Internet features

The Internet: Features

Electronic communication

The most common type of electronic communication is electronic mail or email and is the most frequently used function of the Internet. Email can be used for one-to-one communication, as well as one-to-many communication, in the form of electronic conferencing, generally via listservs, or newsgroups. The basic concepts behind email parallel those of regular mail. You send mail to people at their particular addresses. In turn, they write to you at your email address. You can subscribe to the electronic equivalent of magazines and newspapers. You might even get electronic junk mail. Other types of electronic communication include, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and video conferencing like CU-SeeMe. These are discussed in detail in the electronic communications section. Learn all about email at: Learn the Net: How E-mail Works.

File transfer protocol (FTP)

To transfer large files efficiently from one computer to another through the Internet, FTP was developed. Specific software, usually incorporated into your Web browser, is needed to transfer files and this is what allows you to download software or pictures from the Internet. To upload Web pages that you have created to the Internet, you would need software such as Fetch or WS_FTP. For more information check out the EDPY 202 site.

Telnet

When you use telnet, you are using software that allows you to log into another computer and run programs on that computer. This is significantly different from gathering information from the computer. With telnet, you might access a library catalog, a database, run an engineering simulation, play agame of chess against the host computer, or participate in a MUD (Multi-User Domain) fantasy simulation.

Gopher and wide-area information servers (WAIS's)

Now that the Internet has become a rich repository of information, people are developing ways to make it far easier to find and retrieve information and files. Gophers and WAIS's are two services that could ultimately make the Internet as easy to navigate as commercial networks such as CompuServe or Prodigy. Both gophers and WAIS's essentially take a request for information and then scan the Internet for it, so you don't have to. They also work through menus -- instead of typing in some long sequence of characters, you just move a cursor to your choice and hit enter. Gophers even let you select files and programs from FTP sites this way.

World wide web (WWW)

People frequently use the term "Internet" or "the Net" and "the World Wide Web" synonymously. However, they are not the same. The WWW, or Web, is one part or function of the Internet. It is a server application that can be accessed with software called an Internet browser. Internet browsers provide access to documents that have been published on the Web even if these documents have been published on different servers because it is the Internet that connects the servers together. The Web is similar to a WAIS but it is designed on a system known as hypertext. Words in one document are "linked" to other documents. It's comparable to sitting with an encyclopedia -- you're reading an article, see a reference that intrigues you and so flip the pages to look up that reference.

More information

For more information about any of the above check out these sites: