creation of freely available clients for use on a variety of hardware platforms and operating systems. The more recent Gopher+ protocol adds the ability to provide documents in alternate forms (PDF, PostScript, RTF, Word). These features and the ease of installing and administering gopher servers has led to an explosive growth of gopher sites since its initial deployment. As of November 1993, there were over 2200 known servers.

World Wide Web relies on hypertext; formatted documents are displayed, and hypertext links within the document can be selected to travel from the current document to another. W3 allows a user to annotate documents (using hypertext links), provides gateways to other services, and has multimedia support (for example, on appropriate hardware platforms it can intermix text and images in a displayed document). There is a range of free W3 clients, supporting many environments. World Wide Web was originally developed at CERN for the High Energy Physics Community.

Gopher and WWW share a maintenance problem in that there is no automated way to update links to other documents when those documents are moved or removed.

Directory Services (WHOIS, X.500)

Directory Service tools are intended to provide a lookup service for locating information about users (often referred to as White Pages), or services and service providers (Yellow Pages). For example, a White Pages service might be used to locate an electronic mail address, given a name and organization, while a Yellow Pages service could be used to locate an online library catalog or file archive site.

One of the first directory services deployed on the Internet was WHOIS, a simple White Pages service created to track key network contacts for the early DARPA-sponsored incarnation of the Internet. A number of sites currently operate WHOIS servers, based on a range of extensions and enhancements to the original model. WHOIS enjoys the advantages of simplicity and the presence of WHOIS client software on a preponderance of Internet-connected hosts. Work is underway on a more powerful protocol, known as WHOIS++, which is backwards-compatible with WHOIS.

The X.500 Directory Service is a much more ambitious Directory project that has been under development for a number of years under the aegis of ISO/OSI. Implementations, concerned primarily with White pages services, are available in the public domain and from commercial sources. There are LDAP based X.500 clients available for most major platforms, as well as a LDAP based gopher gateway to X.500.

Despite years of effort, there is still no single White Pages Directory Service for the entire Internet; Yellow Pages services remain even less well developed and deployed. The cost of setting up the service is one obstacle; maintaining the required databases is even more daunting.

Indexing Services (archie, Veronica, online library catalogs)

There are several Internet-based projects that build indexed catalogs of information to facilitate searching and retrieval. The first such services provided network access to library card catalogs, with more recent projects indexing network-based information.

archie:

The archie service began as a simple project to catalog the contents of hundreds of ftp-accessible online file archives. The archie service gathers location information, name, and other details describing such files and creates an index database.

Users can contact an archie server and search this database for files they require.

The archie service is accessible through a range of access methods, including telnet, stand-alone client programs running on a user's own machine, gopher, WWW, or via electronic mail. The initial implementation of archie tracks over 2,100,000 filenames on over 1,200 sites around the world (as of November 1993). There are about 30 (geographically distributed) archie servers. Both commercial and freely available versions of the archie client software are available.

Work continues on extending the archie service to provide additional types of information. The latest version is being used to provide a prototype Yellow Pages service and directories of online library catalogs and electronic mailing lists.

Veronica:

Veronica arose as an attempt to do for the world of Gopher what archie did for the world of ftp. A central server periodically scans the complete menu hierarchies of Gopher servers appearing on an ever-expanding list (over 2000 sites as of November 1993). The resulting index is provided by a veronica server and can be accessed by any gopher client.

Online library catalogs:

A large number of libraries make their computerized library catalogs available over the Internet. Most are available through telnet sessions in which the user connects to a specific address and logs in using a specific login name. Some are also available through other tools, such as Gopher.

Text-based Indexing Services (WAIS)

WAIS:

Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) is a system for indexing and serving information in a network-based environment. It is distinct from indexing tools such as archie and veronica in that it is used to index text-based target documents on a server, as well as descriptions of the contents of a server.

A WAIS server allows the administrator to set up an index of the documents (or resources) to be published. The user employs a WAIS client to attach to a particular WAIS server, and specifies a search pattern which is matched against the server's index. In early WAIS clients, searches are specified as simple natural- language queries; common ("stop") words are removed, and Boolean "ORs" are implicitly added between the remaining list of words. Matching documents are rank-ordered according to a simple statistical weighting scheme which attempts to indicate likely relevance. The user may choose to view selected documents, or further refine the search. The results of one search may be used to successively refine future searches ("relevance feedback"). Gopher clients can also access WAIS servers via a transparent gateway.

Both freely available and commercial versions of WAIS servers and clients are available. Current work is attempting to add Boolean expressions and proximity and field specifications to queries.

There are currently (as of November 1993) some 500 registered WAIS databases with an estimated 2000 additional databases that are not yet registered. There are approximately another 100 commercial WAIS databases.

6. NIR Tools

This section contains detailed information about the various NIR Tools. It is ordered alphabetically.

ALEX

Date template updated or checked: 19th March, 1994 By: Name: Vincent Cate Email address: vac@cs.cmu.edu

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NIR Tool Name: Alex

Brief Description of Tool:

OVERVIEW:

The Alex filesystem provides users and applications transparent read access to files in anonymous FTP sites on the Internet. Today there are thousands of anonymous FTP sites with a total of a few millions of files and roughly a terabyte of data. The standard approach to accessing these files involves logging in to the remote machine. This means that an application can not access remote files like local files. This also means that users do not have any of their aliases or local tools available. Users who want to use an application on a remote file first have to manually make a local copy of the file. There is no mechanism for automatically updating this local copy when the remote file changes. The users must keep track of where they get their files from and check to see if there are updates, and then fetch these. In this approach many different users at the same site may have made copies of the same remote file each using up disk space for the same data.

Alex addresses the problems with the existing approach while remaining within the existing FTP protocol so that the large collection of currently available files can be used. To get reasonable performance long term file caching is used. Thus consistency is an issue. Traditional solutions to the cache consistency problem do not work in the Internet FTP domain: callbacks are not an option as the FTP protocol has no provisions for this and polling over the Internet is slow. Therefore, Alex relaxes file cache consistency semantics, on a per file basis, and uses special caching algorithms that take into account the properties of the files and of the network to allow a simple stateless filesystem to scale to the size of the Internet.

USER'S VIEW:

To a user or application, Alex is just a normal filesystem. Any command that works on local files will work on Alex files. Since Alex is a real filesystem, nothing needs to be recompiled and no libraries are changed. Thus, users can apply all of their existing skills and tools for using files.

The user sees a filesystem with a hierarchical name space. At the top level (/alex) there are top-level Internet domains like "edu", "com", "uk", and "jp". Each component of the hostname becomes a directory name. Then the remote path is added at the end. If the user does a "ls /alex/edu/berkeley" he sees some machine names such as "ucbvax" and "sprite" and some directories on berkeley.edu. From the "ls" it is not clear what is where. The user may or may not be aware of host boundaries.

INFORMATION PROVIDER'S VIEW:

Alex is implemented as a user level NFS server. NFS was chosen because it makes it easy to add Alex to a wide range of machines. Most machines can simply use the mount command.

The model of usage is that there is one Alex server running at each institution (though this is not required in any way). Users mount the local server which caches files for users at that site.

Any information put into any anonymous FTP site becomes available via Alex.

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Primary Contact(s):

Name: Vincent Cate

Email address: vac@cs.cmu.edu

Postal Address: School of Computer Science 5000 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh PA, 15213

Telephone: +1-412-268-3077

Fax: +1-412-681-1998

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Help Line:

At this time Alex is a one person project (Vince).

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Related Working Groups:

Maybe the FTP working group.

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Sponsoring Organization / Funding source:

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Information Science and Technology Office, under the title "Research on Parallel Computing," ARPA Order No. 7330. Work furnished in connection with this research is provided under prime contract MDA972-90-C-0035 issued by DARPA/CMO to Carnegie Mellon University. Vincent Cate is supported by an "Intel foundation graduate fellowship".

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Mailing Lists:

Address: alex-servers@cs.cmu.edu

Administration: alex-servers-request@cs.cmu.edu

Description: alex-servers is for people setting up an Alex fileserver.

Archive: alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu (128.2.209.13)

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News groups:

None.

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Protocols:

What is supported: Any machine that can NFS mount a fileserver.

What it runs over: Unix machine and FTP

Other NIR tools this interworks with:

Uses FTP sites.

WAIS can be used to index files in Alex (this was done for ftpable-readmes and cs-techreports WAIS servers)

New versions of archie can output Alex paths.

Future plans: Graduate from CMU.

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Servers:

Date completed or updated: 19 March 1994 By: Name: Vincent Cate

Platform: UNIX

Primary Contact: Name: Vincent Cate

Email address: vac@cs.cmu.edu Telephone: +1-412-268-3077

Server software available from: alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu

Location of more information: No other place to go to.

Latest version number: New versions all the time.

Brief Scope and Characteristics: This software is known to still contain bugs.

Approximate number of such servers in use: 200.

General comments: You can use lpr, make, grep, more, etc. on files around the world.

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Clients:

You just do an NFS mount of the server. No client software is needed.

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Demonstration sites:

Site name: alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu

Access details - do the following as root: mkdir /alex mount -o timeo=30,retrans=300,soft,intr alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu:/ /alex

Example use: ln -s /alex/edu/cs/cmu/sp/alex/links alexlinks cd alexlinks ls cd cs-tr cd ls cd purdue ls lpr TR758.PS

If you like Alex and want to use it regularly please find, or set up, an Alex fileserver at/near your site.

