Finctionality of Internet

Internet Resources

Internet Explorer enables you to access most Internet resources, including those available through FTP, Gopher and telnet. In addition, Internet Explorer comes with a newsreader and an e-mail interface so users can access Usenet newsgroups and send and read e-mail from within Internet Explorer. In order for telnet, newsreader and e-mail capabilities to work properly, certain configurations must be completed - such as indicating to Internet Explorer the name of the telnet client to invoke, or the name of the mail server being used.

Find people on the Internet

Locating a specific person on the Internet can be a challenging task. There is no single repository of information about Internet users. There is no single organization that is responsible for collecting and maintaining information about Internet users.

There are numerous tools that have been developed to find people on the Internet. However, it is likely that you will need to use a combination of these tools to be successful in your search.

Finding people on the Internet is a challenging task, because there is no single, centralized directory of Internet users.

Why?

• No one organization is in charge of collecting Internet user information.

It would be impossible for a single organization to manage, maintain and update information on every single Internet user.

However, there are a number of tools which can be used to find people on the Internet.

CWIS - Campus Wide Information Systems

Many universities make a wealth of information available through CWIS - for example, listings of campus events, class schedules and job opportunities. A CWIS also usually includes a directory of faculty and students.

To access this service, a user needs to be able to access the CWIS at the university where a student or faculty member can be reached. Here is a screen showing a link to the Campus Wide Information System at the University of Kansas:

CCSO/CSO

CCSO (often shortened to CSO) is another search tool found at many universities and large organizations. CCSO stands for Computing and Communications Services Office at the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign, which is where the directory and search tool was developed.

CSO allows the user to search for a person's name, e-mail address, department, etc. The CSO directory will return any information available for the person or department, and often includes phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Finger

Finger is a program that displays information about users on a particular system.

Finger can be used two ways:

• Use the finger command to ask for information about a particular user. To do this, you need to provide the name of the machine that the person uses.

To find out who else is currently logged on to the same machine that you are logged on to.

In order for this to work, finger must be running on the remote machine (i.e., the machine used by the person you're interested in locating).

WHOIS

WHOIS is a searchable database of information about networks, networking organizations, domains, sites, and the contacts associated with them. WHOIS provides a way to find out e-mail addresses, postal addresses, and telephone numbers for those contacts.

The main WHOIS database is maintained by the InterNIC's Registration Services. An organization that registers a domain name is automatically added to the WHOIS database.

WHOIS is available through telnet, the World Wide Web, e-mail, or a local WHOIS client.

Netfind

Netfind is a simple Internet "white pages" directory that can be searched using keywords. Given the name of a user and a rough description of where the user works, Netfind attempts to locate information about that Internet user.

It is helpful to know the domain name of the computer used by the person that you are trying to locate. This is generally typed in as one of the key words. Netfind will present you with a list of possible domains based on the key words (perhaps all the domains at a particular university).

Once the domain has been narrowed down, Netfind uses finger to track down the person's name.

X.500

X.500 is an international standard that defines a type of directory service which can provide information about people, such as e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Many organizations throughout the world have made information available in X.500.

X.500 has two major components:

• DUA (Directory User Agent) - a client program, or interface, that enables the user to query the available information. DUAs differ, depending on the type of X.500 access.

DSAs (Directory System Agents) - which contain the information. X.500 consists of many DSAs, each of which holds part of the total information available. If necessary, several DSAs will be searched to answer a user's query, but this is invisible to the user.

X.500 can be accessed through the WWW, gopher, e-mail and telnet.

USENET archives

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) maintains an archive that contains the e-mail addresses of most of the people who have posted articles to USENET newsgroups. USENET is the network which carries newsgroup articles.

If you believe that someone has posted an article to a USENET newsgroup, you can probably get their e-mail address by requesting it from the MIT archive via electronic mail.

Search Engines

Another way to locate people is to make use of one of the search engines or indexes available via the World Wide Web. By searching for a user's name, it may be possible to find their e-mail address, postal address, telephone number, or even their personal webpage.

The results will vary from one search engine or index to the next. Here is an example of a screen from the search tool called Internet Address Finder: