The Internet and The Web

Internet Basics

Nobody owns or controls the Internet -- no more than anyone owns all communities. The Internet is a vast collection of interconnected networks of varying types and sizes, all connected through communication lines. It's now over 30 years old.

During the 1960's, the United States Government began experimenting with ways of connecting distant computers via telephone lines. This project was funded at first by the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Originally, it connected only a handful of computers at government research sites. The purpose was to help researchers and the military communicate more quickly and easily.

This computer network employed a new idea in data communication. The Department of Defense sought a system capable of withstanding a nuclear attack by rerouting information in different ways if parts of the network were destroyed. The new idea, called packet switching, is still used today.

Packet switching breaks outgoing data up into small pieces. Each piece is stamped with the name of its destination, much like the way a piece of mail is addressed. These pieces are sent onto the network. The machines on the network pass them from place to place until they reach their destination and the packets are reassembled. This process is governed by the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) -- a suite of rules specifying how different systems can talk to each other. The TCP/IP protocol mandated that every computer on the Internet have a unique number (called its IP address or IP number).

This is how the modern Internet works. The original system designed by ARPA rapidly gave way to other purposes, such as electronic mail and conferencing. As more people connected and developed new ways of using the network, it grew. Foreign organizations and governments also jumped onboard, adopting many of the ARPA's connectivity stardards for communicating electronically. The Department of Defense never foresaw the Internet's potential as it exists today, nor could they have predicted it, given the rapid changes in technology over the last thirty years.

Although no one owns the Internet, its early developers who initially assumed the task of assigning unique computer addresses, thus assuring that messages sent to one computer didn't end up going somewhere else. They handed this task to the National Science Foundation in the mid-1970s, which passed it to a private organization in early 1995. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), operated by the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, oversees this and related functions today. In recent years it has contracted with the InterNIC (http://rs.internic.net) to help handle domain naming and Internet Protocol (IP) number assignments. InterNIC, in turn, works with other local organizations to help assign IP addresses and domain names. It also works with numerous international agencies to assign IP numbers in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Asia, and other locations (http://www.ripe.net; http://www.canet.ca/canet/; http://www.nic.mx/; http://www.apnic.net/ and see the Yahoo index for other domain naming, respectively).

Beyond this, the international Internet Society (ISOC) formed in 1992 to help develop international standards and to encourage the computer industry to adopt them. (It now oversees work in this arena previously run by a loosely associated industry and academic group called the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)). Most of their energies are devoted to networking rules; some to Internet applications.

The original ARPA network contained at most a few hundred computers. It is currently estimated that as many as 30,000,000 people worldwide are connected to the Internet in one form or another via more than 1,000,000 machines.

The Internet, today, is a generic term incorporating many divergent technologies and services. Although the World Wide Web has become its most popular part in recent years, other Internet services include FTP, TELNET, USENET, GOPHER, and much more. Here's a brief description of a few:

FTP -- Short for File Transfer Protocol, this is a set of rules (part of the TCP/IP protocol suite) providing a standard way of transferring files between different types of computers. Most often used for transferring many files at once, it allows users to upload or download files anywhere in the world by remotely logging into any server which permits visitors. Users need only identify the files to send or receive, and start the process. The specific procedures for sending and receiving the files differ for each vendor's FTP program (some of which are free on the Internet). An Anonymous FTP site permits public access without requiring an account or password (they accept "anonymous" as your username and your Internet address or "guest" as your password, usually without requiring you to enter anything). FTP also includes many commands for specifying how files should be transferred (such as compressed or not).

TELNET -- A terminal emulation program, Telnet, allows you to make a direct, TEXT (7-bit) connection to a remote host computer site. Also part of the TCP/IP protocol suite, Telnet is a separate program permitting different types of computers to connect. It sends your keyboard input and the responsive screen displays back and forth as plain text in real time. Users typically use Telnet to access many Internet sites still using text-only or non-graphical formats. These include many databases, games, weather reports, businesses, and chat-connections to other users. Though Telnet is not part of your CNC Internet Access Kit; Microsoft bundles a version of it into Windows 95 and Windows NT, plus a version comes with the newer Macs, and other versions are available from many vendors -- all differing a little.

