NetXpress BBS Client Help

Menu Command Help

Ph
C [ site [ port ] ]

Finger
FI [ user@site [ port ] ]

FTP
F [ site [ user [ password [ port ] ] ] ]

Gopher
G [ site [ port ] ]

IRC
I [ user [ password [ site [ port ] ] ] ]

Mail
M [ user ]

PING
P [ site [ number ] ]

RawTCP
R [ [ user [ password ] ] site [ port ] ]

Rexec
Re [ [ user [ site [ port [ command ] ] ]

Rlogin
Rl [ [ user [ password ] ] site [ port ] ]

Talk
Ta [ user@site ]

Telnet
T [ [ user [ password ] ] site [ port ] ]

WhoIs
WH [ name ]

WWW
W [ url ]

Definitions

site
A domain or IP address

port
A port that the server application is listening on

name
The person's name (Last name first)

user
A login userid

password
The password for the 'user' login

url
A Universal Resource Locator

number
Number of pings to send

Editor Commands

The text editor allows for the following keystrokes:
Esc
Quits and cancel your input
Tab / Ctrl-Z / Ctrl-Q / F10 / Esc[V / EscOY
Quits and saves your input
Ins / Ctrl-V / Esc[2~ / Esc[4l / Esc[4h / Esc[L
Toggles the insert mode on/off
Right Arrow / Ctrl-D / Esc[C / EscOC
Moves the cursor to the right
Left Arrow / Ctrl-S / Esc[D / EscOD
Moves the cursor to the left
Down Arrow / Ctrl-X / Esc[B / EscOA
Moves the cursor to the next line
Up Arrow / Ctrl-E / Esc[A / EscOB
Moves the cursor to the previous line
Home / Esc[1~ / Esc[H
Moves the cursor to the begining of the line
End / Esc[4~ / Esc[K / Esc[F
Moves the cursor the the last character of the line
Ctrl-Left / Ctrl-A / EscOt
Moves the cursor to the previous word
Ctrl-Right / Ctrl-F / EscOv
Moves the cursor to the next word
Enter
Adds a carriage return to the text
PgDn / Esc[G
Moves the cursor down the height of the input area
PgUp / Esc[I
Moves the cursor up the height of the input area
Ctrl-Y
Deletes the current line
<- (Backspace)
Erases the previous character
Del / Esc[1P / Esc[3~ / EscOo
Erases the current character

Universal Resource Locators

URLs are a naming system that is used on the world wide web. Its format is detailed in RFC1738.

They basically comprise of a access method, an address, and a path.
Example:
http://www.merlinsys.com/info.htm

If the previous example, the access method was http:, the address was www.merlinsys.com and the path was info.htm.

Ports

A TCP/IP port can be thought of as a channel on a television. To tune in to a specific program you must change to that channel. With a TCP/Ip port, a server will listen on a specific port for a request from a client application. The port depends on the protocol being used. Each standard protocol has its own unique port number.

For example:

IP Address

IP Addresses are comprises of four numbers in the range of 0 to 255 separated by periods. A domain name will always be resolved to find out what IP address it realy is so that a connection may be started.

World-Wide-Web (WWW)

The World-Wide-Web protocols allows for the exchange of information in a extremely flexible and unstructured manner. The WWW server is just a file request server, the WWW client has most of the intelligence and makes decisions about how to obtain certain information.

The important difference between the older Gopher protocol and the Web protocols are that the Web display formats are unstructured and can look like anything, while Gopher has a rigid menu structure. Also Web browsers possess knowledge of many more methods of accessing data than gopher clients do. The number of access methods available to Web browsers is bound to increase in the future.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) allows users to peruse the file system of another system on the Internet. One important fact concerning FTP, is that it tries to look like a file system and thus contains no file descriptions, although there are methods of displaying descriptive text to the user.

Telnet

Telnet allows people on the Internet to remotely login to another computers on the Internet. It is like using a terminal program with a modem over phone lines. Except that all communication is handled through the TCP/IP protocol over the Internet.

Gopher

The Internet Gopher protocol offers users the ability to browse through the Internet in a structured menued environment looking at user-friendly menu descriptions instead of service names, hosts and ports. The beauty of Gopher is that a menu entry may point anywhere on the Internet, and thus hoping from one Gopher to another is virtually seamless to the user. It also allows users to retrieve documents without the need to do it themselves interactively.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

IRC stands for "Internet Relay Chat". It was originally written by Jarkko Oikarinen (jto@tolsun.oulu.fi) in 1988. Since starting in Finland, it has been used in over 60 countries around the world. IRC is a multi-user chat system, where people convene on channels (a virtual place, usually with a topic of conversation) to talk in groups, or privately.

WhoIs

WhoIs is used to look up names of users and corporations in a main database. The default action is to do a very broad search, looking for matches to your target in many fields: handle, name, nicknames, hostname, net address, etc., and finding all record types. WhoIs then shows the results in one of two ways: as a full, detailed display for a single match (with possible subdisplay), or as one- or two-line summaries for multiple matches.

Finger

Finger is a common Unix facility to examine the user login information on a system. Information retrieved can either be a text file or information about that user on that system.

Ping

Ping checks to see if a system is running and how long messages take to reach it and come back to your system.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocl (SMTP)

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and is defined in RFC821 and has been updated in other various RFCs. It is the standard way of transferring private mail between hosts directly connected to the Internet. The SMTP function will actually send the message right away on to the Internet via the SMTP Host defined below. The message will not be stored anywhere on the local system or on your BBS. The SMTP function cannot access incoming messages, you will need to use an Internet gateway for your BBS.

Remote Login (rlogin)

Remote Login is very similar to Telnet, except that it automatically logs in the user.

ph/CSO

CSO is also know as qi and ph. It is a phonebook protocol that allows searches to be made on various fields. Gopher uses CSO internally, thus we have made it available as a separate function. CSO will probably be used the least out of all of the functions.

Remote Execution (Rexec)

Rexec is used to execute programs on another computer. The software must reside on that computer and your login ID must have rights to it.

Raw Telnet

This is just Telnet without any Telnet control codes. This is a straight TCP/IP connection.