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Bunyip corporation currently sells a commercial archie server to network providers. Their price is $6,000 for the server, plus an additional $4,500 per year for maintainance. As a result, there are few archie servers available for public use. In addition, the few sites that are available are overloaded. Finally, some sites refuse to pay the $4,500 maintainance, and as a result, don't have the latest (fastest) version of archie.
Archie is a critical service for the internet. More archie servers are needed (there are currently NONE in the western united states). This will never happen as long as Archie is so expensive.
Researchers continue to develop faster and better searching methods, and use these to index the complicated information infrastructure on the internet. Automated programs are constantly being developed to browse cyberspace, but new tools are not being developed to search anonymous ftp sites.
The reason is simple: it's already been done. It's not that hard. Why reinvent the wheel?
Archie is sufficiently simple that it can be reinvented by a small group of software engineering students in half a year. Once reinvented, with source code freely available, students around the world can continute to optomize and improve the service, making the internet a better place (while gaining experience on "production" programs).
Eventually, a free archie server constantly optomized by students will be superior to anything that can be developed by a small company.
This manual consists of several parts:
@everyheading @thischapter @|@| User Manual @thispage @everyfooting Author: rootd // Editor: hiren // Texinfo: rootd @| @| 3 December 1994
The following chapters are the user manual for the free archie system. We include a short tutorial chapter designed to enable you to submit archie searches via telnet or email almost immediately. For many users, the introductory chapter is all they ever need. If you just want to do simple searches, go straight to chapter 1.
Then we have three chapters which describe the archie enviornment in an authoritative manner. The first describes the different types of searches you can perform. The second describes the commands that are available when using telnet or email to submit archie searches. The third chapter describes all of the enviornment variables which affect the way your commands are executed.
Finally, we have four chapters which describe the different ways to perform archie searches in detail. In addition to using telnet and email, you can also perform searches with a prospero-client, or a "next-generation" client. Unlike searching via telnet or email, these search methods require that your local system administrator install software on your local computer.
Merry Christmas and Happy searching!
--The Free Archie Team
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