Many services previously available by Telnet are now fully available on the Web. Teachers, parents, students and others, for instance, can now search an index to over 850,000 research papers, journal articles and other material using the U.S. government's Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database on the Web, previously accessed by Telnet. Although Netscape Navigator does not directly access Telnet sites, it permits users to use their Telnet programs as a helper program while still in the browser so that they do not have to open and use it separately. Just type in the name and path to your Telnet program in the space provided under Navigator's main menu's "Options|General Preferences..." Apps tab.

NEWSGROUPS: USENET AND IRC-- Millions of people swap messages on specific topics using the USENET (also called Net News). Using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), the messages move between news servers run by most Internet Service Providers and other large organizations. Each topic, called a newsgroup, typically has many sub-topics containing extensive messages threaded back in time to the first one. You can follow a discussion's logical progression, and if you like, contribute your own response to any of them.

Given the thousands of newsgroups available, you need a way to filter which newsgroups to view. You do this by subscribing to specific ones of interest. By subscribing, you are saying that you want your computer to automatically check it each time you go online. By default, the Concentric Network News server automatically subscribes you to several newsgroups pertaining to how to use newsgroups which you can view directly from your Netscape Navigator without using additional software.

Although there are many newsgroups, the major ones are grouped into broad categories with addresses beginning with:

alt. - alternative or racey.
comp. - computer-related
misc. - miscellaneous
news. - about newgroups themselves
rec. - recreation, arts, and sports
sci. - science
soc. - social issues
talk. - lively debate

IRC -- For those who want to engage in one of the Internet's mature, character-based, group chat sessions, you can access Concentric's Internet Relay Chat (IRC) program. Designed in 1988 to expand the UNIX talk program's two-users communications, the IRC has evolved into a many-user chat system where people gather on different channels. Each channel deals with a different topic -- role-playing, philosophy, countries, schools, music, to name just a few. Thousands of channels are often available with new ones appearing all the time. Channel users can communicate with one another in real-time from all across the Internet, easily finding others with similar interests.

The IRC system consists of a over a hundred large servers across the world acting as message clearinghouses. To use it, you connect to Concentric's Internet Area, then type "irc," and you're in! After a moment, you'll see the server's daily message, server rules, and help information. The IRC client is divided into two windows; the top one is for incoming messages. The bottom window, where you type your commands and messages, is only one line high.

Messages you type in IRC are sent to others interested in viewing the same channel. You can also access the IRC using your own computer's "client" IRC software if you do not want to use the free copy in Concentric's Internet Area.

Although thousands of IRC channels exist, they appear and disappear daily, making it difficult to accurately list them. Two good channels for you to start in are #chat and #irchelp, both places where you can practice talking and trying out new options. You get to these channels by typing: "/JOIN #chat " or "/JOIN #irchelp." For more, see our basic IRC tutorial at "http://www.concentric.net/help/communications/basicirc.html".

GOPHER -- A hierarchical index to vast amounts of information on the Internet, Gopher permits users to follow topics in increasing detail. The index is to documents that can be viewed and downloaded. Up until about 1995, users needed separate menu-driven software to use Gopher on the Internet, but Navigator now permits searching and viewing the information directly in your browser. Organizations and companies around the world make documents available on their own Gopher servers, so the information you find on each will vary.

You might use an Internet search program to find information about the "Federal Budget", for example, and find a reference to the government's MARVEL gopher site. Beginning at "gopher://marvel.loc.gov/", you might then select a folder relating to information about "Congress", then select a folder entitled "Congressional Gophers", then "House Gophers", then "House Committee Information", then "Budget", then "Hearing Testimony" and finally locate the report entitled, "President Clinton's Fiscal Year 1996 Budget" from February 1995. It's actually there in plain text!