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Documentation:

ftp://alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu/www/alex.html ftp://alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu/doc/intro.ps ftp://alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu/doc/NIR.Tool ftp://alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu/doc/alex.post

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Bibliography:

@InProceedings{cate:alex, author = "Vincent Cate", title = "Alex - a Global Filesystem", booktitle = "Proceedings of the Usenix File Systems Workshop", year = 1992, pages = "1--11", month = may, place = "Ann Arbor, MI", keyword = "distributed file system, wide-area file system"

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Other Information:

FTP to alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu and "cd to doc". Get the "README" or anything else there. A current version of this document may be there and called "NIR.Tool". In Alex this file is named "/alex/edu/cmu/cs/sp/alex/doc/NIR.Tool".

ARCHIE

Date template updated or checked:       1 March, 1994
By: Name:                               Peter Deutsch
Email address:                      peterd@bunyip.com

NIR Tool Name: archie

Brief Description of Tool:: The archie system is a tool for gathering, indexing and serving information from around the Internet. The current version serves a collection of filenames found at anonymous FTP sites, as well as a smaller collection of text descriptions for software, data and other information found at anonymous FTP archives. Additional databases are under development.

User's View:: Users run a client program to connect to an archie server and issue search commands to find information in an archie database. In the case of an anonymous FTP filename, this information can then be used to fetch the file directly from the archive site using the `ftp' command. To the user, archie could be seen as a `secondary source' of information which, because of the high cost of locating and serving, would not otherwise be available.

The user searches the archie databases through either a telnet session to a machine running an archie server, or by using a stand-alone client program (which uses the Prospero protocol for sending and receiving requests). There is also an email interface which allows users to send and receive search requests via electronic mail.

Freely available archie clients exist for most operating systems and can be fetched using anonymous FTP from most of the current archie servers. There are also gateways to the archie system from many other NIR tools, including Gopher, WAIS and WWW. An X.500 interface to archie is currently under development.

Information Provider's View:: There are two types of information providers who would be interested in archie. Primary information providers are interested in having a summary of the information provided by their service tracked by an archie server. Secondary service providers, or those sites wishing to provide a "value-added" service for the Internet can elect to run an archie server at their site to provide a useful service to users, to raise the profile of their institution on the Internet, or to provide market differentiation (for commercial service providers).

The archie system is of particular utility serving information where there are many sites to be searched and/or where the cost of searching each site is high.

For example, there are currently over 1,200 anonymous FTP sites on the Internet, and the number continues to grow. Searching for a specific filename at a single site may involve scanning hundreds, or even thousands of filenames. Thus, most operators of anonymous FTP archives welcome the fact that archie indexes and serves the names of all files available from each site tracked.

Information Types Supported:: The archie system allows the gathering and serving of arbitrary information types, although the current system serves only freeform text and a dedicated text format for filename listings. Internally, the archie system now supports a WAIS search engine and frontends for Gopher, WWW and WHOIS++ for accessing archie information through Gopher clients is now being tested. Additional collections of information to be served by the archie software will be announced.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Primary Contact(s):

Name: Archie Group, Bunyip Information Systems Inc.

Email address: info@bunyip.com

Postal Address: Bunyip Information Systems Inc., 310 St-Catherine St. West, suite 202, Montreal, QC CANADA H2X 2A1

Telephone: +1-514-875-8611 Fax: +1-514-875-8134

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Help Line: for archie server system and telnet client

Name: Archie Group, Bunyip Information Systems Inc.

Email address: info@bunyip.com

Telephone: +1-514-875-8611

Level of support offered:

commercial support for server (primarily for systems maintainers)
voluntary helpdesk support for freeware clients
volunteer helpdesk support for Internet information gathering tools in general

Hours available: - server system:
email: 24 hour support
phone support: 9-5 EST

- helpdesk consultation: as time permits

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Related Working Groups:: IETF, IIIR, WNILS, URI.

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Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:: Bunyip Information Systems Inc.

Funded by licensing of archie software and development contracts from sponsors. Additional information services based upon this software are now being tested.

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Mailing Lists:

Address: archie-people@bunyip.com

Administration: archie-people-request@bunyip.com

Description:: This mailing list is for people interested in the archie project and its future developments. Announcements of upgrades, new services, etc. are made to this list.

Archive: none

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Address: archie-maint@bunyip.com

Administration: archie-maint-request@bunyip.com

Description:: This mailing list is for people who operate and maintain archie servers. Announcements of bug fixes, new releases and discussion of new features are carried out on this list.

Archive: "archives.cc.mcgill.ca:/pub/mailing-lists/archie-maint"

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Address: iafa@bunyip.com

Administration: iafa-request@bunyip.com

Description:: This mailing list is for people who are involved in the Internet Anonymous FTP Archives Working Group of the IETF. This group was involved in standardizing the encoding of information at anonymous FTP archives and thus is of interest to operators and users of the archie system. It came to completion in November, 1992 and produced two documents which have been presented to the IETF as informational RFCs.

Archive: "archives.cc.mcgill.ca:/pub/mailing-lists/iafa"

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News groups: Name: comp.archives.admin

Description:: This newsgroup is for operators and maintainers of Internet archives. Announcements and discussions of issues related to archie are presented here, as well as discussions of more general issues relating to archiving and Internet services.

Archive: not known

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Name: alt.internet.services

Description:: This newsgroup is for people interested in Internet-related services, with a focus at the user level. Announcements and discussions of issues related to archie are presented here, as well as discussions of more general issues relating to Internet services.

Archive: not known

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Protocols:

What is supported:

The current archie system clients use the Prospero protocol for communication with the search engine on the archie server. Freely available clients are available which include source to perform this communication for those wishing to implement additional clients.

The archie server is capable of building arbitrary databases, using arbitrary search and access engines and the current release ships with the public domain implementation of WAIS. We expect future archie servers to serve information using this protocol. The current server system assumes the TCP/IP protocol suite is available, and in particular the ftp protocol for data gathering.

The archie system can be accessed through systems operating the Gopher, WAIS and WWW (HDDL) protocols. A gateway from the X.500 system is under development.

What it runs over:: The Prospero protocol implementation runs over its own implementation of a reliable datagram protocol based upon UDP. Data gathering runs over the TCP/IP protocol suite.

Other NIR tools this interworks with:: Prospero, Gopher, WAIS, WWW.

Future plans:: The archie system became a commercial product in October, 1992, marketed by Bunyip Information Systems Inc. The company plans to market additional data gathering modules to allow the server code to build additional types of databases. Work is also underway to integrate extensions to WHOIS to allow the building and maintaining of White Pages (names) directories. The company is also working on other Internet information tools that will work with the archie system.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Servers:: Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993
By: Name: Peter Deutsch
Email address: peterd@bunyip.com

Platform:: Sun SPARC running SunOS 4.1 or later. IBM RS6000 running AIX version 3.2 or later. for additional UNIX platforms, contact Bunyip Information Systems details.

Primary Contact:

Name: Alan Emtage
Email address: bajan@bunyip.com
Telephone: +1-514-398-8611

Server software available from:: Bunyip Information Systems Inc.
email: info@bunyip.com

Location of more information:: Additional information on the archie product line is available from the anonymous ftp archives on the various archie server sites. Try "archie.ans.net", "archie.sura.net", "archie.au", etc.

Latest version number:: archie 3.1

Brief Scope and Characteristics:: This is the commercial inmplementation of the archie system, replacing a version done as a Masters project at McGill University during the period 1990-1992. It comes with an archie telnet client that offers a number of minor improvements over earlier versions. Additional releases, with a number of additional improvements, are planned in the coming months.

Approximate number of such servers in use:: Currently about 27 (not all are publicly available)

General comments:: Most users access archie through a freeware or public domain client program. These are available from most archie servers via anonymous FTP. Check out the archie directory on any of the publicly available archie servers or the banner message when logging into any of the archie telnet clients for more details.

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Clients:

Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993

By: Name: Peter Deutsch
Email address: peterd@bunyip.com

Platform:: command line shell, written in C. Works with both UNIX and MSDOS/OS2 shells.

Primary Contact:

Name: Brendan Kehoe
Email address: brendan@cygnus.com
Telephone: not known

Client software available from:: most archie server hosts and major Internet archives. Look for filename "c-archie-1.3.2.tar.Z".

Location of more information:: Packaged with software.

Latest version number:: 1.3.2

Brief Scope and Characteristics:: This program provides a simple command line interface to the archie server system, using the Prospero protocol. Written in C, it has been ported to MSDOS and OS2.

General comments:: This program should not be confused with the archie system telnet interface, which is a program that runs on the archie server itself.

Future plans:: Not known

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Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993 By: Name: Peter Deutsch Email address: peterd@bunyip.com

Platform:: command line shell, written in Perl. Works with both UNIX and MSDOS/OS2 shells.

Primary Contact:

Name: Khun Yee Fung
Email address: clipper@csd.uwo.ca
Telephone: not known

Client software available from:: most archie server hosts and major Internet archives. Look for filename "perl-archie-3.8.tar.Z".

Location of more information:: Packaged with software.

Latest version number:: 3.8

Brief Scope and Characteristics:: This program provides a simple command line interface to the archie server system, using the Prospero protocol. Written in Perl.

