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The earliest versions of archie simply contacted a list of FTP archives on a regular basis (contacting each roughly once a month, so as not to waste too much resources on the remote servers) and requested a listing. These listings were stored in local files to be searched using the Unix grep command. Later, more efficient front- and back-ends were developed, and the system spread from a local tool, to a network-wide resource, to a popular service available from multiple sites around the Internet. Such archie servers could be accessed in multiple ways: using a local client (such as archie or xarchie); telneting to a server directly; sending queries by electronic mail; and later via World Wide Web interfaces.