The INTERNET
Many of you may not have noticed it, but the title is slightly
sarcastic. Many people in today's world consider the internet to be
something beyond comprehension... something that should be written all in
capital letters. To disappoint you, and to remove the mysticism, the
internet is only a bunch of computers, located around the world, that
have been wired together. To join the internet, all you have to do is
log on to any of these computers. So, when you see commercials promising
you a "connection to the INTERNET", or "full INTERNET access", laugh.
They are letting you use their computer system.
The easiest way to learn more about the history of the Internet is to read
the following article included here without permission. A short history of the Internet

If you are
reading this information on-line, you are already using the internet. The style
(protocol) that you are looking at is called http, hyper-text transfer protocol.
This is a fancy way of saying that if you click on "links" you will be brought
to a different place. (In general, links are represented by underlined, blue words,
or pictures outlined in blue.). Each place that you go to has an address, called
an URL (Uniform Resource Locator). As with any address, it is located at a specific
place on a specific computer. So, by typing in an address, or by clicking on a
link, you may end up virtually anywhere.
There are other ways to move around
the internet though. Such as using e-mail, which sends packets of information
across the internet to the source and reassembles them. This is the most common
use of the internet today. And best of all, no long-distance charges.
Gopher allows
you to tunnel through the different servers (computers on the internet) and was
what existed before http. By clicking on different folders and files, you can
go to different places and get new pieces of information.
FTP
stands for File Transfer Protocol, and allows you to transfer files from one computer
to another. A great way to download pictures, games and applications. FTP looks
kind of funny to most people, because it was made for heavy duty cyber-geeks to
get lots of information quickly. So, it wasn't made overly user friendly.
Telnet stands
for ... well, telnet. It is a way for one computer to connect directly to another.
This allows you to act like you are on another computer from the one you are on.
Imagine that you came from Hong-Kong U (forgive me, I don't know any names of
far away places) and you got very used to their computers there. BUT, you transferred
here. By using Telnet you could log onto the system there and use the system you
were familiar with from here.
IRC is the Internet Relay Chat
server. This is a fun way to allow you to connect to many people across the world
in real-time. Thus allowing you to hold conversations with them.
Newsgroups
are a way for people with similar interests to write about topics and read what
each other have to say on it. Newsgroups are divided up into the particular interests
and often times allow anyone to write whatever they want on that subject.
We will get much more into the internet during Lab 2, so we will not go
into depth here, nor is there a test.
Congratulations on
completing the overview of the internet.
To return to Lab 0 Click Here.