The "Hands-On Internet for Business" Workshop

There are two types of Internet accesses. One type is the shell account access. The other is the PPP/SLIP account access.

Most on-line services, like CompuServe, America On-Line, and Prodigy only offer shell accounts. With a shell account, the host computer is a member of Internet. The client computer, however, is not a member of Internet.

Internet service provider like Smart.Net, Clark.Net, and Charm.Net offers both shell accounts and SLIP/PPP accounts. With SLIP/PPP access, both the host and client computers are members of Internet.

Shell Accounts

With shell account access, client computers can only be used as computer teminals. The software running on client computers only provide the user interface. The actual internet access applications run on the host computer.

Since the client computers are not members of Internet, they cannot use this type of Internet access to establish Wide Area Networks (WANs).

Nor can shell account client computers run Internet host applications like "FINGER" servers, Mail information servers, World Wide Web (WWW) servers, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers, Gopher Servers, or WAIS servers.

Also, the availability of internet client applications are subject to the on-line providers' discretion.

SLIP/PPP Access

Because client computers with SLIP/PPP access are full members of Internet, they are not restricted to using the internet access provider's user interface. They are peers among all other internet members, capable of sharing data and processing resources.

With SLIP/PPP access, client computers can establish Wide Area Networks (WANs).

Client computers, with SLIP/PPP access, can run both host and client Internet applications (FINGER, FTP, WWW, Gopher, WAIS, etc).

With the appropriate software, SLIP/PPP access client computers can run multiple instantiations of internet client applications simultaniously. e.g., run FTP clients simultaneously to download more than one file simultaneously; run WWW browsers simultaneously to access multiple WWW servers simultaneously, etc.

Client computers, with SLIP/PPP access, can create and maintain as many electronic mailboxes as their hardware/software configuration will allow.