Guide to Network Resource Tools - NETFIND
29.10.95 -ל ןכדועמ הז ףד
EARN Association
Sep 15, 1993
FINDING PEOPLE AND COMPUTERS
NETFIND
What is NETFIND
NETFIND is an Internet user directory tool. It provides a simple
Internet white pages directory facility.
Given the name of a person on the Internet and a rough descrip-
tion of where the person works, Netfind attempts to locate tele-
phone and electronic mailbox information about the person. It
does so using a seed database of domains and hosts in the net-
work.
Netfind finds information about people through the Internet pro-
tocols SMTP and finger. If the person being sought is at a site
that is not directly connected to the Internet (e.g., the site is
connected only through a mail forwarding gateway), Netfind
informs the user that the person can not be found.
Due to the dynamic nature of Netfind's search procedures and var-
iations in Internet availability, different results can be
obtained for the same search on different occasions.
The Netfind software can only run on Suns running SunOS 4.0 or
more recent.
Who can use NETFIND
You must be on the international TCP/IP network (the Internet) in
order to use Netfind. Moreover, Netfind can only find information
on users who are on the Internet.
There is no e-mail access to Netfind.
How to get to NETFIND
You can access Netfind through software at your site (local
access), or you can use Telnet to access it at one of the follow-
ing hosts (remote access):
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Host Country |
| |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| archie.au Australia |
| bruno.cs.colorado.edu USA |
| dino.conicit.ve Venezuela |
| ds.internic.ne USA |
| lincoln.technet.sg Singapore |
| macs.ee.mcgill.ca Canada |
| malloco.ing.puc.cl Chile |
| monolith.cc.ic.ac.uk England |
| mudhoney.micro.umn.edu USA |
| netfind.oc.com USA |
| netfind.vslib.cz Czech Rep. |
| nic.nm.kr Korea |
| nic.uakom.sk Slovakia |
| redmont.cis.uab.edu USA |
| |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
Using NETFIND
To use Netfind, you give it the name of a person and keywords
indicating where that person works. After you specify a search,
Netfind looks in its seed database to find domains matching the
specified keywords. If there is more than one matching domain,
Netfind displays the list of matching domains, and asks you to
select up to three to search. If the keys you specified match
more than 100 domains, Netfind will list some of the matching
domains/organizations and ask you to form a more specific search.
You can use any of the parts of an organization's name (or any of
the components of its domain name) as keys in searches. Using
more than one key implies the logical AND of the keys. Specifying
too many keys may cause searches to fail.
When it completes the search (or when interrupted by C),
Netfind summarizes the search results. The summary includes prob-
lems searching remote domains, information about the most promis-
ing email address for the person being sought (if available), and
information about when and where the person most recently/is cur-
rently logged in (if available). If more than one person is
located by a search, the summary does not include information
about email targets and most recent/current logins (since only
the user can decide which person was the correct one.)
Local access:
The format of the Netfind command is:
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| netfind name-keyword place-keywords |
| |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
where the options are:
-h tells Netfind to skip the domain search phase, and
immediately begin searching individual machines found
in the seed database. This option exists for measure-
ment purposes. It is not of much use to casual users.
-s will disable usage of the SMTP protocol during search-
es. This option is mainly useful for measurement pur-
poses. Without this protocol, searches will begin pro-
ducing finger output slightly sooner, but will often
search less useful machines, generate more Internet
load, and fail to find information for users at sites
that do not support finger (such as many companies).
-t will report how many timeouts occurred. The -T option
will set the timeout interval to the specified number
of seconds. It may be necessary to use this option to
increase the timeout value for intercontinental search-
es.
-D sets the maximum number of domains that Netfind will
search at once. The default is 3. While it may seem
convenient to set a high value for this number, we sug-
gest you do not do this. The search will actually pro-
ceed faster (and waste less Internet bandwidth) if a
small number of well chosen domains are searched.
-H sets the maximum number of machines that will be
searched by Netfind. The default value is 50. Again,
we suggest that you do not set this value higher.
-m displays measurement information. If no filename
is specified, measurements are output to stderr. The
packet count estimates are usually exaggerated, because
they make pessimistic assumptions about the state of
the Domain Naming System.
-d allows you to turn on various classes of debugging out-
put (all of which are output to stderr), using a letter
corresponding to each one. Debugging output is enabled
using the -d option with a list of letters, eg, -dslf.
The following classes/letters exist:
c: display control messages (check if the pro-
gram has reached a specified point)
f: display finger related messages
h: list machine names found in the seed database
l: display lock related messages (when entering
monitors)
m: display messages about mail protocol (SMTP)
n: display messages about network failures
r: display hosts matched from the seed database
that were rejected from searches because of
search scope selection
s: display system call related messages
t: display thread related messages
A: convert the above flags to mean their comple-
ment (example -dAt means produce all debug
output except that for threads).