Web Basics

The World Wide Web -- sometimes called the www, W3 or "The Web" -- is a part of the Internet. It addresses a straight-forward mandate - Provide standard rules for consistently presenting information, regardless of which browsers are used for viewing it. The Web, also, uses a standardized means of transferring information across the internet, making it possible for any Web client (browsers) to access any Web server (host computer) anywhere in the world (assuming, of course, security rules permit it).

Developed in 1990 at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, the Web is somewhat managed by a consortium of corporations, governments and universities called The W3 Consortium and sometimes called the World Wide Web Initiative. Although it pre-dated graphical browsers, "the Web's" meteoric rise in popularity grew largely out of the the 1992 introduction of Mosaic -- the first graphical Web browser. Developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Illinois, Mosaic gave birth to the most popular browser today: Netscape Navigator. Unlike their non-graphic counterparts, these new browsers brought multi-media to the Web -- pictures, sound...even video!

For excellent historic and other information about the Web, see The World Wide Web Consortium at "http://w3.org/pub/www", the Internet Society at "http://info.isoc.org/home.html," and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) at "http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/home.html."

Home Pages & Web Sites

Not quite where the heart is, your home page is the Web page from which you start when you first start your browser. Someone's "Home page" also is where they choose to direct visitors first. Concentric's home page, for instance, is located at "http://www.concentric.net." It offers an introduction to the company, its services and prices, help for Web developers, links to cool locations on the Web, and much more. It also includes frequent updates on new services and new links to the rest of the Web. That's why we encourage you to set "http://www.concentric.net" as YOUR home page!

A "Web site" is a location where you can find one or more Web pages. Concentric, for instance, typically greets Internet surfers at its Web site's home page, which has numerous links to other Concentric Web pages at the same site, as well as links to external Web sites. Each of our Web pages represents a different document on Concentric's servers (or a link to an external one). The document name is used as part of the Web page's address when you arrive at it by clicking on a link (or typing the address directly into your browser's location field). We keep a catalog of cool Web pages our subscribers have created, for example, and we've located it at "http://www/concentric.net/catalog.html." Read on for an explanation of each part of this address.

HTTP & HTML

As mentioned before, the primary benefits the new Web browsers deliver include a common standard for transferring information and rules for consistent information display on dissimilar screens. The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the set of rules (protocol) governing how linked information is transported (sent to your computer). Because all Web browsers support it, a Mac user can view a Web page created by a Windows 3.x user who stores the Web page on a UNIX server. The Hypertext part of it refers to text which is linked to other text, so that when the Mac user clicks on a Hypertext word, it makes the same link that a UNIX user gets by clicking on the same link using their own browser. Often used as the first part of addressing a Web page (http://), this protocol tells the computer to use the "http" rules to find, interpret and display the information received.

The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is another set of rules specifying how "HTML documents" are displayed. It uses tags to control a document's formatting. To make a word bold, for example, the language requires a <b> tag prior to the word, and a </b> tag following the word, as in: <b>word</b>. By the time you read this, the W3 Consortium should have formally adopted the next standard version -- referred to as "HTML version 3.2." HTML is a subset of SGML (Standardized General Markup Language) -- a broader markup language using tags to standardize document formats.

DNS, IP addresses, links, & URLs

With the millions of users on the Internet, people and programs need an accurate, fast and easy way of connecting from point to point -- perhaps from your computer to a specific Web page at the University of Minnesota (where the GOPHER program was first developed). This is done using a dotted quad -- but you already knew that, didn't you? A dotted quad is four sets of numbers separated by dots -- as in 192.0.2.0 -- which provides, in this case, Concentric's main Internet Protocol (IP) address. In short, it is an "IP address" -- the one referenced here is for Concentric's Server. Every computer connected to the Internet needs a unique address -- even yours!

Since most humans remember names and words more easily than numbers, the Domain Naming Service (DNS) was developed. It permits those with computer servers attached to the Internet (hosts) to substitute one or more names or words, separated by dots, to identify their computers. We call ours "Concentric.net," for example. The DNS is a database of "alias" names corresponding to each dotted quad, and is searched whenever someone logs into the Internet. As a subscriber accessing the Internet through Concentric's servers, for instance, you are assigned a dotted quad alias called username@Concentric.net, but when someone sends data to you, the DNS looks up your username and domain name, then finds the corresponding dotted quad and uses that for its address.

