I just returned from a national conference on interconnections to the
Internet from Macs, PC's, etc.  Sending thing from desk top to the
Internet provider is relatively simple, going from the Internet to the
desk top for telnet and ftp can be more difficult, if not almost
impossible.  Oh yes, for $1000 you can get a software fix, $5k will buy a
router that does this both ways.  Macs seems a little better than DOS
boxes.  However, unless you either have a fair amount of spare cash or lots
of time to customize the connection, it would seem that a better approach
would be to leave the ftp site on the internet server (which is probably
a unix box) and simply upload files from the source desktop machine to
the unix server.  This may be simpler, and should be reliable since the
unix box probably comes with ftp, telnet, e-mail, etc.
 
Everything I learned at a three day conference says these things can be
ugly to shake out.  Rather than have a bunch of us try and fail to get
the materials via ftp, you should have some of your colleagues at the lab
login and see if it works, than beta test with a small number of off-site
folks.
 
If you find a cheap and easy answer for inbound and outbound
communications to a DOS box, please let all of us know
 
Jerry Bromenshenk
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University of Montana
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