Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!uunet!bionet!lhc!usenet
From: usenet@nlm.nih.gov (usenet news poster)
Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank
Subject: Re: ANONYMOUS FTP FROM BITNET
Keywords: Internet
Message-ID: <1990Sep30.043924.19653@nlm.nih.gov>
Date: 30 Sep 90 04:39:24 GMT
References: <9009290610.AA23614@genbank.bio.net>
Reply-To: states@ray.NLM.NIH.GOV (David States)
Organization: National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md.
Lines: 46

In article <9009290610.AA23614@genbank.bio.net> BCHTANTW%NUSVM@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU (Tan Tin Wee) writes:
>
>Recently somebody asked for help on getting random sequences from
>GENBANK.  One of the options suggested was anonymous FTP with the
>caveat that the netter must be on INTERNET.
>Even if he is not, it is still possible to do anonymous FTP via
>BITNET. ...
>Tin Wee TAN

Even if it is possible to hack a path from E-mail into FTP, in
the long run your best solution is to get on INTERNET.  There 
is already a dramatic difference in transfer speed between
INTERNET and BITNET, and this is only going to get worse.
BITNET cannot handle files larger than 25kbytes without segmenting
them into chunks, but 25k is pretty small (even a 2 page paper
with some graphics will exceed this).  The network protocol used
on INTERNET, TCP/IP is more reliable than modems, and once your
site is on line, much less hassle.  Perhaps most important,
FTP is only one of many services available via INTERNET.  Until
you have a network route which supports TCP/IP, you will not be
able to use remote shell, remote procedure call, socket communication,
and other services available through INTERNET.

The importance of these other services is that they give you much
greater flexibiity to optimize your communications and computation.  
For example, rather than attempt to maintain the current, most
up to date version of a database on your local machine, you could
use a relatively simple local program to send your search queries
via the net to an up to date server, perhaps in another city.
You save the expense and aggravation of attempting to maintain
an up to date local database copy, and the net saves the traffic
of sending the whole database.  With TCP/IP, the turn around is
still interactive rather than hours or days as in FASTA-mail.

The arguement that "Internet is not free, we pay for it one way
or another through taxes" is true on some level, but, in my view,
misleading.  The communication of scientific data between academic
research groups is precisely what INTERNET was created to do.
It is one of the support mechanisms the the US government provides
to encourage research and development.  Saying "Don't use INTERNET
because we will all pay for it in our taxes" is like saying "Don't
write grant applications because ..."

David States				states@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
National Center for Biotechnology Information
National Library of Medicine