The extension often identifies something about the type of organization. Common global (international) ones are:

.com -- commercial organizations

.edu -- educational institutions

.net -- Internet service providers and other networks

.org -- non-commercial organizations

Additional US-only ones are:

.gov -- government entities

.mil -- military

.us -- miscellaneous sites in the United States

 

Addresses in other countries also often include a country identifier (such as ca for Canada, uk for United Kingdom and au for Austrailia) in the address, although organizations outside the U.S. can, and often do, use just the global identifiers. A hypothetical address from the United Kingdom, for example, might be "bobs@gws.xz-eld.uk", or could be "bobs@gws.com".

To look at a specific Web page, you click on a hypertext link or type the address directly into the "Location" field above Navigator's main window (and press ENTER). If activated, the link jumps you to another location: in the same document, in a different document on the same server, or in a location on someone else's server. As your cursor passes over a link, it's address, called its Uniform Resource Locator (URL), displays at the bottom of your screen. You jump to that location only after you click on the link and it is processed. The location field near the top of your screen then displays the new location's URL.

Text links, appearing in different colored text and underlined by default, change color again after you successfully jump to their location; unfollowed links default to blue text and change to purple once followed (but link colors are easily changed on your browser). Hot spot links -- active link regions of screen images, including image maps -- do not change color after you click on them.

Searching the Web

A key part of using the Web is knowing how to find what you want. The millions of documents and other information available on the Web is searched using a "search engine." Although many custom search engines are commercially available for specific tasks, the Web boasts of many excellent free ones. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Most typically, you simply type into a little box provided for the keyword or search phrase for which you are looking, then click on a button such as "Search" or "Find." Some programs try narrowing the search by having you select more specific information, such as a date range, state name, search category, and so forth.

Since the number and type of search engines changes all the time, Netscape provides the "Net Search" button on the face of its browser to help users quickly select a search engine. Some of them work by creating an index of all words on Web pages around the world (ignoring certain common words like "the"). Some work by indexing just keywords from Web pages. Some permit searching entire phrases as a phrase, while others only search the words without regard to their sequence. Thus, if you searched for the "National Heart Association", some will find only Web pages with this phrase, while others will find all pages with "National" OR "Heart" OR "Association" somewhere within the same Web page (unless you place your search terms in quotes).

The specifics for using each search engine is beyond the scope of this handbook, but you can find information about them at NetscapeΓs search engine Web page by clicking on your browserΓs "Net Search" button. Some of the more popular general purpose search engines include Excite, Yahoo!, Lycos, and InfoSeek, which are briefly described below:

• Excite is a concept-based navigation technology which uses a Web index covering the full text of well over 10 million pages, updated weekly. It reviews 55,000 sites, plus Usenet newsgroups, hourly news and commentary.
• Yahoo! Updated daily, allows browsing index categories and searching by subject. It also offers up-to-the-minute sports scores, weather, headlines, and stock quotes.
• Lycos offers a comprehensive Internet catalog capable of locating responses in seconds and includes text, graphics, sounds, and videos. It is well regarded in both quality of information and relevancy search of results.
• InfoSeek offers relevant matches, related topics to explore, and timely news and views from popular magazines, TV networks, and online experts. The Infoseek Guide also makes it easy to find email addresses, stock quotes, company profiles, and more.

NetscapeΓs search engine page also describes some special-purpose search engines. One such program, called "The Software Sharing Resource Library," finds and rewards Web sites offering free software or shareware, and uses this information to build a database of PC and Unix tools, as well as a general index of Web sites. A handful of others, such as the "Four 11" search engines, permit you to locate peopleΓs telephone numbers and/or e-mail addresses.

E-mail

Short for "Electronic mail", e-mail is a software program that permits users to send and receive electronic messages (mail) using a computer. To use it, you must have an e-mail address (<user name>@<e-mail server name>), e-mail software, an active account on an e-mail server, and an active connection (dial-up or direct network) to the e-mail servers.

