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We recommend the latest versions of either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator as the browser of choice for our clients. These Browsers also include fairly complete E-mail and News clients as well. You can visit either of these company's home pages through the links provided above and download the version for your operating system.
FTP clients allow you to upload and download files from Internet Servers that you have access to. There are many FTP clients available. One we recommend and use internally is WS_FTP available for both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95/NT. You can download WS_FTP here. For our Mac users Fetch seems to be the program of choice. You can download Fetch from the Dartmouth website.
Have you ever wondered where the network slow down is coming from? Is it your ISP, an internal Intranet, a router somewhere on the Internet, the Server you are trying to connect with or perhaps your computer? If you are a Windows 95/NT user you can find out. Net.Medic by Vitalsigns is an inexpensive analytical tool that will answer any one of these questions and more. We use Net.Medic here at Ashton ITC to monitor our sites and can highly recommend it. You can download a trial copy directly from Vitalsigns.
As good as it is, Net.Medic won't pinpoint exactly which router in the Internet portion of the link is causing the trouble. For this you need a Traceroute program and a good shareware one is available. WS_Ping for Windows 95/NT combines a "ping" client with traceroute capability. If there is a "Network" problem you will be able to determine by name which router along the connection is causing the problem. You can download WS_ping here.
For our clients who are administering their own server, a Terminal (or telnet) program is essential. As with the other software we have recommended here, there is a shareware/freeware client available for Windows 95/NT from Hilgraeve software. This program replaces the terminal program that comes bundled with Windows 95 and adds the capability of making direct TCP/IP connections. You can download it from Hilgraeve's home page.