Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ziploc!eps
From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Beginner's guide to downloading
Summary: FTP is for INTERNET sites (and uunet customers) ONLY
Message-ID: <225@toaster.SFSU.EDU>
Date: 8 Jan 90 02:09:27 GMT
References: <4@amsdev.UUCP> <12771@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Distribution: na
Organization: San Francisco State University
Lines: 32

In article <12771@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
	subbarao@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kartik Subbarao) writes:
>  Anonymous ftp is neat and simple. ...
>  do the following:
>
>  ftp ...

This only works if you are on the Internet; the original poster
is not.  For those people there may be alternatives.

Some sites offer anonymous uucp service (you just pay for the
phone call, not too bad if you have Telebit PEP modems).  There
are also "archive servers" that handle e-mailed requests.  You
can find out more about these in the newsgroup comp.archives.

If you see a reference to something you want, mail the author or
post a request along the lines of "I would like to get a copy of
this but I do not have FTP access.  Is it available from an
archive server, or is there someone who can mail me a copy?"
(If several people say they can, ask ONE to do it...  you don't
want many, many copies of large items; if you see a posted
request, don't mail it unless it's small, just offer to).

Some things are so large that it's not worthwhile to transfer via
modem... using an Exabyte tape drive I can put 2.2 Gigabytes on
an 8mm video cartridge that fits in the palm of my hand.  If I
drop it in the mail the whole shebang is about US$10.  Of course
the tape is reusable, so most of this is one-time cost.  For
about $7 more it it will be in your hands tomorrow (instead of
1-3 days).

					-=EPS=-