Subject: DOS AND INTERNET From: jvncnet!community.com!gary.nielson Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 10:34:13 -0400

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Re: questions about DOS based BBS's and the Internet:

        Right now, without some real hacking, you can only offer Internet
e-mail and newsgroups on most DOS packages. And it's a nightmare setting up
Internet on most of these packages. I've tried several -- and for most you need
to use parts of the shareware BBS package WAFFLE to set up Internet. The manual
is terrible and runs for several hundred pages.  I read parts of it 5 or 6
times and still didn't get it.

        For most DOS bbs products, the easiest and cheapest way to do Internet
email is thru a FidoNet gateway, and who wants to do that? It's so slow, takes
several days for mail to arrive.

        The good news is there are some ways to do it easily. I run TBBS on my
home BBS (704-892-6078) and it took me 2 hours to set up its add-on Internet
module, PIMP. (Yes, that's its name, stands for Personal Internet Mail
something or other.) The hassles were with my provider -- it took an awfully
long time to get my domain address working and then to get newsgroups working
from their end. But that would be the case with any package.

        With TBBS, it took me much longer to configure FidoNet than Internet
and it's been working flawlessly. I can set up my own mailing lists, allow
people to FTPMAIL from my BBS, run as many newsgroups as I want, redirect
mailing lists to TBBS message bases.

        And furthermore, the biggest race on this year among DOS BBS developers
is full-blown Internet -- telnet, gopher, ftp, etc. I know that Phil Becker of
TBBS has written "the Becker box" -- software that would run on another machine
and allow you to run full-blown Internet services thru TBBS. Due out in five
months (I know what they say about vaporware, but TBBS has been quite
reliable.)

        I dont know about the other packages -- Major, PCBoard, etc. -- but I
do know that everyone wants to get it so that the hobbyist BBS sysop will be
able to offer complete Internet this year for minimal cost. 

        As Jack Rickard of Boardwatch magazine likes to say, the days of the
$30,000 Unix installation with fulltime administrator for Internet connections
are over! I'll be able to do it from home for a few thousand bucks in no-time.
See you online!



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