General comments:: This program should not be confused with the archie system telnet interface, which is a program that runs on the archie server itself.

Future plans:: Not known

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Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993 By: Name: Peter Deutsch Email address: peterd@bunyip.com

Platform:: archie client program for VMS systems.

Primary Contact:

Name: Brendan Kehoe
Email address: brendan@cygnus.com
Telephone: not known

Client software available from:: most archie server hosts and major Internet archives. Look for filename "archie-vms.com".

Location of more information:: Packaged with software.

Latest version number:: not known.

Brief Scope and Characteristics:: This program provides a simple command line interface to the archie server system for users of VMS.

General comments:: This program should not be confused with the archie system telnet interface, which is a program that runs on the archie server itself.

Future plans:: Not known

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Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993
By: Name: Peter Deutsch
Email address: peterd@bunyip.com

Platform:: Xwindows client (X11R4)

Primary Contact:

Name: George Ferguson
Email address: ferguson@cs.rochester.edu
Telephone: not known

Client software available from:: cs.rochester.edu, most archie server hosts and major Internet archives.

Look for file "xarchie-1.3.tar.Z".

Location of more information:: Packaged with software.

Latest version number:: xarchie-1.3

Brief Scope and Characteristics:: This program provides an Xwindows client that allows users to search the archie anonymous FTP database. Also included is the capability of fetching files (using ftp).

General comments:: none.

Future plans:: Not known

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993
By: Name: Peter Deutsch
Email address: peterd@bunyip.com

Platform:: NeXTStep client.

Primary Contact:

Name: Scott Stark
Email address: me@superc.che.udel.edu
Telephone: not known

Client software available from:: most archie server hosts and major Internet archives. Look for file "NeXTArchie.tar.Z".

Location of more information:: Packaged with software.

Latest version number:

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

This program provides a NeXTStep client that allows users to search the archie anonymous FTP database. Also included is the capability of fetching files (using ftp).

General comments: none.

Future plans: Not known

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Demonstration sites:

Site name: any one of:

archie.rutgers.edu 128.6.18.15 (Rutgers University) archie.unl.edu 129.93.1.14 (University of Nebraska in Lincoln) archie.sura.net 128.167.254.179 (SURAnet archie server) archie.ans.net 147.225.1.2 (ANS archie server) archie.au 139.130.4.6 (Australian server) archie.funet.fi 128.214.6.100 (European server in Finland) archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.11.3 (UK/England server) archie.cs.huji.ac.il 132.65.6.15 (Israel server) archie.wide.ad.jp 133.4.3.6 (Japanese server)

Client software should be supported at all of these sites. Additional sites are available. Use the "sites" command in the archie telnet interface at any of the above sites for a more complete lists.

Access details:

telnet to any of the above sites
login as user `archie' (no password is required)
type `help' at the prompt to get started.

Note: Some people forget and use ftp in place of telnet. This will not work. The hint that this is being done is that they claim that a password is needed, not that the site can't be found.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Documentation:

Document Title: What is archie Location details: anonymous FTP from archie.ans.net Site: archie.ans.net Full file name: "pub/archie/doc/whatis.archie" Description: Brief overview of the archie system.

Document Title: archie man pages Location details: anonymous FTP from archie.ans.net Site: archie.ans.net Full file name: "pub/archie/doc/archie.man.*" Description: Manual pages for the archie system telnet interface in various formats (raw ASCII, nroff, compressed, etc.). This document also explains the various search options and other features, so is of use to users of the other archie client programs.

Document Title:         What's New in 3.0
Location details:       anonymous FTP from archie.ans.net
Site:                   archie.ans.net
Full file name:         "pub/archie/doc/whats.new"
Description:            Description of the changes to archie for the
first commercial release

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bibliography: none

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Other Information: none

GOPHER

Date template updated or checked: 14 March 1994 By: Name: Mark P. McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NIR Tool Name: Internet Gopher

Brief Description of Tool:

The Internet Gopher protocol is a client/distributed-server document search and retrieval protocol originally developed at the University of Minnesota. Gopher was originally created as a fast, simple, distributed, campus-wide information search and retrieval system; ease of use and implementation has made Gopher increasingly popular on the Internet. Since its original release, many folks on the Internet have contributed to its growth, submitting patches, servers, clients, and linking their local servers into the worldwide network of Gopher servers. Gateways exist to seamlessly access a variety of non-Gopher services such as ftp, WAIS, USENET news, Archie, Z39.50 (1992 rev), X.500 directories, Sybase and Oracle SQL servers, etc. In addition, an "archie for gopherspace" called Veronica (very easy rodent-oriented net-wide index to computerized archives) has been developed at the University of Nevada. Veronica makes it easy to search for items in gopherspace by title.

The gopher protocol is often described as "fiercely simple"; it is connectionless (stateless), and uses TCP reliable streams. A client connects to a server using TCP, and sends a one-line text "selector string". The server responds by returning the item (a file, a directory listing, or a link to some other service) corresponding to the selector string and immediately closing the connection. Items in directory listings are returned as a series of lines terminated by carriage-return line-feed. Each item (line) is defined by a one- character tag to specify the item type, a display string or item-name that the client should display to the user, and a number of tab delimited fields to specify the selector string, host domain name and port number. Because of its simple and connectionless nature, gopher servers make very minimal demands on their host machines and gopher clients are extremely easy to implement.

The users view the Gopher world as a series of networked hierarchical directories much like a familiar filesystem. However, the links define a graph rather than a simple rooted tree. Links in the Gopher graph may define services other than simple files or directories; these include cso (qi) servers, telnet sessions, links to other gopher servers, and links to gateway servers.

The information provider's simplest view is that files and directories below a certain root directory on their machine are all visible and available for retrieval by gopher clients. More features like long names, item types, links, and gateway services are available to the more sophisticated information provider.

Servers and clients run on most popular hardware, including Macs, UNIX boxes, PC-DOS boxes. The Internet Gopher name is copyright (c) 1991-1992 by the University of Minnesota. The Internet Gopher protocol is described in an informational RFC (1436) available at better RFC archives everywhere. Extensions to the base gopher protocol allow for associating meta-information with gopher items, alternate views of documents (i.e., text, postscript, rtf, etc.) and electronic forms. Collectively, these extensions are referred to as Gopher+. Gopher+ is upward compatible with the orginal gopher protocol. The gopher software may be retrieved from numerous Gopher or FTP archive sites, including the University of Minnesota Gopher server, the Info-Mac Archive Gopher server, and by anonymous FTP from boombox.micro.umn.edu and sumex-aim.stanford.edu. As of December 1993, about 1/3 of the approximately 4800 Gopher servers on the internet support Gopher+.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Primary Contact(s):

Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team

Email address: gopher@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Postal Address: Microcomputer & Workstation Networks Center 152 Shepherd Labs 100 Union Street SE. University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455

Telephone: +1-612-625-1300

Fax: +1-612-625-6817

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Help Line:

Name: Microcomputer HelpLine; ask for The Internet Gopher Development Team

Email address: gopher@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Telephone: USA: 612 MA MICRO (+1-612-626-4276) Helpline is for general support at the U of M.

Level of support offered: all users

Hours available: Phone Helpline 9-4 weekdays.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Related Working Groups:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mailing Lists:

Address: gopher-news@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Administration: gopher-news-request@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Description: News and views of all things gopher. Tends to be a high volume mailing list and technically oriented.

Archive: Via Gopher: University of Minnesota Gopher Information About Gopher

Address: gopher-announce@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Administration: gopher-announce-request@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Description: A low-volume mailing list of announcements of new software and servers.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

News groups:

Name: comp.infosystems.gopher

Description: Discussion of all things gopher.

Archive: Available via gopher client; connect to the gopher server at gopher.tc.umn.edu port 70, look in the "Information About Gopher" section.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Protocols:

What is supported: Internet Gopher

What it runs over: Anything you can run TCP/IP over.

Other NIR tools this interworks with:

Z39.50 WAIS variant via WAIS gateway FTP via FTP gateway archie/Prospero via an archie gateway veronica (an archie for gopherspace) NNTP via NNTP gateway Finger (subset of gopher) X.500 via X.500 gateway Z39.50 1992 revision variant via Z39.50 gateway Oracle and Sybase SQL servers via SQL gateway CSO (Ph/Qi) online phone books

Future plans: New user interace metaphor on PowerPC and Pentium-based clients.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Servers:

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: UNIX.

Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: gopher@micro.umn.edu Telephone: +1-612-625-1300

Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu

/pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (things change fast; please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Server, index server for WAIS based indices and for NeXT native indexing, tools, gateway code. Supports Gopher+.

Approximate number of such servers in use: Over 3000.

General comments: The defacto standard workhorse Gopher server. Paul Lindner is the architect and keeper of this server.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Macintosh.

Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: gopher@micro.umn.edu Telephone: +1-612-625-1300

Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Macintosh Gopher Server and tools, supports Gopher+.

Approximate number of such servers in use: Current estimates between 300 and 400.

General comments: Runs on any Macintosh with 1MB memory or more. Requires MacTCP. Can be configured to use Apple Computer's AppleSearch full-text search software as a Gopher-accessible search engine.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: PC-DOS.

Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: gopher@micro.umn.edu Telephone: +1-612-625-1300

Additional contacts: Name: Dennis Sherman Email address: Dennis_Sherman@unc.edu

Name: Foteos Macrides Email address: macrides@sci.wfeb.edu

Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: 0.91b

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Basic Gopher server for PC-DOS boxes.

