IEEE provides a wide variety of electronic communications services that are available over the Internet and to networks with gateways to the Internet. Some gateways provide what is called "full Internet access" which implies not only e-mail but FTP and TELNET capability. Because many members have e-mail but not FTP and TELNET access, IEEE attempts to provide information and service access via e-mail as well as via the more sophisticated tools such as the World-Wide Web (AKA the Web).

   IEEE ALIAS SERVICE   IEEE provides Personal, Society, Section, and Student Branch aliases on request - these are dummy addresses of the form x.y@ieee.org which provide a way to keep track of personal or entity e-mail addresses. IEEE stores the actual address and re-directs messages. As long as the person or entity who requested the alias keeps the actual address current, these aliases help in keeping track of changing e-mail addresses (particularly for IEEE entities where the volunteer changes often). See the text file "info.directory" for information on how to request an alias, update an existing alias or get a copy of a directory.

   SERVICE ALIASES    Many IEEE services are available by sending e-mail message requests to specific IEEE aliases; for example, any document or article can be ordered through IEEE by sending the request to "askieee@ieee.org". Similarly "membership-services@ieee.org" is the address for inquiries about your membership.

   INFORMATION SERVICES    A lot of information is available as ASCII text files which can be accessed over the Internet. Simply send an e-mail message to "fileserver@ieee.org" and include the names of the files you want - one per line.

   LIST MANAGEMENT SERVICE    You can use the IEEE list processor, called "majordomo" to join a mailing list to automatically receive certain text files as they are made available, or to sign up to be a participant in a discussion group. To sign up, you send an e-mail message to "majordomo@ieee.org" and put your request in the body of the message as follows "subscribe listname your name". You can get a listing of current mailing lists and discussion groups by placing the word "lists" on another line of your message.

   MAILING LIST SERVICE    IEEE is developing several kinds of mailing lists. You can join any of the public lists to receive information (in the form of e-mail messages) on a regular basis by sending a subscribe message. Some IEEE newsletters are now being distributed electronically in this manner. IEEE also distributes conference announcements and tables of contents of publications using this system. Look for announcements from your Society, Section, Region, or IEEE for these services as they are developed. Messages may be archived (saved for a while) in some cases.

   DISCUSSION GROUP SERVICE    IEEE is developing three kinds of discussion groups; unmoderated, moderated, and private. The unmoderated groups enable wide open discussions on specific topics. Moderated groups provide forums on specific topics where someone reviews, edits and possibly rejects the messages. Private groups are forums for internal discussion amongst members of a group - usually a volunteer and/or staff committee, task force, etc.

   FTP SERVICE    IEEE offers an anonymous FTP service "ftp.ieee.org" in which the information files noted earlier are stored as well as other non-text files - software, WordPerfect files, etc.

   WEB SERVICE    If you have access to a Web client, you can access the main IEEE web server using "http://www.ieee.org". The home page provides links to virtually all aspects of the IEEE. Both Spectrum and The Institute can be read on-line. Many IEEE Societies, Sections, Student Branches, Regions, etc. have (or are developing) their own web pages.

   MORE INFORMATION     More detailed information about fileserver or majordomo is available by sending a message to "fileserver@ieee.org" or "majordomo@ieee.org" and placing the word "help" in the body of the message. ASCII text files containing explanations about e-mail and related subjects, including copies of THE INSTITUTE articles on electronic communications are described in the text file "info.email". Please see the April and May issues of The Institute for more details about mailing lists and discussion groups. Information is also available on the IEEE Web and FTP servers.

  This information was kindly supplied by Robert T.H. (Bob) Alden (r.alden@ieee.org), Chair IEEE Electronic Communications Steering Committee. It represents the state of these services as of April, 1996.