Summary - how to make home PC an internet node

[Dave Cottingham]

I recently posted a question on these newsgroups asking for what
people knew about getting the home PC on the internet, and one on
rec.ham-radio.packet asking what the scoop is on using amateur packet
radio for this purpose.  I`d like to thank all the people who took the
trouble to respond.  There were a fair number of me-toos as well, so I
made up a summary of what I understood on the subject from the
responses and elsewhere, but due to the fact that a) some of the
responses had some considerable detailed info that might be of
interest to people and b) my knowledge of networking in its thousand
forms has sizeable holes in it I decided it would be a good idea to
append all the responses.  The resulting file is 100K, so I'm not
posting it.  You can get it by sending a message to
fileserv at max.berkeley.edu with a line in the body (not the subject!)
that says "sendme ip_hookup".  It will arrive in two parts.

Here is the micro-summary:

Q: how do you get an internet address, and how do you
make the physical connection?

A: The affordable option is to work for a university or other
organization that has an internet hookup, or have a buddy at same, and
convince the relevant authorities to attach you to one of their
existing nets.  You use a modem and phone line to connect to one of
their computers, running SLIP protocol.  Said computer acts as router
for you between its LAN and the phone line.  If you're lucky you might
even get the thing to work with dial-up connections instead of a
permanent leased line and save a buck.  As far as the outside world
knows, your home PC is one of their computers.

Q: Suppose I'm willing to settle for news and mail?

A: There are thousands of ways, including uunet, nixpub, fidonet, or
picking someone at random from comp.mail.maps.

Q: How do I get a registered domain name?  And what software should I
use?

A: I didn't ask these question, but I got lots of replies to them
anyhow.  Get the longer summary for the answers.

Dave Cottingham
dc at caveat.berkeley.edu