This section contains descriptions of how Internet tools might be used by a student  in their role as chess club president. You may scroll down through the various sections or click on the headings to move from section to section. 

 Introduction

TCP/IP

Telnet

File Transfer (FTP)

Email

Mailing Lists

Gopher

Newsgroups

Summary

Play Chess

Until recently a person had to be computer literate, have a basic knowledge of UNIX, and a working knowledge of about six different pieces of software in order to gather information from the net.

The Internet grew and, as more people needed access to the information, so did the need for better distribution of information, as well as ease of locating and retrieving files and resources.

This prompted the development of more user-friendly software tools such as gopher and the World Wide Web. With the advent of web browsers, such as Netscape, the user no longer has to be a 'computer geek' in order to retrieve  information from the net.

Though knowledge of individual software packages and commands are not necessary if you have a fast connection and a good web browser, it is still useful to have an understanding of the function of other tools.

To that end I offer a brief, semi-chronological look at some of the software tools in existence today and the way that they would be used by someone who doesn't have access to the graphical interface of the World Wide Web. 

All computers do not speak the same language, but if they are going to be  networked they must share a common means of information transfer. That is where Transmission Control Protocol/Internetworking Protocol comes in. TCP/IP is an agreed upon standard for computer communication over Internet.

As a local area network user there is nothing that you need be concerned about. All TCP/IP settings should have been taken care of by your system administrator. If you are using a PC and modem from home or the office, you may have to make  some settings and launch TCP/IP in order to make your Internet connection.

But since we are on a LAN we won't go any further with TCP/IP. Besides, you have probably already read more than you want to know about TCP/IP. Instead,  we will take a look as some of the other software packages as they might be used by Martina, a fictional student at Southern Regional H.S. and president of the chess club. 

As previously mentioned, a physicist on the east coast who has an account on a  west coast computer could run high level physics simulation software via telnet. The fact is that telnet need not be that fancy and an account on the computer isn't  always necessary. Many universities allow public telnet access. All you need to know is the public logon and a few telnet commands.

Using telnet, Martina could play chess against some of the top computers in the  country. Listed here are some of the sites that allow public access to chess computers. In some cases you can play live against other people.

NOTE: PLEASE DO NOT ACCESS THESE SITES UNLESS YOU ARE  FAMILIAR WITH TELNET. We have not yet covered telnet use, and improper use can tie up resources at both the host and remote system.

All systems use port 5000 and logon with your name

anemone.daimi.aau.dk
ics.onenet.net
iris4.metiu.ucsb.edu
lux.latrobe.edu.au

Martina just got a new computer and would like a computer program to put on it. She knows there is plenty of free software available on the net. After checking with  a few friends she finds the address of an FTP site that has some chess programs. Using her FTP software she easily retrieves a few different games that she can run on her new system.

NOTE: If you are not yet familiar with FTP, be careful using Netscape or other browsers. If you click on one of the games you will begin a download of that game. This will take up space in your file area and may cause you to exceed your disk  quota. FTP also puts a strain on the resources of both systems. You should never ftp unnecessarily.

 Mailing Lists

Martina subscribes to a mailing list that sends her daily messages from other people who subscribe to the same list. Mailing lists are a way to contact people with  interests similar to yours. Any message sent to the list is automatically copied by a computer and sent to every person who subscribes to the list.

You must be careful when subscribing to mailing lists. If you don't know what you  are doing you can easily clog your mailbox with dozens or even hundreds of messages a day.

If you are familiar with how to subscribe to lists and you have an interest in chess  you can subscribe to chess-l@grearn.csi.forth.gr by sending the appropriate subscription message to listserv@grearn.csi.forth.gr. (Don't add that last period. It was the end of the sentence.) 

If Martina wasn't an Internet expert she could have used gopher to locate and  download the chess game from the FTP site. Gopher was a software tool invented by the University of Minnesota to simplify FTP.

Today Martina has another use for gopher. She wants to find some chess news.  After doing a Veronica search she locates a site that has the information she is looking for. You can take a look as what she found by travelling to this site.

Newsgroups are another way of getting in touch with other people. The main  difference is that there is no chance that your mailbox will get flooded. If you have the choice of subscribing to a mailing list or reading a newsgroup, you will often find the newsgroup a better choice.

If you have access to newsgroups here are a few Usenet chess related groups for you to check out.

rec.games.chess.analysis
rec.games.chess.computer
rec.games.chess.misc
rec.games.chess.play-by-email
rec.games.chess.politics

Recent developments have made it possible for you to read newsgroups even if your server doesn't provide them to you. They are now available at a few WWW sites that provide newsgroups to the public. Probably the best is DejaNews.

The bad news is that this is just a small piece of the Internet puzzle. There are many other software packages and techniques that Martina  had to master in order to become an efficient Internet researcher.

The good news it that Netscape and WWW make it possible for you to do everything that Martina did, in a much more efficient manner. In fact, by clicking on some of the links above you have already done some of the same things she did  using dedicated software packages.

Now that we are through with this lesson I'll provide you with another WWW  chess link, if you promise not to use them unwisely and hog network resources during inappropriate times. Here's a  link that will allow you to play chess against a computer.

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