Moderator's Comments:

A word of warning up front: the following will not help you in any way to "break into" your schools computer (or any other computer, for that matter) and nobody else here will be willing to help you in any way should you try to attempt it. Should that be your intention you can as well stop reading here and go to other websites.

I apologize in case this warning does not apply to you, but we had so many of these questions over the last ten years i spent here that i am trying to save time in case this is just one more of them. Let us get it on with your problem:

First, we need to clarify a few terms and lay down a few definitions. Like in every other area of competence you will do better understanding what you do than by just reexecuting some recipe learned by heart.

Back in the old days, the usual way of connecting to a computer was via a "terminal". A terminal is a keyboard and a monitor, both connected to the computer via a serial line. As the technical development of computers evolved the situation was no longer "one big computer in the middle, lots of (users with dumb) terminals accessing it", but commonly the device from which the user made the connection was another computer. And because this didn't happen via serial lines any more but via network connections something new was needed.

But the old "terminal" concept was working very well and so it was not abandoned altogether but "virtualised": the serial line connection was replaced by a network connection and the real terminal was replaced by a program acting as if it were a terminal: a so-called "terminal emulator".

This was called "telnet". "telnet" is a little troublesome as a term, because the protocol (the "language" the two connected computers communicate in) is called "telnet" and the client program implementing the telnet protocol is also called "telnet" (there is also a server part, called "telnetd"). It usually depends on the frame of reference what exactly is talked about: the protocol, the client program, or both. (Btw.: the situation with "ftp" is the same: the protocol and the client software share the same name, the server is commonly named "ftpd".)

Anyway: for a long time "telnet" and "ftp" were the standard way of connecting from one (Unix, VMS and other) computer to another such computer. But there was one big problem: the first thing a (Unix) computer asks when you contact it is to identify yourself: "username" and "password". The question, the respective answers (and the rest of the communication) all went in clear text and without any encryption over the network. If one wanted to know someone elses password for a certain computer he had just have to have the right equipment (a "network sniffer") and wait until this person logged into that computer.

Because of this "ssh" (secure shell) was invented. It works in principle the same way as telnet but all the communication is encrypted (the protocol is called "SSL", "Secure Sockets Layer"). You can still eavesdrop on someones communication with a remote computer, but you can't make any sense of it.

OK, after that much theory, back to your question: "putty" is a ssh-client for Windows. On a Mac you neither need it nor could you use it. What you need is an "ssh-client" for MacOS", which - fortunately - is already installed according to www.openssh.com.

So it seems ( i have no Mac to test that, but others here do, they will sure help out with details) you are already set. According to your PDF you have a username and a password. You also know the name (or the IP address, 192.168.200.230) f the computer you want to connect to. Open a command shell and enter:

Code:

$ ping 192.168.200.230

If the host doesn't answer and you get a "ping timed out"-type of response you can stop here. There is no network connection and you have to correct this before continuing.

Otherwise, if the host answers, do:

Code:

$ ssh <username>@192.168.200.230

You should be asked for your password. Everything else in the document applies to you the same as to Windows users.

I hope this helps.

bakunin