WWW: Beyond the Basics

3. The Internet Today

3.3 Tools on the Internet

The Internet is made up of tools that provide "functionality supported by excellent engineering (Lynch, 1993)." Most Internet users think of applications as tools that allow communication not as protocols. These tools range from plain text like email to more advance Web pages built with Java applications. The overall capabilities of the Internet are unbelievable.

3.3.1 World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a highly used tool by Internet users. It is a collection of "Web pages" created by Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and viewed by Web Browsers. Web pages contain anything from personal information to broad topics of interest.

Who can create a Web page? Anyone that has Internet access. If you have "surfed the net" you may have encountered pages that introduce a person, provide information about their personal interests, or may even contain a resume advertising themselves for the job market. Web pages provide a means for companies to advertise their products, post available job positions, and furnish information on the latest technical developments. Web pages supply researchers with another method to inform the public of breaking research topics. They enable doctors to share medical cures with other doctors. Political candidates advertise there views to inform the voters. Teachers supply students with numerous amounts of resources that help them to better understand any subject. There is something for everyone on a Web page.

How easy is a Web page to design? It is even easy for the novice computer users because there exists Web pages that allow you to create Web pages with just a click of a button. There are several Web sites where Web page editors are available for downloading. With most Web browsers, you have an option of viewing or saving a Web page source file; this is also a good assistant when developing your Web page. Although some of the more advanced applications of the Web may require a little more technical skill, those that are ambitious can create a Web page with a variety of features.

Different features of a Web page are used to enhance the page or to entertain the visitors to that page. Images are usually visual aids to help explain a subject or give a creative edge. Sound files, available for downloading, are used to help with reading or explaining a Web page. Lastly, Java applications actually give animation to a Web page. These features should be used to enhance Web pages, but are often abused. The abuse of Web technology can make journeys on the World Wide Web time consuming and less productive. There are several ongoing discussions throughout the Internet community concerning Web page design. The debates provide suggestions and even solutions, but there is no true way to regulate a Web page's content. To obtain more information about Web page design and HTML see Chapter 13.

3.3.2 Electronic Mail

Electronic mail satisfies the desire to communicate the fastest way possible, besides normal conversation (Kehoe, 1992). This allows users to send plain text or even file attachments for viewing by one or more end users. Electronic mail is commonly referred to as email and can decrease the amount of time for pertinent personal information to be transferred through the Internet community. Email has the same concept as postal mail because an email address provides all of the information to get a message from you to anyone else in the world.

Email addresses contain significant information that allow a message to travel from its sender to the intended receiver. An email address usually contains the form of user@somewhere.domain. The user portion of the email address is the person's account name or identity on the system. The somewhere portion of the email address tells you the name of the system and the location. The domain portion tells what kind of organization. The domain implies the organization type - commercial institution (com), educational institution (edu), government site (gov), a military site (mil), a administrative host (net), or a organization (org). Other countries represent domains in different ways, for example Australia (au), Canada (ca), and United Kingdom (uk). Let's use my email as an example, vondap@csgrad.cs.vt.edu. The user information is vondap. The somewhere portion of the address is csgrad.cs.vt, which tells us that I am a user on a machine called csgrad (computer science graduate machine) in the department of computer science (cs), at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (vt). The last part of the email address is edu that indicates that it is an educational institution (Kehoe, 1992).

Email is used for more than person to person communication. It is often used for mailing lists and listservs. Mailing list and listservs are for people that share common interest and discuss it through email. The difference between the two is a human administrator and a computer administrator. A mailing list has one (human) administrator that holds all the names on the list. A listserv is an automated system for maintaining discussion lists, and a computer program is responsible for the list maintenance.

3.3.3 File Transfer

File transfer is the "ability to copy files from one computer to another" (Lynch, 1993) using file transfer protocol. Although the name of the program that implements the protocol may be different, it is often called FTP after file transfer protocol. Usually, FTP service requires permissions on both the machine that you are using and the machine you are accessing, but some machines do allow anonymous access. It is suggested that file transfer be done late at night and after "normal" traffic hours because there is less traffic on the Internet.

The usual command for file transfer is FTP, but may vary with machines and programs. A usual connection command uses the machines hostname or Internet number. Creating a connection implemented by the command ftp ftp.uu.net. There are several commands that can be used while in FTP mode, such as dir, cd, get, put, ascii, and binary. The command dir is used to look at what files are in the current directory, and cd is used to change to different directories. The command get enables you to download a file to the machine that is local and put enables you to upload a file to the remote machine. The commands ascii and binary control the transfer modes. In ASCII mode, certain characters are translated between systems to help make text files more readable. In binary mode, the information that is on the remote system is precisely what is received on the host system.

FTP is also used in the Archie server query system. The Archie server is a system created by those at McGill University in Canada used for a quick and easy way to scan offerings at many FTP sites. Now, Archie has grown to track 800 anonymous FTP sites and over a million files. Archie is also available through telnet sessions, email queries and command-line clients.

3.3.4 Telnet

Telnet is the main Internet protocol for remote login. Telnet allows users to have an interactive terminal to a remote location as if the terminal was the host computer (Lynch, 1993). "Telnet provides users with the opportunity to be on one computer system and do work on another, which may be across the street or thousands of miles away (Kehoe, 1992)."

Although the command for Telnet access is machine dependent, the most popular Telnet command, is telnet itself. For example, telnet somewhere.domain allows you to connect to location, somewhere, with a type of organization called domain. Telnet may also allow you to have a third option, the port in which the connection should take place. Telnet with port option has the command telnet somewhere.domain port where port is a port number. The automatic default port number is 23, but it is sometimes helpful to telnet to another port, for different accessibility.

Telnet is used for other types of access, too. Most libraries today are converting to public accessible libraries that no longer use the convention of card catalogs, but computer library catalogs. The electronic catalogs provide users with information about the books available in the library. These libraries often allow telnet access from outside users to check the status of books and magazines. There are also several freenet communities like the Cleveland Freenet that allows free Telnet access. A host of other directories and databases are available through Telnet access.

3.3.5 Usenet News

"Usenet is the set of machines that exchange articles tagged with one or more universally-recognized labels called newsgroups (Kehoe, 1996)." Usenet groups are used by governmental agencies, universities, businesses, and even some home computers. A Usenet group is managed by the system administrator and the system owner.

A Usenet group are created through a "vote" to determine popular support for the proposed newsgroup. If the guidelines are followed, the group will normally be created. Due to the nature of the vote, the newsgroup originator has no way to enforce the results of the vote.

Usenet groups are not an organization, a democracy, a right, or a software. Usenet groups are not a central authority on any one subject, they are just discussion tools. Newsgroups are not a democracy because of the lack of organization and there is no way to enforce any one person's wishes. When participating in a Usenet newsgroup you do not have the right to freedom of speech because you are an authorized user by the owner of the machine, and it is up the owner's discretion to allow any publications on their machine. Lastly, Usenet is not a software because there are several software applications that allow the use of Usenet newsgroups (Kehoe, 1992).

The transmission of a Usenet article is centered around the unique message identification. When a site offers an article to a neighbor, it looks to see if it has received the article, if the article is not already received, the site accepts the news article. The unique message identification prevents the possibility of identical articles being accepted.

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Copyright © 1996 Vonda M. Patterson, All Rights Reserved

Vonda M. Patterson <vondap@csgrad.cs.vt.edu>
Last modified: Tue Nov 26 13:13:33 1996