Like other communications programs, e-mail has to play by specific rules (e-mail protocols) to allow dissimilar computers to send and receive e-mails and attachments. Some e-mail programs do not rigorously follow these rules, or add "extensions" or "enhancements" unsupported by other e-mail programs and servers, resulting in garbled or unreadable messages. Among the most common protocols are SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) regulating your SMTP (outgoing e-mail) server and POP3 (Post Office Protocol, version 3) regulating your POP (incoming e-mail) server.

Unlike many other Web browsers, Netscape Navigator integrates a full-fledged e-mail program and companion news reader program, permitting users to quickly and easily switch between them. With Netscape mail, you can compose, send and receive e-mail; or send and receive files of all types. You can also include links to other Web pages in your e-mail -- as attachments or directly into the mail -- which will remain "live" while your recipient remains connected to the Web while reading his or her e-mail (reading their e-mail on-line).

Finally, if you receive complaints that some of the files you send as attachments are not readable, try using Netscape Navigator's alternate methods of interpreting e-mail attachments. To do this, select from Netscape Navigator's main menu "Options, Mail and News Preferences...", click on the "Composition" tab, and select the "MIME Compliant (Quoted Printable)" radio button. This uses the common MIME standard for encoding your attached binary files.

Audio and Images

You've probably heard about how the World Wide Web offers a multimedia experience -- well, this is where it happens. You can view real museum paintings, spectacular photos from amatures and pros alike, and listen to a wide variety of stand-alone sounds or live broadcasts from supporting radio stations and others. You can even watch live videos on the Web. So what's the catch? You've got to have the hardware and software to support it!

Images are the easiest -- if you have at least 14,400-baud (preferably a 28,800) dial-up modem access and a reasonably good color video adapter for your computer (which most people using Windows or the Mac have), then the supporting software required to view many images is built into Netscape Navigator, so you need nothing more. Netscape Navigator currently uses three popular file formats to display images: CompuServe's Graphics Interchange Format (.GIF file extension), the Joint Photographic Experts Group's file format (.JPG or .JPEG file extensions) and a UNIX-based graphics format (.xbm file extension). The GIF files tend to display images with crisp lines and few color variations better, while JPEG files tend to display more complex images better.

To use any of the numerous other graphics file formats, you must install a separate helper program designed for viewing and/or manipulating those images. Popular programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and LView Pro, for instance, allow you to view (and edit) bitmap (.bmp) and tagged image format (.tif and .tiff) files. After installing such a program on your comptuer, you must instruct Netscape (under "Options|General Preferences|Helpers tab) to launch it when your browser encounters one of the supported file formats, such as a .tiff file.

Your Navigator browser can display both in-line graphics -- images that are referenced internally in a Web page -- and external graphic files which you can "open" for viewing by selecting it (provided it is of the appropriate file type). Internal graphics you might see on Web pages include company logos, Web page background colors, icons or full photos.

Since movie/video file formats are still changing and struggling for which will prevail as the industry standard, Netscape has not included a program for automatically viewing them within Navigator. You can, however, install separate software for viewing videos or movies, then tell Navigator to use them as a "helper" program, as mentioned above.

Sounds abound on the Web, but you need a "sound card" (hardware) for your computer to process them, and separate speakers and a software program to listen to them. Although sound has been available on the Internet for many years, the technology available for handling it has not kept up with consumer needs. The sounds are digitized into very large files, requiring a very fast computer to process them and lots of disk space. Emerging technologies, however, are improving on file compression and processing speeds. Additional technologies are permitting audio sources to send sounds in a constant stream without having to be saved to your computer's disk.

The popular "older" audio software saves sounds in varying file formats, each of which may have their own strengths or weaknesses. Netscape Navigator supports those ending in AU, SND, AIF, AIFF and AIFC to play with the NAPLAYER software program that automatically plays sounds for you when you download the files from a Web site. You can listen to President Clinton's weekly radio broadcasts, for example, by downloading an ".AU" file from the White House's Web page (http://www.whitehouse.gov). The files are large, however, and can take quite a while to download, particularly if you do not have fast access to the internet.