Approximate number of such servers in use: Current estimates between 25 and 75.

General comments: Written by Chris McNeil < cmcneil@mta.ca > , based on Phil Karns net package. The U of M Gopher team forwards difficult problems to Chris.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: VMS

Primary Contact: Name: J. Lance Wilkinson Email address: jlw@psulias.psu.edu Telephone: +1-814-865-1818

Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/VMS/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: 1.2 VMS-0

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Basic VMS Server, shares some code with UNIX server.

Approximate number of such servers in use: 35-40 servers in use.

General comments: The VMS server was written and is maintained by J. Lance Wilkinson, Foteos Macrides, Bruce Tanner and others on the VMSGopher-L@trln.lib.unc.edu mailing list.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: VM/CMS

Primary Contact: Name: Rick Troth Email address: TROTH@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Telephone:

Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu:/pub/gopher/ Brazos.IS.Rice.EDU:/pub/vmcms/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: 2.4

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher server for IBM VM/CMS installations.

Approximate number of such servers in use: Unknown.

General comments: This server was written and is maintained by Rick Troth. This server is commonly referred to as the Rice VM/CMS server. There is also another VM/CMS server: the Vienna VM/CMS server.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: VM/CMS.

Primary Contact: Name: Gerhard Gonter Email address: Gerhard.Gonter@WU-Wien.ac.at Telephone:

Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu:/pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: 2.00.00

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher server for IBM VM/CMS installations.

Approximate number of such servers in use: Unknown.

General comments: This server was written and is maintained by Gerhard Gonter. This server is commonly referred to as the Vienna VM/CMS server. There is also another VM/CMS server: the Rice VM/CMS server.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: MVS

Primary Contact: Name: Steve Bacher Email address: seb@draper.com Telephone:

Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu:/pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: 2.1

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher server for IBM MVS installations.

Approximate number of such servers in use: Unknown.

General comments: This server was written and is maintained by Steve Bacher.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Unix veronica server

Primary Contact: Name: Steve Foster Email address: gophadm@futique.scs.unr.edu Telephone:

Server software available from: Via FTP: veronica.scs.unr.edu:/veronica

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: veronica server software

Approximate number of such servers in use: Unknown.

General comments: Written and maintained by Steve Foster at the University of Nevada.

Future plans: Additional support for searching on Gopher+ attributes

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Clients:

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Macintosh

Primary Contact Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: gopher@micro.umn.edu Telephone: +1-612-625-1300

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: One of the many Macintosh Gopher clients. Requires MacTCP.

General comments: Macintosh TurboGopher is as of this writing, the fastest Gopher client available for the Mac. Written by the Minnesota Gopher Development Team. Supports Gopher+.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Macintosh

Primary Contact: Name: Don Gilbert, Biology, Indiana University - Bloomington Email address: Software@Bio.Indiana.Edu Telephone:

Client software available from: Via Gopher: Indiana University Gopher Server IUBio Software+Data/GopherApp, Mac Gopher client Via FTP: ftp.bio.indiana.edu:/util/gopher/ gopherapp/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: One of the many Macintosh Gopher clients. Requires MacTCP.

General comments: Written and maintained by Don Gilbert. Supports Gopher+.

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Macintosh

Primary Contact: Name: "Jonzy" Email address: JONZY@CC.UTAH.EDU Telephone:

Client software available from: Via Gopher: gopher.cc.utah.edu in Testing directory

Via FTP: ftp.cc.utah.edu:/pub/gopher/Macintosh/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: One of the many Macintosh Gopher clients. Requires MacTCP. Has a browser style interface. Uses customized Telnet application.

General comments: Written and maintained by "Jonzy".

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: UNIX (curses/EMACS based client)

Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team

Email address: gopher@micro.umn.edu Telephone: +1-612-625-1300

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: The UNIX curses-based client.

General comments: Written and maintained by Paul Lindner. Supports Gopher+.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: UNIX (simple client does not use CURSES)

Primary Contact: Name: Sean Fuller Email address: fuller@aedc-vax.af.mil Telephone:

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: 0.3

Brief Scope and Characteristics: sgopher is a simple gopher client for inetd/batch/online; it does not require much of the terminal other than it be 80X24 characters. It can be run stand alone or it can be launched from inetd. It doesn't use termcap or curses. Sgopher outputs the \r\n pair at the end of line and requires a < return > after each command to support more terminal types.

General comments: Runs on VMS, IRIX, Ultrix, AIX, Solaris 2.x, Solaris 1.x

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Xgopher: UNIX XWindows based client

Primary Contact: Name: Allan Tuchman Email address: tuchman@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu Telephone:

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Makes use of the X interface.

General comments: Written and maintained by Allan Tuchman.

Future plans: Gopher+ support planned for the future.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill

Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Xgopher: UNIX XWindows based client

Primary Contact: Name: Andrew Scherpbier Email address: xvgopher@gopher.sdsu.edu turtle@sciences.sdsu.edu Telephone:

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Makes use of the X interface... displays a way cool chewing gopher icon while information is being downloaded.

General comments: XView based gopher client.

Future plans: Gopher+ support.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: NeXT: NeXTstep client

Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: gopher@micro.umn.edu Telephone: +1-612-625-1300

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution

Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Makes full use of the NeXT interface.

General comments: Initial version written by Max Tardiveau. Now maintained by Paul Lindner.

Future plans:

-------------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: DOS TurboVision w/Clarkson packet drivers

Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: gopher@micro.umn.edu Telephone: +1-612-625-1300

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Character-based graphics and windows under DOS. Uses either Clarkson Packet drivers (CRWYN packet drivers) and a built-in TCP/IP protocol stack or Ftp, Inc.'s protocol stack (PC/TCP).

General comments: Gopher+ support.

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: VMS.

Primary Contact: Name: Mark Van Overbeke Email address: mark@ummvxm.mrs.umn.edu Telephone:

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: 0.6

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

General comments: The VMS client was written and is maintained by Mark Van Overbeke.

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: VMS.

Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: gopher@micro.umn.edu Telephone: +1-612-625-1300

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: 1.12

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Identical to Unix gopher1.12. Works on a VMS 5.5-2 system running MultiNet 3.1B. UCX and Wollongong are also supported.

General comments: A port of the University of Minnesota Unix client to VMS.

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: VM/CMS.

Primary Contact: Name: Rick Troth Email address: TROTH@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Telephone:

Client software available from:

Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

Gopher client for IBM VM/CMS installations.

General comments: This client was written and is maintained by Rick Troth. This client is commonly referred to as the Rice VM/CMS client. There is also another VM/CMS client: the Vienna VM/CMS client.

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: VM/CMS.

Primary Contact: Name: Gerhard Gonter Email address: Gerhard.Gonter@WU-Wien.ac.at Telephone:

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for IBM VM/CMS installations.

General comments: This client was written and is maintained by Gerhard Gonter. This client is commonly referred to as the Vienna VM/CMS client. There is also another VM/CMS client: the Rice VM/CMS client.

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill

Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: DOS with PC/TCP.

Primary Contact: Name: Steven E. Newton Email address: snewton@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu Telephone:

Client software available from: Via FTP: oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu:/public/dos/misc/

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for DOS with PC/TCP

General comments: Written and maintained by Steven E. Newton

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: DOS with PC-NFS.

Primary Contact: Name: Stan Barber Email address: sob@TMC.EDU Telephone:

Client software available from: Via FTP: bcm.tmc.edu:/nfs/gopher.exe

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for DOS with PC-NFS

General comments: Written and maintained by Stan Barber

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: DOS Novell LWP Gopher Client

Primary Contact: Name: Jeremy T. James Email address: blackp@med.umich.edu Telephone:

Client software available from: Via FTP: lennon.itn.med.umich.edu:pub/gopher

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: DOS Novell LWP Gopher Client

General comments: Written and maintained by Jeremy T. James.

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Windows 3.1 with Winsock or PC/NFS.

Primary Contact: Name: Martyn Hampson Email address: m.hampson@ic.ac.uk Telephone:

Client software available from:

Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: lister.cc.ic.ac.uk /pub/wingopher

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: (please check software distribution)

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for Windows; uses either Winsock DLL or PC/NFS network interface.

General comments: Written and maintained by Martyn Hampson. Gopher+ support.

Future plans:

-------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Windows with Winsock and ToolBook.

Primary Contact: Name: Kevin Gamiel Email address: kgamiel@kudzu.cnidr.org Telephone:

Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/micro/pc-stuff/ms-windows/winsock/gophbook.zip

Location of more information:: As above.

Latest version number: 1.0

Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for Windows; uses Asymetrix's ToolBook to paint the screen and speaks to the network via a Winsock DLL.

General comments: Written and maintained by Kevin Gamiel

Future plans:

------------------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Air Gopher commercial client for windows

Primary Contact: Name: David Pool, Spry Software, Inc. Email address: dave@spry.com Telephone: +1-206-447-0300

Client software available from:

Location of more information:

Latest version number:

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

General Comments:

Future plans: Gopher+ support planned.

------------------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: Win Gopher

Primary Contact: Name: Bill Easton, Notis, Inc. Telephone: +1-708-866-0159

Client software available from:

Location of more information:

Latest version number:

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

General Comments: Requires Winsock. Supports gopher.

Future plans: Gopher+ support planned.

