Discover the Information Superhighway Explore How It Serves You Test-Drive the Internet

What Is the Internet?  The Internet is a worldwide connection of nearly 10 million computers and 45,000 networks.  Each network on the Internet has a Network Operations Center (NOC). Each NOC pays for its part of the Internet, connects its users to it, and fixes their problems.  To help the public understand the concept of the Internet, the government refers to it as the Information Superhighway.

Information Superhighway Services FTP Listserv Usenet Telnet Gopher WWW Yahoo AltaVista DejaNews History of the Internet

Electronic Mail  stands for electronic mail.  Every user on the Internet has an address.  is a great way to communicate, because it avoids the delays caused by playing telephone tag.  Mail queues up in your "in box" and you read and respond to it at your convenience.  Many users read their electronic mail several times a day.

File Transfer Protocol  FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol.  It is the standard method for transferring files over the Internet from one computer to another.  FTP can be used as a verb as well as a noun.  For example, if you want someone to send you a file, you can ask them to FTP it to you.  If a host computer supports anonymous FTP, you do not have to be a registered user to retrieve files from it.

Listserv  Listserv stands for list server.  List servers work like electronic distribution lists, sending messages to their subscribers.  You join a list server by ing a message to it, saying you wish to subscribe. For example, suppose you want to subscribe to the listserv NewsScan, which summarizes news stories several times a week from the major computing magazines and newspapers.  To subscribe, send to with ‘subscribe’ in the subject line.

Usenet Newsgroups  Usenet is an electronic bulletin board service consisting of newsgroups, newsfeeds, and newsreaders.  Once you subscribe to a newsgroup, you use a newsreader to access the group's newsfeed.  In addition to reading information on the newsgroup, you can add your own comments and create new items, thereby participating in a virtual conference.

Telnet  Once you log on to your local network, telnet lets you log in remotely to other networks on the Internet.  If you do not have a logon on the remote computers, you can often gain access by logging on as "anonymous."  Like the names of many Internet services, telnet can be used as a verb. For example, you can tell someone to telnet to your computer to retrieve a file you left there for them.

Gopher  "Gopher" is a play on words. It was invented at the University of Minnesota, home of the Golden Gophers.  Its function on the Internet is to "go fer" things.  Like the rodent, it can burrow through the Internet to find the resources you want.  In the early 1990s, the Gopher spread all over the world.  Users navigated through a hierarchy of menus to locate and download texts, pictures, audio clips, and videos.  Now, however, the Web has replaced the Gopher as the most popular way to find stuff.

World Wide Web  The World Wide Web (WWW) is a networked hypertext system that allows multimedia documents to be shared over the Internet.  Developed at the European Particle Physics Center (CERN), the Web lets researchers all over the world collaborate on the same documents without needing to travel anywhere.  Pictures, audio clips, and videos can be the object of links in WWW documents.  The author believes that the Web was the most important invention of the 20th Century.

Yahoo  Yahoo is a subject-oriented directory of the World Wide Web.  Yahoo has robot computer programs called spiders that are constantly searching the Web for new information.  The people who run Yahoo organize what the spiders find into a subject-oriented index. When you do a Yahoo search, you find out whether your search terms match any of the items in the Yahoo index.  All of the hits are hyperlinked to their Web pages, so you can quickly access information by clicking the hit you want.

AltaVista  AltaVista is a key word search engine created by the Digital Equipment Corporation.  AltaVista lets you search the Web for key words in documents.  Because this kind of search can result in tens of thousands of hits, AltaVista sorts the hits according to the relevance or level of importance of the information found.  AltaVista indexes hundreds of millions of Web pages and is used many millions of times daily.

DejaNews  DejaNews is a search engine for Usenet newsgroups.  DejaNews can search through mountains of Usenet archives in seconds to find the information you need.  Forms and how-to guides help you target your search to get what you want, quickly and easily.

Interesting Web Sites Library of Congress Smithsonian White House Internet Society Louvre NASA Ask ERIC NECC Yahoo and other Web search engines Electronic Frontier Foundation Return to the Menu