The DOS users guide to the Internet

PLEASE NOTE: This page is no longer maintained, as I now use FreeBSD instead of DOS. You are welcome to use the information here, but not all links will work.

This guide is intended to help people without Windoze to enjoy the benefit's of the Internet.

If you want to know where you can find DOS based Internet programs then goto my DOS based PPP & Internet applications list.

Dan Komáromi has written a step-by-step guide to setting up E-Mail on a DOS machine.

Packet Drivers

To access the Internet from DOS, you need to use a SLIP or PPP Packet Driver. These are handy little TSR's that turn the modem into a Network Interface. Once you have one of these you can use any network program that utilises Packet Drivers.

Some Packet Drivers have a Dialer built-in, while others require the modem connection to be made before they can be used.

PPP - Point to Point Protocol, this is the most common protocol for Dial-in Internet connections. It's more reliable than slip (especially on bad lines). Some PPP packet driver support IPX as well as IP packets.

SLIP - Serial Line IP. SLIP Packet Drivers usually don't include a dialer, so you'll need a comms package to establish the connection. They have less header info in the packets, which makes it a good choice over null modem links. SLIP drivers only support IP packets.

Client Software

You can use any network program that can talk to a Packet Driver. These include Telnet, FTP, Mail, News, IRC and Web Browsers.

There is not a common tcp/ip stack like there is with a Winsock. Instead the client programs handle their own tcp/ip stack. Therefore each client must be setup with the network parameters - local IP address, netmask, gateway, and DNS servers. Each client will have it's own way of doing this - which can be a challege when you have a dynamically assigned IP address.

Handling Dynamically Allocated IP addresses

There are utilities that will automatically grap the dynamically assigned IP address (either off the screen or via rarp) and put in an environment variable - usually called MYIP. Many programs will access the MYIP environment variable directly (eg Minuet, Trumpet News), while others need their configuration files modified each time (which is much easier to automate with an environment variable available).

Some program's will get the IP address themselves via RARP (eg NCSA's Telnet) but this will only work with some PPP packet drivers, not SLIP.

The lastest release of EtherPPP includes a BOOTP server simulator, which makes configuring Waterloo TCP applications as easy as putting "my_ip=bootp" in the WATTCP.CFG file.

For a listing of some of some common Packet Drivers & DOS based Internet Software, visit my DOS based PPP & Internet applications list.

If you are interested in writing DOS TCP/IP applications then have a look at Dan Kegel's Pages.

Online since: 7th April, 1996
Last updated: 25th January, 1997

Visitor Number: 43712
(Since 25th August, 1996)

nigel@tropinet.com