------------------------------

Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994

By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Platform: GINA

Primary Contact: Name: Mark Resmer, California Technology Project Email address: resmer@eis.calstale.edu

Client software available from:

Location of more information:

Latest version number:

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

General Comments: Macintosh and windows clients include netnews, email.

Future plans:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Demonstration sites:

List of sites which are willing to act as demonstration sites for this application.

site name ip address login as serving area ---------------------------------------------------------------- consultant.micro.umn.edu 134.84.132.4 gopher North America gopher.uiuc.edu 128.174.33.160 gopher North America panda.uiowa.edu 128.255.40.201 panda North America info.anu.edu.au 150.203.84.20 info Australia gopher.chalmers.se 129.16.221.40 gopher Sweden tolten.puc.cl 146.155.1.16 gopher South America

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Documentation:

Title: (1) Gopher Protocol and (2) Gopher+ Proposed Extensions Location details: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/

Title: RFC 1436 The Internet Gopher Protocol (a distributed document search and retrieval protocol) Via FTP: nic.ddn.mil /rfc/rfc1436.txt

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Bibliography:

The Whole Internet, Ed Kroll, O'Reilly, 1992

The Internet Gopher, "ConneXions", July 1992, Interop.

Exploring Internet GopherSpace "The Internet Society News", v1n2 1992

The Internet Gopher Protocol, Proceedings of the Twenty-Third IETF, CNRI, Section 5.3

Internet Gopher, Proceedings of Canadian Networking '92

The Internet Gopher, INTERNET: Getting Started, SRI International, Section 10.5.5

Tools help Internet users discover on-line treasures, Computerworld, July 20, 1992

TCP/IP Network Administration, O'Reilly.

Balakrishan, B. (Oct 1992) "SPIGopher: Making SPIRES databases accessible through the Gopher protocol". SPIRES Fall '92 Workshop, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

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Other Information:

HYTELNET

Date template updated or checked: 28 February, 1994 By: Name: Peter Scott Email address: aa375@freenet.carleton.ca

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NIR Tool Name: HYTELNET

Brief Description of Tool:: HYTELNET is a terminate-and-stay-resident hypertext browser, which gives a user full instructions for logging into telnet-accessible sites on the Internet i.e., library catalogs, campus-wide information systems, bulletin boards, directory services, gophers, etc. The browser does not make remote connections. A Unix/VMS version, which does make remote connections, has been written by Earl Fogel, Computing Services, University of Saskatchewan. Macintosh and Amiga versions are also available (see ftp site information below).

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Primary Contact(s):

Name: Peter Scott

Email address: aa375@freenet.carleton.ca

Postal Address: 324 8th Street East Saskatoon, Sask, Canada S7H 0P5

Telephone: +1-306-966-5920

Fax: +1-306-966-6040

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Help Line:

Name: Peter Scott

Email address: aa375@freenet.carleton.ca

Telephone: +1-306-966-5920

Level of support offered:
o volunteer

Hours available: 8:00 a.m - 3:30 p.m CST

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Related Working Groups:

None

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Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:

None

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Mailing Lists: HYTELNET Updates Distribution

Address: hytel-l@kentvm.kent.edu

Administration: By listowner Peter Scott aa375@freenet.carleton.ca

Description:

To inform members of new versions of the software, and to keep users informed of new/changed/defunct Telnet-accessible sites To subscribe send e-mail message to listserv@kentvm.kent.edu with no subject, and sub hytel-l firstname lastname as the body of the message.

Archive: None

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News groups: bit.listserv.hytel-l

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Protocols:

What is supported:

What it runs over:

Other NIR tools this interworks with:

Future plans: Possible translation into gopher format

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Servers:

None.

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Clients:

Date completed or updated: 21 December, 1993 By: Name: Peter Scott Email address: aa375@freenet.carleton.ca

Platform: DOS

Primary Contact Name: Peter Scott Email address: aa375@freenet.carleton.ca Telephone: +1-306-966-5920

Client software available from:

ftp.usask.ca in pub/hytelnet/pc as hytelnXX.zip, where XX = latest version number. pub/hytelnet/{amiga,unix,vms,mac}/* for respective versions

Location of more information:: finger scottp@jester.usask.ca

Latest version number: 6.6 (Issued October 23, 1993)

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

General comments:

Future plans: To contine to produce updated versions in current form.

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Demonstration sites:

The Unix/VMS version can be accessed via telnet to access.usask.ca (login: hytelnet)

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Documentation: None

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Bibliography:

HYTELNET as software for accessing the Internet: a personal perspective on the development of HYTELNET. Electronic Networking, Vol. 2, No. 1 Spring 1992 pp 38-44

Hypertext...Information at your fingertips. In: Designing Information: new roles for librarians. Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993

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Other Information:

NETFIND

Date template updated or checked: 1 March, 1994 By: Name: Mike Schwartz Email address: schwartz@cs.colorado.edu

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NIR Tool Name: Netfind

Brief Description of Tool:

Given the name of a person on the Internet and a rough description of where the person works, Netfind attempts to locate information about the person. People can be specified by first, last, or login name. Their place of work can be described by name and/or the city/state/country.

Netfind provides textual information about people, when it is able to locate such information. It is not a directory in the usual sense of the word. Rather, it searches for people using a number of Internet services and heuristics about how to locate user information. Because of the techniques it uses, Netfind can locate information about more people than any other Internet user directory - over 5 million people in over 9,000 domains worldwide when last measured.

You can use the University of Colorado Netfind server by telnet to bruno.cs.colorado.edu: login as "netfind" (with no password). Help screens providing more detailed instructions and technical information are available there. There is currently no way for non- Internet users to access Netfind (e.g., using an email interface).

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Primary Contact(s):

Name: Mike Schwartz

Email address: netfind-dvl@cs.colorado.edu

Postal Address: Department of Computer Science University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0430

Telephone: Declined. (Note: Netfind is currently a volunteer service. We do not have staff resources to support telephone inquiries.)

Fax: Declined.

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Help Line:

There are an increasing number of Netfind servers being set up at various Network Information Centers (including the U.S. Internic). However, since Netfind is provided as a volunteer service at this time, there is no help line.

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Related Working Groups:

Gopher, NIR, IIIR, IRTF-RD.

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Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:

None. Netfind was originally a research prototype. It is offered as-is, on an unsupported basis. From time to time the original developers make improvements, but it is not currently funded.

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Mailing Lists:

Address: netfind-users@cs.colorado.edu

Administration: netfind-users-request@cs.colorado.edu

Description: mailing list for user changes and updates.

Archive: None.

----------------------------

Address: netfind-servers@cs.colorado.edu

Administration: netfind-servers-request@cs.colorado.edu

Description: mailing list for sites running Netfind servers.

Archive: None.

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News groups:

None.

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Protocols:

What is supported: NVT ASCII. At present no formal protocol is used. We are currently implementing a client/ server protocol, which will allow better clients and more efficient servers.

What it runs over: TCP/IP.

Other NIR tools this interworks with: Finger, Gopher, PH, SMTP, USENET news, UUCP maps, Various NIC databases, Various service logs, WAIS, WHOIS, X.500, DNS

Future plans:

Many. Telnet to the server and see the "Future Directions" menu under the "Frequently Asked Questions" help menu.

In addition to the above list, we are currently exploring possibilities to integrate the Netfind seed database gathering mechanisms into the Fremont framework, to make the process more scalable, and to support other types of information (e.g., to help with mapping the Internet).

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Servers:

Date completed or updated: October 12, 1993 By: Name: Mike Schwartz Email address: schwartz@cs.colorado.edu

Platform: SunOS 4.1 or more recent. Uncertain whether Netfind will run on Solaris.

Primary Contact: Name: Mike Schwartz Email address: schwartz@cs.colorado.edu Telephone: (not supplied)

Server software available from: ftp.cs.colorado.edu, in the directory pub/cs/distribs/netfind.

Location of more information:: in above directory.

Latest version number: 4.4.

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

This version of Netfind incorporates the ability for sites to register a set of URLs in their DNS server, pointing Netfind to a variety of different sources for information. Netfind can now tap information from X.500, WHOIS, and PH, in addition to the previous sources it used (finger, etc.). For more information see ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/distribs/netfind/Netfind.WP.URLs

Approximate number of such servers in use:

17 public servers; hundreds or thousands of private stand-alone clients.

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Clients: The Netfind client is available in the same release as the server. See above.

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Demonstration sites: Site name: bruno.cs.colorado.edu The current list is: archie.au (AARNet, Melbourne, Australia) bruno.cs.colorado.edu (University of Colorado, Boulder) dino.conicit.ve (Nat. Council for Techn. & Scien. Research, Venezuela) ds.internic.net (InterNIC Directory and DB Services, S. Plainfield, NJ) eis.calstate.edu (California State University, Fullerton, CA) lincoln.technet.sg (Technet Unit, Singapore) malloco.ing.puc.cl (Catholic University of Chile, Santiago) monolith.cc.ic.ac.uk (Imperial College, London, England) mudhoney.micro.umn.edu (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis) netfind.anu.edu.au (Australian National University, Canberra) netfind.ee.mcgill.ca (McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada) netfind.if.usp.br (University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil) netfind.oc.com (OpenConnect Systems, Dallas, Texas) netfind.vslib.cz (Liberec University of Technology, Czech Republic) nic.nm.kr (Korea Network Information Center, Taejon, Korea) nic.uakom.sk (Academy of Sciences, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia) redmont.cis.uab.edu (University of Alabama at Birmingham)

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Documentation:

There are three primary sets of information available about Netfind. The first is a set of help information, available in the FTP distribution as well as from the help screens available from any Netfind server. This information includes a fairly complete set of Frequently Asked Questions, as well as user help information and pointers to other related information. The second is a pre-publication version of a technical paper about Netfind, available in

ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/PostScript/ Netfind.Gathering.ps.Z (compressed PostScript)

ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/ASCII/ Netfind.Gathering.txt.Z (compressed ASCII).

