NCSA tools were a huge thing for those of us who used DOS. In the summer of 1995, I was still using Windows 3.1, and I was the only one who brought a computer to the research program I was enrolled in (not CS). When I told people that they could use telnet to go read their home email, my computer spent an hour a day being the check-in point (it was a long walk to the computer labs on campus, and we didn't have local logins) for those who wanted to read email.
The next summer, I was at the University of Florida, but off-campus. However, the Alachua [County] Freenet offered free dialup with PPP. Since etherppp emulated an Ethernet packet driver, the NCSA apps worked fine there, though obviously much slower.
Better, more complete DOS-compatible suites have arisen since then (e.g., mTCP), but the NCSA suite was fantastic. Security? Nah, none of that. But useful? OMG yes.