Now you've got a telnet program running, the next job is what to do with it. First, establish a connection to Supernet using your usual dialer program, this may be in your Internet group if you are using Windows 3.1, or in My Computer for Windows 95 users, or simply by connecting to the internet as normal using your browser. Once this connection has been established, choose the "connect" option in your telnet program and type in 'hades.itl.net' and hit return. If you are using the default program from within Windows 95, it should automatically invoke your dial-up connection for you in the usual way without having to start the dialer first. If all goes well you should be presented with a login prompt asking for your user name. This is your Supernet user name, and is usually the same as your e-mail name, ie where 'yourname@itl.net' is your e-mail address, your login would be 'yourname', without the quotes. Next you'll be asked for your password, again this is your Supernet password and if nowhere else will be in the documentation Supernet sent you when you signed up. Both the username and password will be case-sensitive, also you won't see what you are typing when you enter your password, so pay attention!
Assuming all goes according to plan, you will now be presented with a menu of options. The one of most interest to the average home user will be the ftp option. This allows you to connect to and download from many sites around the world, but you do it at full internet speed, the file ends up in your home directory on the Supernet server, usually in a matter of seconds. You can then use your browser, if you don't have an ftp program, to retrieve the program onto your own machine. The advantage of this is that your modem link should then be running at full speed, as you are only connecting to the local server, no more waiting for internet bottlenecks to clear.
So, to the nitty-gritty. You've taken option 4 and you're presented with a prompt. As with most unix utilities, typing just a question mark ? will bring up a basic help screen, then typing any of the commands listed followed by another question mark will bring up help for that particular command. For the purposes of this exercise we'll assume you're connecting to Compaq because you need the latest screen drivers or whatever for your machine and the internet is running like a dog again and you've already given up trying to download the file in the normal manner through your browser. So, type 'connect ftp.compaq.com' and after a short pause, 'cos the 'net's running slow, you'll be presented with a login. Your username here, as with most public access sites, is 'anonymous', your password is your e-mail address, as in 'yourname@itl.net'. I'm assuming here that you know the name of the file you're after, you'll have been watching it trying to download for the past however long so you'll have had plenty of time to make a note of it. On most public access sites there'll be a subdirectory called 'pub', and therein a list of subdirectories, hopefully with meaningful names. There maybe a readme.txt and/or an index.txt around with a directory listing in it, so this might be worthwhile getting and having a quick read. One point to note here, there are two modes of file transfer, 'ascii' for text and 'binary' for everything else. The default mode is ascii, so this would be a good time to type in 'binary' to set yourself up for the file transfer ahead. So, 'cd pub' then 'cd whichever' directory then 'get filename.zip' and lo and behold, after an impressively short time, you'll get a message that the file transfer has completed, usually with a transfer rate like you'll never see on your browser screen while you're using a dial-up connection. You can of course, use your browser to do all the donkey work for you in finding the file. Typing 'ftp.compaq.com' in as a url will connect you to the server in ftp mode and allow you to browse the directories in a rather more friendly manner than the telnet connection will, then just make a note of the complete path to the file you are interested in and use telnet to get it.
Now you've got that file you were after on the disc on Hades, the next thing is to get it onto your own machine. If you already use an ftp program for updating your website or whatever, no problem, simply point it at hades.itl.net and grab the file, it will be in your root directory, that's the one below hyplan. Once you've got it on your disc, don't forget to delete the copy on Hades, there's a maximum of 12Mb available there for you, 5Mb of which is permanent, the rest is temporary, presumably exactly for the purpose we are using it. If you haven't got an ftp program, or for reasons I'll go into later you can't use one, you'll have to use your browser to retrieve the file. This involves one more step, as the browser can't "see" the root of your directory on hades, only the one called hyplan, which is where your homepage is if you've got one, ie user.itl.net/~yourname/. So you need to use the ftp option in your telnet program again to connect to hades.itl.net, yes I know it sounds like your duplicating things here, but that's how it works, login again, then use the put command to copy the file from your root to your hyplan directory, as in 'put filename.zip hyplan/filename.zip'. If the file is particularly big, that is over 6Mb, the 12Mb limit may impose itself and you won't be able to make a second copy, so you'll have to use an ftp program to retrieve it. Now if you type into your browser the url 'user.itl.net/~yourname/filename.zip' your browser will download the file from Supernet onto your drive in the normal fashion, but hopefully you won't be suffering the long pauses that often occur when trying to retrieve a file across the internet in the normal manner. Again, once you're finished, don't forget to delete the file on hades. If you're using the ftp option in your telnet program to do this you'll have to 'delete filename.zip' in your root, and also 'cd hyplan' and then 'delete filename.zip' again to get rid of the duplicate copy you made for your browser to grab. It's considered polite to terminate a telnet session or ftp transfer in the correct manner, so typing 'quit' at the end of your file transfer will log you out of the server, then 'quit' again to get you back to the Supernet menu. Option 0 will log you out from here. This procedure is to be preferred to just closing the telnet program with the click of a mouse button.
Under what scenario, you might be asking, could you not use an ftp program, or an e-mail program for that matter. Well, if at work you have access to the internet via a proxy server on your in-house network, most e-mail and ftp programs will have great difficulty negotiating this firewall, which is in place just for this reason, to prevent unauthorised access to your network from outside. However, you may be able to access the proxy server using telnet, then connect through to hades. You may need to confirm this with your network administrator, or possibly get the facility enabled if it does not already exist. Once logged onto hades using your own username and password, the option 1 on the menu, "Pine", will enable you to deal with your e-mail or check the newsgroups during your lunch hour. This is quite a powerful program with comprehensive help and can be configured to suit your own preferences to a degree.
Authored early '98 by Chris Eve (
kypfer@itl.net)