An earlier paper is also available in

ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/PostScript/ White.Pages.ps.Z or

ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/ASCII/ White.Pages.txt.Z,

containing some of the original ideas in Netfind and measurements of the system. The Netfind.Gathering paper contains an up-to-date description of the data gathering and integration algorithms.

The third source of information focuses particularly on the URL-based remote site customization mechanism, and is available in ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/distribs/netfind/Netfind.WP.URLs

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Bibliography:

Netfind is one prototype developed by the Networked Resource Discovery Project, at the University of Colorado - Boulder. A bibliography and set of project papers is available by anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.colorado.edu, in pub/cs/techreports/schwartz. This directory contains a file called "README" that contains a project overview and bibliography. The files in this directory are also available via an electronic mail interface. For more information, send a mail message to infosrv@ftp.cs.colorado.edu, containing the message body (not subject line) "send HELP" (without quotes).

PROSPERO

Date template updated or checked: 1 March, 1994 By: Name: Steven Augart Email address: info-prospero@isi.edu

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NIR Tool Name: Prospero

Brief Description of Tool:

The Prospero directory service supports a user centered view of files scattered across the Internet. It can be used to organize references to files as if they were on your local system, without the need to physically move them.

Prospero provides access to existing directories and indices that can be used to find files of interest that are available from Internet archive sites. Among the indices available is the archie database and a gateway to all Gopher menus, files, and searches. We hope to have WAIS indices and World Wide Web documents online in the near future.

Prospero also provides a mechanism to make directories and indices available to end-users and applications in a format that allows information from different sources to be integrated into a coherent whole.

Prospero does not interpret the data that it organizes. It does provide mechanisms to retrieve the data, but the display and use of the data is up to the user's application. Prospero is intended to serve as infrastructure that integrates information from a variety of sources and supports a variety of user applications.

Prospero allows fine grained authorization of requests to all objects, including directories and indices. Prospero supports the authentication of clients through four mechanisms: (a) simple client assertion of the user's identity; (b) a trusted port mechanism similar to that used by the Berkeley UNIX R commands; (c) a simple cleartext passwording mechanism; (d) Kerberos (version 5). The maintainer of an ACL chooses which of these mechanisms he or she wishes to accept as proof of the client's identity.

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Primary Contact(s):

Name: Info Prospero (preferred contact address)

Email address: info-prospero@isi.edu

--------------------------

Name: Clifford Neuman

Email address: bcn@isi.edu

Postal Address: U.S.C. Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695 U.S.A.

Telephone: +1-310-822-1511

------------------------

Name: Steven Augart

Email address: swa@isi.edu

Postal Address: U.S.C. Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695 U.S.A.

Telephone: +1-310-822-1511

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Help Line:

Name: Info Prospero

Email address: info-prospero@isi.edu

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Related Working Groups:

IETF IAFA WG IETF IIIR WG IETF URI WG IETF NIR WG IRTF Resource Discovery WG

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Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:

Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California

The design and implementation was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. CCR-8619663), the Washington Technology Center, Digital Equipment Corporation, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency under NASA Cooperative Agreement NCC-2-539.

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Mailing Lists:

Address: info-prospero@ISI.EDU

Administration: info-prospero-request@ISI.EDU

Description: This mailing list is really two one-way mailing lists. Send mail to INFO-PROSPERO to obtain information about Prospero, papers, or the release. Mail to INFO-PROSPERO will not be passed on to subscribers. INFO-PROSPERO is also the list to which we will send status updates and information on how to obtain new releases.

Archive: Via anonymous FTP to PROSPERO.ISI.EDU as /pub/prospero/mail/info-prospero.arc

Via Prospero in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/GUEST/prototype" virtual system as /sites/isi.edu/pub/prospero/mail/info-prospero.arc

--------------------------

Address: prospero@ISI.EDU

Administration: prospero-request@ISI.EDU

Description: This mailing list is for general discussion of Prospero, for announcements of new sites that have come on board, and for announcements of directories that people have created to organize the information already accessible.

Archive: Via anonymous FTP to PROSPERO.ISI.EDU as /pub/prospero/mail/prospero.arc

Via Prospero in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/GUEST/prototype" virtual system as /sites/isi.edu/pub/prospero/mail/prospero.arc.

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News groups:

NONE

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Protocols:

What is supported: Prospero directory service requests are formatted according to the Prospero protocol.

Prospero does not have its own file retrieval protocol. Files may be automatically retrieved using FTP, NFS, AFS, and GOPHER. Loginable services may also be accessed via TELNET.

What it runs over: Directory service requests are layered on top of UDP, with our own (included) reliable message delivery layer.

Other NIR tools this interworks with: Archie, Gopher, Wais, WWW

Future plans:

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Servers:

Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993

Platform: UNIX

Primary Contact: Name: Clifford Neuman and Steven Augart Email address: info-prospero@isi.edu Telephone: +1-310-822-1511

Server software available from:

Via anonymous FTP: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU, /pub/prospero/prospero.tar.Z

Via Prospero: /releases/prospero/prospero.tar.Z, in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/GUEST/prototype" virtual system.

Note that the name prospero.tar.Z refers to the most stable release (currently Beta version 5.1). If you want the latest version of the server (which includes the Gopher gateway), you should retrieve it by version number; the name for the latest version is prospero-alpha.5.2.tar.Z

Location of more information:: Contained within the release.

Latest version number: Alpha Version 5.3

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

The server allows the maintainer to make directory information available about selected portions of the server's filesystem, such as anonymously FTPable files. The server also is used to publish information from other databases, such as Archie. The server also allows users and maintainers to store their own customized organizing views of the namespace. Release Alpha.5.2 of the server includes a gateway feature which treats all Gopher servers as a Prospero database.

Approximate number of such servers in use:

General comments:

Future plans:

We have a prototype NFS server that makes Prospero queries, but it is not yet ready to release. We plan to develop a gateway similar to the existing Gopher gateway feature for World Wide Web. There is also active work being done on exporting WAIS indices through Prospero in a way similar to the way the archie database is exported.

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Clients:

Date completed or updated: 1st November, 1993

Platform: UNIX

Primary Contact Name: Clifford Neuman and Steven Augart Email address: info-prospero@isi.edu Telephone: +1-310-822-1511

Client software available from: Via anonymous FTP: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU, /pub/prospero/prospero.tar.Z

Via Prospero: /releases/prospero/prospero.tar.Z, in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/swa" virtual system.

Note that the name prospero.tar.Z refers to the most stable release (currently Beta version 5.1). If you want the latest version of the clients (which includes the Prospero menu browser), you should retrieve it by version number; the name for the latest version is prospero-alpha.5.2.tar.Z

Latest Version number: Alpha Version 5.2

Brief Scope and Characteristics:

We provide two client interfaces. The older one is a command-line client, which can be configured to use the same syntax to navigate through the Prospero namespace that a user uses to navigate through the UNIX filesystem. ("cd", "ls", etc.) The newer one is a menu- based file and directory browser similar to the UNIX Gopher client.

General comments:

Archie clients also make queries in the Prospero namespace, so all Archie clients are Prospero clients too. They are better described in the Archie report.

Future plans:

We are working on enhancing the menu browser client to allow users to remotely customize and update virtual systems. We plan to develop a Prospero hypertext browser.

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Demonstration sites:

A guest virtual system is available on PROSPERO.ISI.EDU. However, to use it, you must compile the Prospero command-line client on your own machine. Instructions for using it come with the Prospero distribution.

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Documentation:

All of these papers are available via anonymous FTP from PROSPERO.ISI.EDU. They may additionally be obtained through Prospero itself by preceding the 'Full file name:' given below with '/sites/isi.edu' and looking in the '#/INET/EDU/ISI/GUEST/prototype' virtual system.

Document Title: The Prospero Protocol, version 5 Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/doc/prospero-protocol.PS.Z

Document Title: Prospero User's Manual Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/doc/prospero-user-manual.PS.Z

Document Title: Prospero Library Manual Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/doc/prospero-library-manual.PS.Z

Document Title: Prospero Menu-based Browser API Manual Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/doc/prospero-menu-api.PS.Z Document Title: Description of Prospero Documents and Papers Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/papers/README-prospero-documents

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Bibliography:

A bibliography listing all publicly available Prospero documents and papers is available via anonymous FTP from PROSPERO.ISI.EDU as /pub/prospero/README-prospero-documents The following papers are also available via anonymous FTP from PROSPERO.ISI.EDU:

Prospero:/papers/subjects/operating-systems/prospero/prospero-bii.ps.Z Anonymous FTP: /pub/papers/prospero/prospero-bii.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @INPROCEEDINGS{prosperobii,

AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford and Augart, Steven Seger", TITLE = "Prospero: A Base for Building Information Infrastructure", BOOKTITLE = "Proceedings of INET'93", YEAR = 1993, MONTH = "August"}

For the readers of this report, this is the first paper you probably want to read about Prospero. This paper describes how Prospero can be used to integrate internet information services, including Gopher, WAIS, Archie, and World Wide Web. The paper was presented at INET'93 in August.

