| Getting Connected
Setting up your PC or Mac to make a PPP or SLIP connection to the Internet can be
tricky. Fortunately, our Internet Control Center software by Usefulware is specially designed to take the hassle
out of software setup for Datasync subscribers! We provide this software for Windows, Windows
95, or Macintosh free of charge to new subscribers. It includes a fully-licensed
TCP/IP stack, Web browser, mail, news, telnet, ftp, and IRC chat software and several
other useful programs. The Datasync Internet Control
Center User's Manual is available online here.
If you already have Internet software other than ICC, here we present step-by-step
configuration help for several popular Internet connectivity packages.
Windows 95 users: The base Windows 95 system contains everything you need to
establish a PPP or SLIP connection to the Internet; specifically, the Dial-Up Networking
and TCP/IP packages. Setting up your Dial-Up Networking connection is much easier
if you have the Microsoft Internet Jumpstart Kit from the Windows 95 Companion CD-ROM (the
"Plus Pack"). This optional package includes the Microsoft Internet Explorer as
well as an Internet Setup Wizard.
Most computers that are shipped with Windows 95 pre-installed do include the Internet
Jumpstart Kit. If you have an icon labeled "The Internet" or find the Internet
Tools group under Start..Programs..Accessories, you're in luck. If not, you can download it from Microsoft.
New computers as of early 1997 are being shipped with Windows 95 Release 2, which
fortunately has much improved Dial-Up Networking software as well as a slightly different
Internet Connection Wizard. Its icon reads "Get On The Internet" instead of
"Internet Setup Wizard".
Two additional sources of great help in setting up Windows 95's Internet capabilities
are Bob Cerelli's Windows 95 Page and Windows95.Com.
Windows NT users: Windows NT includes the Remote Access Service (RAS) for
connecting to a remove computer via a modem.
Windows 3.1 and 3.11 users: If you want to go the shareware route, Trumpet Winsock is a good choice.
You can get applications for Winsock from our Tucows mirror.
Netscape Personal Edition is a commercial bundling of the wildly popular Netscape
Navigator with a Winsock package and dialer. It is widely available at retail software
outlets.
Chameleon Sampler is a sampler version of the Chameleon
Internet suite which is distributed in a number of Internet reference books.
Macintosh users: TCP/IP support is built into the Macintosh operating system as
of System 7.5. If you have an earlier release of the operating system, you can obtain
MacTCP from a software vendor. MacTCP is also included on diskette with some of the
Internet books written for Macintosh.
Next, you'll need a dialup PPP package. MacPPP version
2.0.1 is a good choice, and it's free.
Linux users: For starters, you must have PPP support configured into your
kernel. Most stock kernels have this. If you are building your own kernel, be sure to
answer yes to CONFIG_PPP when running 'make config'.
Next, you must have the pppd package installed. Again, most if not every Linux
distribution will contain pppd and recommend that it be installed.
Newer distributions of Linux include convenient front ends for configuring PPP connections.
Red-Hat includes the Linuxconf utility for configuring PPP. If you are using a Red-Hat
distribution of Linux, you can read our Linux PPP page for more
information on getting connected to Datasync. You can also get a copy of Linuxconf if you are using
a distribution that does not include it from the Linuxconf
homepage.
Older distributions will need to use the chat utility, part of the pppd package, which is
used for conversing with the modem.
Here are some sample scripts for using pppd and chat to bring a PPP
connection up and down. Be sure to read the comments in ppp-connect, as it
requires some customization.
- ppp-connect: Shell script
for establishing a PPP connection
- ppp-kill: Shell script for
bringing down a PPP connection
You will also need to edit your /etc/resolv.conf file so that name lookups
will work. The following should suffice:
domain datasync.com
nameserver 205.216.82.1
nameserver 205.216.82.2
Also be sure your host.conf file specifies 'bind' somewhere in it. For
example:
order hosts, bind
multi on
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