To aid the archiving and retrieval of of TeX-related files, a TUG working group developed the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN). Each CTAN site has identical material, and maintains authoritative versions of its material. These collections are extensive; in particular, almost everything mentioned in this FAQ is archived at the CTAN sites (see the lists of software at the end of the questions).
The CTAN sites are currently dante.ctan.org (Mainz, Germany), cam.ctan.org (Cambridge, UK) and tug.ctan.org (Colchester, Vermont, USA). The organisation of TeX files on all CTAN sites is identical and starts at tex-archive/. Each CTAN node may also be accessed via the Web at URLs http://www.dante.de/tex-archive, http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive and http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive respectively; not all CTAN mirrors are Web-accessible. As a matter of course, to reduce network load, please use the CTAN site or mirror closest to you. A complete and current list of CTAN sites and known mirrors may be obtained by using the finger utility on 'user' ctan@cam.ctan.org, ctan@dante.ctan.org or ctan@tug.ctan.org; it is also available as file CTAN.sites on the archives themselves.
For details of how to find files at CTAN sites, see
finding files via ftp
and finding files via Web search.
The email servers ftpmail@dante.ctan.org and
ftpmail@tug.ctan.org provide an ftp-like
interface through mail. Send a message containing just the line
'help' to your nearest server, for details of use.
The TeX user who has no access to any sort of network may buy a copy of the archive on CDROM (see TeX CDROMs).