Prospero:/papers/subjects/operating-systems/prospero/prospero-oir.ps.Z Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/prospero-oir.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @ARTICLE{oir, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "Prospero: A Tool for Organizing {I}nternet Resources", JOURNAL = "Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy", MONTH = "Spring", YEAR = 1992, VOLUME = 2, NUMBER = 1}

This is the first paper we give to more general computer science audiences to read. It's also a good first paper to look at. It gives a good overview of Prospero and what it does. It also describes a bit about the Virtual System model, of which Prospero is a prototype implementation. Describes what Prospero does, not how it does it.

Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/prospero-gfsvsm.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @INPROCEEDINGS{gfsvsm, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The {P}rospero {F}ile {S}ystem: A Global File System based on the {V}irtual {S}ystem {M}odel", BOOKTITLE = "Proceedings of the Workshop on File Systems", YEAR = 1992, MONTH = "May"}

This is a good third paper to read about Prospero. This one is targeted more toward system implementors. It provides more implementation details than the paper on organizing Internet resources, but less of the vision of how Prospero can be used together with other systems.

Prospero: /papers/subjects/operating-systems/prospero/prospero-smlic.ps.Z Anonymous FTP: /pub/papers/prospero/prospero-smlic.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @INPROCEEDINGS{prosperosmlic, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford and Augart, Steven Seger and Upasani, Shantaprasad", TITLE = "Using Prospero to Support Integrated Location-Independent Computing", BOOKTITLE = "Proceedings of the Usenix Symposium on Mobile and Location-Independent Computing", YEAR = 1993, MONTH = "August"}

This paper describes how the Prospero Directory Service can be used to solve the server selection problem and the user location problem. The paper was presented in August at the Usenix Symposium on Mobile and Location-Independent Computing.

Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/UW-CS-89-01-07.PS.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @TECHREPORT{vsmldos, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The {V}irtual {S}ystem {M}odel for Large Distributed Operating Systems", INSTITUTION = "Department of Computer Science, University of Washington", YEAR = 1989, MONTH = "April", NUMBER = "89-01-07"}

This describes the initial vision for the Virtual System Model, the model on which Prospero is based. Much of the material in this paper appears in greater detail in other papers.

Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/UW-CSE-90-05-01.PS.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @TECHREPORT{vsmtp, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The {V}irtual {S}ystem {M}odel: A Scalable Approach to Organizing Large Systems (A Thesis Proposal)", INSTITUTION = "Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington", YEAR = 1990, MONTH = "May", NUMBER = "90-05-01"}

for a long time this was the best description of Prospero, but all the information in this document appears in more recent papers and the dissertation itself.

Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/prospero-closure.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @ARTICLE{nfclosure, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The Need for Closure in Large Distributed Systems", JOURNAL = "Operating Systems Review", MONTH = "October", YEAR = 1989, VOLUME = 23, NUMBER = 4, PAGES = "28--30"}

This paper describes the reasons that operating systems need to support closure, that is they need to make it clear which name space is to be used when resolving names. While closure is one of the important features of Prospero, the concept should be applied in other operating systems too.

Prospero: /papers/subjects/operating-systems/prospero/prospero-neuman-thesis.ps.Z Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/prospero-neuman-thesis.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @PHDTHESIS{phdneuman, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The {V}irtual {S}ystem {M}odel: A Scalable Approach to Organizing Large Systems", SCHOOL = "University of Washington", MONTH = "June", YEAR = 1992, NOTE = "Department of Computer Science and Engineering Technical Report 92-06-04"}

This is Clifford Neuman's Ph.D. Dissertation. It is currently the definitive work on Prospero and the Virtual System Model. Includes an obsolete version of the Prospero User's Manual and of the Prospero Protocol Specification.

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Other Information:

We provide three documented library interfaces to Prospero in order to make client writing easy.

The PFS and PCOMPAT libraries are documented in the library reference manual. The PFS library allows one to directly make Prospero requests and parse the results and to manipulate Prospero objects as abstractions. The PCOMPAT library is an interface to the PFS library which uses the same interface as the UNIX filesystem; one can link many existing programs with the PCOMPAT library in order to get it to resolve names in the Prospero namespace. It is not as portable as the PFS library and does not provide as much functionality.

The third library interface is the menu-browser API library. It is documented in the menu-based browser API manual and is used by our menu-based browser.

VERONICA

Date template updated or checked: 28 February, 1994 By: Name: Steven Foster Email address: foster@veronica.scs.unr.edu

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NIR Tool Name: veronica

Brief Description of Tool:

veronica: Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives.

veronica is the comprehensive title-index of the world's gopher servers. Because of veronica, the Gopher web is a search-and- retrieval system as well as a browsing system. veronica is popular because the ubiquitous Gopher client can both access the search server, and provide immediate access to the discovered resources. Taking advantage of Gopher's linked menus, and of the policy of open access at most gopher sites, veronica finds and indexes almost all items on publicly-accessible gopher servers.

As of February, 1994, veronica holds indexes to more than 3200 gopher servers on approximately 2500 internet hosts. In February 1994 the public-access veronica sites served an estimated 1,200,000 queries. Most queries are resolved in less than twenty seconds. Eight server sites offer searches to the internet community, and several other institutions run servers for internal access.

veronica is easily accessed via any Gopher client. It offers various types of searches, ranging from single-keyword searches to boolean queries of indefinite complexity.

A veronica search originates with a user's request for a search, submitted from a gopher client. The searches may include boolean operators ( AND, OR, NOT, and parentheses ) and several options to control the number of items returned, and to restrict the search to certain gopher types. The result of a veronica search is a set of gopher-type data items, which is returned to the gopher client as a gopher menu. Each item on this menu contains the user's desired keyword or keywords in the item title.

The user can access any of the gopher items by selecting from the returned menu. Items on this menu may be drawn from many gopher servers. Because veronica is accessed through gopher clients, it provides immediate access to all types of data supported by the gopher protocol and the client implementation.

The veronica service comprises two functions:

1) Harvesting menu data from gopher servers, and preparing it for use; 2) Offering searches of that database to gopher clients.

These two functions are not necessarily provided by the same host computer. Currently collection and preparation of data are done at University of Nevada, and datasets are distributed to the other veronica servers.

The veronica service infrastructure has been fairly stable since July, 1993, with eight server sites offering searches for the internet community (March 1994). These servers are supported by the participating institutions: NYSERNET, PSI, SERRA, CNIDR, University of Koeln, SUNET, University of Bergen and the University of Nevada System Computing Services. Several additional servers offer searches with access limited to internal users; in this class are servers at MSU, SUNET, and the Australian University system.

An auxiliary tool to build a locally held menu of Public available has been created. Called "maltshop", it has been distributed since January, 1994. It appears that maltshop is rapidly being accepted, but its long-term effect on loading of the servers may be problematic.

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Primary Contact(s):

Name: veronica development team Email address: veronica@veronica.scs.unr.edu Postal Address: VERONICA development team SCS Computer Center Building mailstop 270 University of Nevada, Reno Reno, NV 89557-0023 Telephone: +1-702-784-4292 or +1-702-784-6557 Fax: +1-702-784-1108

Name: Fred Barrie Email address: barrie@cs.unr.edu Postal Address: SCS Computer Center Building mailstop 270 University of Nevada, Reno Reno, NV 89557-0023

Telephone: +1-702-784-4292 or +1-702-784-6557 Fax: +1-702-784-1108

Name: Steven Foster Email address: foster@nevada.edu Postal Address: SCS Computer Center Building mailstop 270 University of Nevada, Reno Reno, NV 89557-0023 Telephone: +1-702-784-4292 or +1-702-784-6557 Fax: +1-702-784-1108

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Help Line:

Name: veronica development team

Email address: veronica@veronica.scs.unr.edu

Telephone: no telephone support available

Level of support offered: all users

Hours available: irregular response latencies to email queries, based on schedule of developers.

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Related Working Groups: GOPHER, FACETS

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Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:

University and Community College System of Nevada Computer Services, and University of Nevada, Reno. Additional support has been provided by CNIDR, Pandora Systems, Inc., and Pacific Bell Co. Server hosts have been provided by the sites listed above in the Description section.

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Mailing Lists:

Address: gopher-news@boombox.micro.umn.edu Address: veronica-news@veronica.scs.unr.edu

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News groups:

Name: veronica discussion happens on comp.infosystems.gopher

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Protocols:

What is supported: Gopher protocol, Gopher+ protocol

What it runs over: TCP

Other NIR tools this interworks with: Gopher, WAIS, ftp

Future plans: Implement extensions with Gopher+. Support for URN/URL standards. Per-site updates of indexes. Subject-area-specific indexes. Indexes for USENET news and LISTSERV articles. Automated server load-levelling.