The newer programs, including Real Audio's audio player and VocalTec's Internet Wave Audio on Demand, are Web browser helper applications that you must install, and configure your browser, to use. Both (and others) deliver live audio in real time using new audio compression techniques. Other audio programs emerging on the Web include telephone applications, combined conferencing/whiteboard applications and all of the Star Trek sounds you would ever want.

Cool Places to Visit

Cool, of course, is relative. Some people are excited about finding the Declaration of Independence and Constitution at the White House's Web page (http://www.whitehouse.gov), while others get jazzed by a listing of real-time audio resources, including commercial and Web-only radio stations, such as the one maintained by Timecast (http://www.timecast.com). These lists change periodically.

To help in this arena, Netscape provides "What's Cool" and "What's New" buttons on the front of its browsers. The "Cool" button leads to a Web page assembled by Netscape's "cool team" listing Web sites "that catch your eye, make us laugh, help us work, quench our thirst...you get the idea." The "New" button lists the Web's best new sites based on new sites which users submit for consideration.

Samples of sites on the "Cool" list as of this writing include:

• "The Why Files" -- The National Institute for Science Education answers questions (http://whyfiles.news.wisc.edu/index.htm).
• Women's Wire -- business and information resources for cyberspace devotees (http://www.women.com).
• SportsLine -- scores, news, contests, roundup from Shaq World (http://www.sportsline.com).
• Narrative Communication -- new "Enliven" Navigator plug-in for Windows provides no-wait multimedia streaming support for audio and graphics files (http://www.narrative.com).
• C|Net -- on-line magazine and cable television show demonstrating the newest Web technologies (http://www.cnet.com/).
• MapQuest -- interactive street atlas finds the best route between locations in continental United States of America (http://www.mapquest.com/).
• Quicken Financial Network -- on-line banking, financial feature articles and Quicken tips (http://www.qfn.com).
• CNN -- Not entirely the Cool News Network, you can listen to CNN's headline news, sound files, photos and more here (http://www.cnn.com).
• MacroMedia -- Multimedia and design information, demos and hot interactive developments (http://www.macromedia.com).
• MTV -- music video company on the Web (http://www.mtv.com/).
• Impact Online -- resources for helping nonprofits get wired to the Web (http://www.impactonline.org).
• The Amazing Fishcam -- continuously refreshing fishcam image (http://www2.netscape.com/fishcam/fishcam.html).

Other cool sites, including some of Concentric's favorites, include:

• Yahoo's best of the Web (http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/ Internet/World_Wide_Web/Best_of_the_Web/index.htm)
• Concentric's Web Developer page: loaded with tips on developing your own Web pages and includes numerous links to world-wide development resources on the Web. Check it out! (http://www.concentric.net/developer.html).
• Job/Career search sites, including Career Path (http://www.careerpath.com/), Career Mosaic (http://www.careermosaic.com/) and the Job Center (http://www.jobcenter.com/ team/emplinks.html).
• Telephone and e-mail lookup services such as Four11 (http://www.four11.com).

Sample "new" sites Netscape listed as of this writing include:

• China The Beautiful -- classic Chinese art, calligraphy, poetry, history, philosophy and more (http://www/superprism.net/~pei/china.html).
• Cretins, Inc. -- satire on office politics (http://www.nembley.com/).
• Fannie Mae -- Answers lots of questions on the US's largest source of home mortgage funds (http://www.fanniemae.com/).
• Human Rights Practices, 1995 -- March 1996 report on practices in countries worldwide (http://www.usis.usemb.se/human/index.htm).
• The Solar Energy Network -- warmth from above (http://www.solarenergy.net/).
• The Strange Case of the Lost Elvis Diaries -- blue suede, bullets, greed and grease (http://home.mem.net/~welk/elvisdiaries.html).

So now it's time to surf on. See you on the Web!