Internet Access for Uniplex Sites

Contents
1. Introduction
2. Providing E-Mail connection to the Internet
3. Providing PC users with Internet connection through Unix/Uniplex
4. Non-text documents via the Internet
5. Document Conversion
6. Providing Full Internet Access to Unix users
7. Implementing your company's Web Page

1. Introduction

Traditional Uniplex sites have in the past typically consisted of one or more UNIX servers networked together, with users accessing their applications using dumb terminals. Today nearly all Uniplex sites have a mix of PC's and dumb terminals, with some users using Uniplex applications, and some users using PC applications such as Word for Windows and Excel.

In addition, connection to the Internet for Electronic Mail, World Wide Web access, and Newsgroups is rapidly growing in importance.

The popular view of someone with Internet access is of a user with a PC, a modem connected directly to their PC, and a personal subscription to an Internet service provider such as Pipex, Demon or Compuserve.

In reality, users with dumb terminals can also make use of the Internet features. In addition, access to the Internet for an organization can and should be controlled through a single Internet access point.

The solutions that are right for a particular company will vary depending on the requirements, and their existing set-up

2. Providing E-Mail connection to the Internet

There are two main options available to a Uniplex site wishing to provide Internet E-Mail connection for users within their company.

Stand-alone PC

If your only concern is to provide a mailbox to which people can send your company mail, you may wish to restrict receipt and sending of Mail to a single PC. You simply subscribe to an Internet provider, who provide you with the software to load, and charge you about £10 per month for the connection. This could provide the same sort of role to your company as your fax machine does.

There are several disadvantages to this approach:

1. Internet mail access is limited to your PC users.
2. The mail system is separate from your Internal Uniplex Mail system.
3. It is expensive to add more users.

Each user requires their own modem. If you find that a users with a character terminal requires Internet mail, you will have to provide that person with a PC.

Most companies telephone sockets are non standard to discourage employees from borrowing the companies telephones. This means that for each user to have a modem connection a separate standard telephone socket must be installed to allow the modem to be connected.

UNIX SMTP Internet connection

This option allows all users connection to the Internet via a single connection. For a basic E-Mail connection all that is required is a single modem, and a single subscription to an Internet provider.

The Internet Service Provider you choose will have to support SMTP for sending and receipt of mail via a modem connection. Many ISP's do not provide SMTP connection for sending of mail but not for receipt, or charge a much higher price for this type of connection.

The software required for this connection generally comes as standard with the UNIX system, Sendmail, TCP/IP and PPP (TCP/IP over a serial/modem connection). Once this software is configured on your system, your Uniplex users will be able to send and receive plain text messages via the Internet.

For your PC users, you can choose from one of 3 options.

1. Uniplex Mail via a terminal Emulator.
2. A PC client for UNIX mail (POP3).
3. A PC client for Uniplex Mail.

The disadvantages of this solution are:

1. It requires more set-up than a stand-alone PC. Companies usually elect to employ a consultant to set-up their system for them.
2. SMTP mail transmits plain text only, so you will need to make provision for transmission of non-text files such as spreadsheets and PC Word processing files. This is discussed later in this document.

The advantages are:

1. Sending and receiving of Internet mail is available to as many of your employees as you wish, at no extra cost per user.
2. The Internet mail is fully integrated into your internal mail system. You may include Internet recipients in your distribution lists.
3. Automatic receipt of mail. With a stand-alone PC, users have to dial in manually in order to pick up their mail. With this solution, users will get notification of received mail during the normal computer usage throughout the day.
4. Centralised control. Mail can be configured to re-route incoming mail to an individual or a distribution list and monitoring of mail usage, and messages can be implemented.

3. Providing PC users with Internet connection through UNIX/Uniplex

If you elect to provide your Internet connection via your UNIX computer rather than via stand-alone PC's, you will need to decide how you are going to provide your PC users with access.

Terminal Emulation

Since Uniplex Mail users will have access to the Internet, a simple solution is to use allow your PC users access to Uniplex mail using a terminal emulator. If your PC users are using Uniplex on a regular basis, this is an acceptable solution, because they will receive notification of new mail via the normal Uniplex notification system.

The advantage of this option is the low cost. Usually your PC users will have access to a terminal emulator for accessing other UNIX based applications, so this option will not cost anything.

The disadvantages of this system are:
1. Notifications for non Uniplex users. Usually, your PC users are infrequent users of Uniplex. These users would have to connect a terminal session regularly to check their mail, or leave a session open all the time.
2. Character based user interface. PC users tend to be unhappy with applications that are not as user friendly as their Windows applications.
3. Inability to transfer PC documents and files. Because the UNIX application via the terminal emulator has no access to the files on your PC, you cannot attach PC files to your mail messages.

PC client for UNIX Mail

PC clients are available for UNIX mail. These use the Post Office Protocol (POP) to transfer mail from a users UNIX mailbox onto their PC, and either POP or SMTP to send mail via UNIX mail to other users within the company, and to the Internet.

Uniplex reads from the UNIX mailboxes, and sends mail to the Internet just like these clients, so from the Uniplex users point of view, these users can be considered to be Internet mail users. In the same way that Uniplex will automatically be able to send and receive mail via the Internet, they will also be able to send and receive mail from these users.