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Servers:

Date completed or updated: February 28, 1994 By: Name: Steven Foster Email address: foster@nevada.edu

Platform: UNIX

Primary Contact: Name: veronica development team Email address: veronica@veronica.scs.unr.edu Telephone: +1-702-784-4292 or +1-702-784-6557

Server software available from:

Via ftp: veronica.scs.unr.edu veronica-code/ veronica-data/ veronica-data.tar.Z

Location of more information:: Via Gopher: veronica.scs.unr.edu veronica/

veronica-faq
how-to-compose-veronica-queries

Via Gopher: gopher.cnidr.org
veronica
veronica-faq
how-to-compose-veronica-queries

Via ftp: veronica.scs.unr.edu
veronica-code/
veronica-docs/

Latest version number: 0.6.5
Next planned version: 0.7b (March 1994)

Brief Scope and Characteristics:: Two modules: a data-collection module and a data-server module.

1. Data-collector runs on any Unix computer that does TCP and compiles perl. This has not been distributed yet. Data collection, data preparation, and indexing are being done at veronica.scs.unr.edu. The harvester "walks" all advertised gopher servers, and any newly-discovered servers. Almost all redundant links are removed, leaving the ( hopefully ) canonical reference for each item. Indexes are built at Nevada, and the indexed dataset is distributed to server sites.

2. Server module.
Servers run on unix computers and answer to gopher-type-7 requests. Boolean keyword logic is implemented. See file "how-to-compose-veronica-queries". Several options allow retrieval of items with specified gopher-types, retrieval of a file of links containing the search results, and override for the default limit on number of results returned, which is 200 items.

Server software runs on most flavors of unix, requires dbm and perl, and requires about 1.4 GB of data on disk, with considerable /tmp space available.

Server software is available to any site which wants to run a server. Server sites are encouraged to offer the service to the net at large.

Approximate number of such servers in use: twelve.

Auxiliary tool: Maltshop v. 0.2d
Maltshop builds a menu of Public Gopher Servers for the local gopher menu.

Maltshop software available from:: Via ftp: veronica.scs.unr.edu
veronica-code/
menu-builder-0.2d

Via Gopher: veronica.scs.unr.edu, port 70
11/Search ALL of Gopherspace
12/Script to automate your local
Veronica menu

General comments:: Basic veronica service has been fairly stable since July 1993. Indexing is quite efficient, and most queries are resolved in ten seconds or quicker. More than 1,000,000 queries were resolved in February, 1994.

Though veronica is well-accepted at this level of service, we are undertaking significant upgrade efforts during Winter 93-94.

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Clients:: Date completed or updated: October 19, 1993
By: Name: Steven Foster
Email address: foster@nevada.edu

Platform:: veronica is accessed through any of the gopher clients.

Primary Contact:: As for gopher clients.

Client software available from:: As for gopher clients.

Location of more information:: Via Gopher:
gopher.tc.umn.edu, port 70
1/Information About Gopher

Future plans:: veronica will interoperate with Gopher+ clients, allowing queries to be composed by ASK blocks.

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Demonstration sites:: Site name: UCCSN veronica server
Access details: gopher to veronica.scs.unr.edu, port 70.
Open "veronica" folder; choose one of the search types available.

Site name:: University of Minnesota Gopher server
Access details:: gopher to gopher.tc.umn.edu, port 70.
Other Gopher and Information Servers
Search Gopherspace with veronica.
choose one of the search types available.

Site name:: NYSERNET veronica server
Access details: gopher to nysernet.org, port 70.
Open "Search the Internet" folder;
choose one of veronica searches.

Site name:: SERRA veronica server
Access details:: gopher to gopher.unipi.it, port 70.
Open "University of Pisa - Services" folder;
choose the veronica search.

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Documentation:: Document Title: veronica FAQ: Common Questions and answers about veronica, a title search and retrieval system for use with the internet gopher.

Location details:: Via Gopher:
Site:
veronica.scs.unr.edu, port 70.
veronica
veronica FAQ
Full file name: veronica-faq
Site:: gopher.micro.umn.edu, port 70.
Other Gopher and Information services
Search Gopherspace with veronica
veronica FAQ
Full file name: veronica-faq
Site:: gopher.cnidr.org, port 70.
veronica
veronica FAQ
Full file name: veronica-faq
Via anonymous ftp:: Site:
veronica.scs.unr.edu
veronica-docs/veronica-faq
Document Title:: How to Compose veronica Search Queries.
Location details:: Via Gopher:
Site:: veronica.scs.unr.edu, port 70.
veronica
How to Compose veronica Search Queries.
Full file name: how-to-query-veronica
Site:: gopher.cnidr.org, port 70.
veronica
How to Compose veronica Search Queries.
Full file name: how-to-query-veronica
Via anonymous ftp:
Site:: veronica.scs.unr.edu
veronica-docs/how-to-query-veronica
Document Title:: About veronica.
Location details: Via Gopher:
Site:: veronica.scs.unr.edu, port 70.
veronica
About veronica
Full file name: veronica-about
Site:: gopher.micro.umn.edu, port 70.
Other Gopher and Information services
Search Gopherspace with veronica
About veronica
Full file name: veronica-about
Site:: gopher.cnidr.org, port 70.
veronica
About veronica
Full file name: veronica-about

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Bibliography:: none

WAIS (WAIS, Inc.)

Date template updated or checked: 1 March 1994
By: Name: Nathaniel Lee
Email address: than@wais.com

freeWAIS (CNIDR)

Date template updated or checked: 1 March 1994
By: Name: Jane Smith and Jim Fullton
Email address: Jane.Smith@CNIDR.org and Jim.Fullton@CNIDR.org

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NIR Tool Name: WAIS

Brief Description of Tool:

WAIS - The Wide Area Information Servers system - is an electronic publishing software set which allows you to search out and retrieve multimedia information from databases anywhere in the world. WAIS databases may be accessed by WAIS, gopher, and WWW clients (such as Mosaic), and via online services such as Delphi and America OnLine. WAIS software includes user interfaces for most platforms, and server software that provides automatic indexing of databases.

WAIS was developed by Thinking Machines Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts in collaboration with Apple Computer, Inc., Dow Jones & Company, and KPMG Peat Marwick. With over 100 databases and 5,000 users worldwide, WAIS is rapidly becoming a standard for information distribution within the Internet environment.

WAIS is a client-server application. Most of the clients remain freely available with a few exceptions. WAIS, Inc. develops and sells commercial versions of WAIS and the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR) develops freeWAIS, a version free for distribution and use. A few freely distributable versions remain available from Thinking Machines, Inc. and other organizations.

What does WAIS do?

WAIS allows multimedia information to be stored anywhere on any platform. Using your interface of choice, WAIS enables you to find personal, corporate and public information. The information is accessible regardless of format: text, formatted documents, pictures, spreadsheets, graphics, sound, or video.

WAIS recognizes natural language queries. The search and retrieval of relevant information is made using your native language. To date, we have used English, French, Italian, and Latin! The most relevant documents, regardless of size, can be sent back to the server in their entirety to further refine your search (telling the server, "Find me more like this document.") Proven searches can be automatically repeated, monitoring and alerting you to new information as it becomes available.

How does WAIS work?

WAIS uses a single computer-to-computer protocol (NISO Z39.50- 1988). Each WAIS server reads your question and based on its words, searches the full text of the database for the most relevant documents, and ranks them using automatic word weighting. Servers need not fully understand your query; the retrieval process is based on a search method called relevance feedback.

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Primary Contact(s) (WAIS, Inc.):: Name: Than Lee
Email address:: info@wais.com
Postal Address:: 1040 Noel Drive, Suite 102, Menlo Park CA 94025 (USA)
Telephone:: +1-415-617-0444
Fax:: +1-415-327-6513

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Primary Contact(s) (CNIDR):: Name: George Brett
Email address:: George.Brett@CNIDR.org
Postal Address:: 3021 Cornwallis Rd., Research Triangle Park NC 27709 (USA)
Telephone:: +1-919-248-1499
Fax:: +1-919-248-1101

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Help Line (WAIS, Inc.):
: Name:; Email address: support@wais.com
Telephone:: Level of support offered: commercial customers only
Hours available:: anytime

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Help Line (CNIDR):
Name:: Kevin Gamiel
Email address:: Kevin.Gamiel@CNIDR.org
Telephone:: +1-919-248-1499
Level of support offered:: developers only
Hours available:: 9-5 EST

Network Working Group
Request for Comments: 1689
FYI: 25
Category: Informational
RARE Technical Report: 13
August 1994

A Status Report on Networked Information Retrieval: Tools and Groups

Status of this Memo

Abstract

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. How the information was collected

3. What is covered?

4. Updating Information

5. Overview of the types of NIR Tools

Interactive Information Delivery Services (Gopher, World Wide Web)

Directory Services (WHOIS, X.500)

Indexing Services (archie, Veronica, online library catalogs)

6. NIR Tools

NIR Tool Name: Alex

NIR Tool Name: archie

NIR Tool Name: Internet Gopher

NIR Tool Name: HYTELNET

NIR Tool Name: Netfind

NIR Tool Name: Prospero

NIR Tool Name: veronica

NIR Tool Name: WAIS

Network Working Group Request for Comments: 1689 FYI: 25 Category: Informational RARE Technical Report: 13 August 1994

A Status Report on Networked Information Retrieval: Tools and Groups

Interactive Information Delivery Services (Gopher, World Wide Web)

Directory Services (WHOIS, X.500)

Indexing Services (archie, Veronica, online library catalogs)

Network Working Group
Request for Comments: 1689
FYI: 25
Category: Informational
RARE Technical Report: 13
August 1994