The letters that are most likely to be of interest to the casual
user are f, m, and n. By default, these options are enabled.
Specifying any of these three flags with -d on the command line
will disable them (hence, the -d option toggles the default
behavior of each of the flags).
The name keyword specifies the person being sought by first,
last, or login name (only one name can be specified).
The place keywords describe where the person works, by either the
name of the institution or the city/state/country. If you know
the institution's domain name (e.g., cs.colorado.edu, where there
are host names like brazil.cs.colorado.edu) you can specify it as
keys without the dots (eg, cs colorado edu). The host parts of
domain names (brazil) cannot be used as keywords. Keys are case
insensitive and may be specified in any order, although using a
very common key (like university) first will cause internal buff-
ers to overflow and some domains to be missed.
Using more than one key implies the logical and of the keys.
Specifying too many keys may cause searches to fail. If this hap-
pens, try specifying fewer keys.
Remote access:
Telnet to one of the remote Netfind sites (see How to get to
NETFIND, above) and log in as netfind. No password is necessary.
You will get the following menu:
Top level choices:
1. Help
2. Search
3. Seed database lookup
4. Options
5. Quit (exit server)
If you select Search, you will be given an opportunity to enter a
name keyword and place keywords.
Examples
To find the address of e-mail address of Nadine Grange, who works
at the EARN office at CIRCE in France, you could try the key-
words:
nadine circe france
Since there are more than three domains that fit the place key-
words, you are asked to pick a few. The search proceeds, using
the domains of your choice:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Please select at most 3 of the following domains to search:
0. circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifique, orsay ce
1. ciripa.circe.fr (centre inter-regional de calcul electronique, c
2. dnet.circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifique, ors
3. ibmmail.circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifique,
4. obspm.circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifique, or
5. oecd.circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifique, ors
6. phy.circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifique, orsa
7. ups.circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifique, orsa
8. cth.ups.circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifique,
9. lure.ups.circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifique,
10. lps.cth.ups.circe.fr (centre national de la recherche scientifi
Enter selection (e.g., 2 0 1) --> 0
( 1) check_name: checking domain circe.fr. Level = 0
Search of domains completed. Proceeding to search of hosts.
( 3) check_name: checking host loire.circe.fr. Level = 0
( 4) check_name: checking host solrt.circe.fr. Level = 0
( 5) check_name: checking host groucho.circe.fr. Level = 0
( 1) check_name: checking host rsovax.circe.fr. Level = 0
( 2) check_name: checking host ventura.circe.fr. Level = 0
( 1) do_connect: Finger service not available on host rsovax.circe. can't
( 1) check_name: checking host earn-ng.circe.fr. Level = 0
( 4) check_name: checking host luregate.circe.fr. Level = 0
SYSTEM: loire.circe.fr
Login name: nadine In real life: Nadine Grange
Directory: /home/nadine Shell: /bin/csh
On since Sep 7 08:48:05 on ttyp0 4 days 21 hours Idle Time
New mail received Sun Sep 12 00:00:08 1993;
unread since Fri Sep 10 11:53:17 1993
No Plan.
Login name: nadine In real life: Nadine Grange
Directory: /home/nadine Shell: /bin/csh
On since Sep 7 09:17:09 on ttyp6 1 day 12 hours Idle Time
SUMMARY:
- "nadine" is currently logged in from
loire.circe.fr, since Sep 7 09:17:09.
- The most promising email address for "nadine"
based on the above search is
nadine@loire.circe.fr.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Note that Netfind found only an Internet address on a Unix
machine.
Learning more about NETFIND
The remote access version of Netfind has a large Help section.
There is also a set of frequently asked questions available with
the software release, in the Doc directory. These questions cov-
er Functionality, Methodology, Network and Remote Site Load, Pri-
vacy, Future Directions, and Related Work.
A noteworthy article on Netfind is:
Experience with a Semantically Cognizant Internet White Pages
Directory Tool, by M. F. Schwartz and P. G. Tsirigotis, Journal
of Internetworking Research and Experience, March 1991, pp.
23-50.
This publication discusses the research principles, performance,
and scope measurements of Netfind, and compares it with other
white pages facilities.
There is a mailing list for Netfind users (for software updates
and other discussions). To be added to the list, send an email
message to netfind-users-request@cs.colorado.edu with the body
(not subject line) subscribe netfind-users
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