The advantage of this option over terminal emulation are:
1. These applications will be true Windows applications which your PC users will prefer.
2. Off-line working. Because the mail is transferred from the UNIX mailbox onto the PC, this solution is ideal for users wishing to work via a modem The connection is only made for the time it takes to make the transfer.
3. Transmission of PC files. As a PC application, the user can transmit PC files as attachments. These documents can be non-text files, because the Mail client will automatically encode these files into a form that can be transmitted via the Internet (MIME encoded).

The disadvantage of this option is that the user must always work on the same PC because the mail is transferred from the UNIX mailbox to the PC.

PC Client for Uniplex Mail

Uniplex is one of the most widely used UNIX based mail systems. It has proved itself reliable, and has many extra features not available to standard UNIX mail.

Office 2000 Mail from Centreline 2000 is a PC mail client for Uniplex. This is not to be confused with Mail Link, which is a similar product available from Uniplex. Naturally, we consider our product to be better functionally, have a superior user interface, and to have much better performance.

The advantages of Office 2000 Mail client over a POP3 client are:
1. The users interface is a true Windows interface, but has been designed in such as way as to be familiar to Uniplex Mail users.
2. Compatibility with Uniplex users. All of the features that are available to Uniplex users such as mail notification, centralised distribution lists and verification of receipt of mail are available to the user.
3. The product is highly integrated with document conversion programs to allow easy transfer of documents between PC users, Uniplex users and the Internet.
4. Non-text mail for all Uniplex users. Unlike the POP clients, which implement the MIME encoding on the PC, Office 2000 Mail implements this as an extension to Uniplex. Once installed, all Uniplex users including those on character based terminals can send and receive no-text documents via the Internet.
5. Central Mailstore. Office 2000 Mail uses the Uniplex mailstore, so the mail is not permanently transferred onto the PC (Copies can be made to your PC if required). This means that users are not tied to a single PC, and can use character terminals to look at their mail if required.

The disadvantage of this option is that for users working remotely, of mail to the PC is preferable to having to maintain a modem connection for the entire mail session..

4. Non-text documents via the Internet

Standard Internet mail only allows plain text to be transmitted. Mailing a Spreadsheet, or graphics image would result in a corrupt data file arriving at the recipients end.

Internet mail also does not support attachment of multiple documents to a mail message.

Typically, users have used a package called uuencode to translate non text files into plain text, and then the recipient decodes the document at the other end using the same package.

MIME is a new standard for encoding files for mail transmission. It translates non-text files into plain text, allows multiple attachments, and allows the sender to identify the type of file being sent so that the recipients mail reader has the option of displaying the file in a meaningful way.

Most current mail systems, and all new mail programs will be supporting MIME for transmission across the Internet, so any site expecting to receive mail from the Internet should install MIME software.

Office 2000 Mime is an add in option for Uniplex Mail that converts Uniplex Mail into MIME format for transmission via the Internet, and converts incoming MIME encoded mail into a Uniplex Mail message with attachments.

It also has the ability to convert outgoing documents to a format required by the recipient, and to automatically convert incoming documents to Uniplex so that it can be viewed on a character terminal.

5. Document Conversion

With Internet access, the need to be able to convert documents from one format to another becomes more pressing.

Office 2000 from Centreline 2000 can offer document converters to suit your requirements. The Office 2000 Mail PC client for Uniplex, and the Office 2000 Mime product tightly integrates with these converters.

6. Providing Full Internet Access to Unix users

Providing E-Mail access to the Internet is a fairly straightforward affair. You are essentially connecting a single computer to your Internet provider. Distribution of Mail once it is received from the Internet is done by your system forwarding mail to the appropriate users either on the same computer or onto any UNIX computer on your network. Your PC's, pick up their mail from the UNIX box, and have no direct connection to the Internet.

For E-Mail, a modem connection is suitable, because although transfer is slow, all of this takes place in the background without interaction from users.

For full Internet access to the Internet such as World Wide Web and FTP file transfer, the situation is very different. For these facilities, there is a direct connection between the computer that the user is using, and the Internet. This is true if the user is using a PC, or a dumb terminal connected to a UNIX server.

Because of this, you will need to subscribe arrange for a Network connection to your Internet provider which is more expensive that the basic Host connection. The cost will vary from provider to provider, but will be approximately 10 times the cost of a basic connection.

Because these applications are real time, you will also need to connect to your Internet provider via a high speed link such as a leased line, or ISDN. The appropriate type of high speed link will depend on the number of concurrent users, and the type of services that they will be using.

Security is another consideration. Making direct connections from your network advertises your site to the world, making it a possible target for unauthorised access. To make your network secure you will require some type of firewall.

Basic firewall protection can be provided by a masking router, which only lets the types of traffic that you specify transfer between your network and the Internet. Proxy servers can be used to completely separate your network from the Internet, and to hide your Internal network. For the most security conscious sites, a full firewall server is required. This is the most expensive option, but provides the highest degree of security while still allowing flexibility. I.e. Allowing access to an internal Web Server from the Internet.

7. Implementing your company's Web Page

You may implement your company's Web Page on one of the Computers on your own network, of you may rent space from your Internet provider.

If you decide to implement a Web site on your own machine, you will need to implement a high speed link rather than a modem connection between your site and your Internet provider.

You will have to purchase a router, Web server software, and consider purchase of a Firewall system for added security.