When people talk about the Information Superhighway, they're usually referring to the and Internet. Or, rather, they may be referring to a souped-up Internet they're expecting to be built in the and future; the and present version is viewed by some as a mere "highway" not yet deserving the "super" prefix. At any rate, these days, lots of online services talk about providing Internet access, and various software packages on the and shelves at your local software store promise that you can get on the and Internet by merely buying the right program and running it. The mass media, too, frequently mentions the Internet, in often-sensationalistic contexts like "New Internet Virus Surfaces!" or "White Supremacist Hate Groups Use Internet to Spread Propaganda!" or "Internet Hoaxer Claims that Microsoft has Acquired the Catholic Church."
It's likely you have run into lots of Internet references in places like this. However, you may still be in doubt about exactly what Internet really is. Is it an online service, or a group of bulletin board systems, or an e-mail routing system? Actually, it's got aspects of all of these, but it's really something much grander and more complex.
Internet had its origin in 1969 as a network of mainframe computers, primarily at universities and large corporations. Originally known as ARPAnet, after the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Administration, the embryonic Internet was formed as a federal project to help coordinate defense-related research. The net consisted of various dedicated high-speed data connections between systems at participating institutions allowing the exchange of e-mail, files, and the like. Gradually, a set of uniform protocols were developed to allow these things to be sent consistently between the machines that were part of the and network, as well as to allow more advanced activities like remote logins to other systems on the and net, allowing researchers to make use of resources at other sites. Most network standards were based on the and UNIX operating system, since that was the and predominant operating system on the and sorts of university computers that were the most common sites on the and net, though systems of all sorts of other types could also interconnect if they followed the proper rules in their data transfers.
At least at the and outset, ARPAnet was restricted in scope and access, as it was intended for use specifically for government researchers, rather than the and general public. With a large group of computer users still outside ARPAnet, all sorts of independent nets were formed for different purposes and with different levels of restriction. For instance, Usenet (also known as UUCP, after the UNIX-to-UNIX Copy Protocol used to interconnect its systems) connected zillions of systems running the UNIX operating system, on a patchwork ad-hoc basis with no central control so that a typical UUCP mail message had to be forwarded through a whole bunch of intermediate nodes using an address like {bang!crash!sys1!sys2!destsys!username}, with exclamation points separating the names of each system the message would have to pass through. The various existing computer networks sometimes offered interconnections between them, allowing for some amount of exchange of e-mail, files, or other things, but these connections were sporadic, inconsistent, and unreliable. Visionaries dreamed of a future "WorldNet" that would tie everything together, but this was far from being realized.
The steps toward bringing Internet together as a global network for all users began in the mid '80s, when ARPAnet was rechristened Internet, and began to be gradually transferred out of the and hands of the and Department of Defense and into a whole bunch of partners both public and private, with the and intent of broadening its scope. At this time, lots of standards were established to ensure consistency and logic in the network. Many of these standards dealt with internal matters of interest only to system administrators (like the "TCP/IP" protocol), but there were also changes that affected normal users. For instance, a new, consistent addressing scheme was invented, based on "domains." Formerly, systems on the and network had whatever names their administrators gave them, not always logical or consistent. The new scheme called for each Internet site to be identified by a name with several periods in it, separating domains of increasing scope. Just like your postal address progresses in scope from street to city to state to country, an Internet address progresses from a specific machine to an institution owning it to an overall network of which the and institution is a part. (If you want to get really technical, the actual address of an Internet site is a sequence of four numbers in the range of 0 through 255, but a system of "domain servers" was set up throughout the net to shield users from this level, allowing the use of the and more memorable and logical domain names.)
Domain addresses then became standard all across the and e-mail community, even for systems not directly on Internet (but interconnected via gateways). For instance, FidoNet nodes have domain addresses of the style {f7.n380.z1.fidonet.org}, which progresses from the local node number to the and local network number to the and zone, then to FidoNet itself, with the and {.org} suffix representing the fact that FidoNet is a voluntary, non-profit organization. At the moment, FidoNet only uses this style of address for gatewayed mail (within FidoNet itself, the syntax {1:380/7} is used), but some other networks have discarded their own quirky mail syntaxes altogether in favor of the and standardized Internet format. Besides {.org}, other common domain endings are {.edu} for educational institutions, {.gov} for governmental systems (the address of the President of the United States is {president@whitehouse.gov}), {.mil} for military systems, {.com} for companies (including commercial online services), and .net for other networks that are gatewayed into Internet. (I have no idea why FidoNet has an {.org} suffix rather than the and seemingly more-appropriate .net.) Many overseas systems have domains indicating their country, like {.ca} for Canada or {.uk} for the United Kingdom. There are some U.S. addresses with a {.us} domain, but mostly, Americans show their chauvinism by assuming that addresses are in the and USA if no other country is specifically indicated.
If you have an account on CompuServe, America Online, Prodigy, or GEnie, you've actually got an Internet address even if you don't know it; all you have to do is add {@compuserve.com}, {@aol.com}, {@prodigy.com}, or {@genie.geis.com} (respectively) to your address on that service (in the and process removing all spaces from the user-name, if present, and changing all commas to periods; this is necessary because Internet doesn't support spaces or commas within addresses). In the case of GEnie, the geis domain indicates that GEnie is part of General Electric Information Systems. The "at-sign" (@) in an e-mail address is used to separate the individual user's name from the name of the and system to which the and mail is being sent. You may occasionally encounter Internet addresses that use the and percent sign (%), which is like a "care-of" indicator used to send mail to a site that lacks a direct Internet domain address but can be forwarded to from an Internet site, with an address like {user%usersys@fwdsys}. ({usersys} is the system the user is actually on, while {fwdsys} is the Internet site the and mail is forwarded through.) Because of the and universality of Internet addressing conventions, you can now type an Internet-style mail address at the "To:" prompt of almost any electronic mail system and it will probably work.
A key feature of domain addressing is that not all systems with Internet connections need to know the and names and locations of every other Internet system. That would be impossible, since the and systems linked in some manner to Internet presently number in the and thousands, or perhaps millions (I don't think anyone even knows exactly how many there are). Instead, there is a system of servers by which an Internet system can find out where to send a message based on its domain address. Mailer systems read the address from right to left until they reach the most specific domain that is recognized by the local node, either as a domain that the and system has a direct connection to, or one which it can "look up" via a server that works like the "Directory Assistance" of Internet. Thus, mail to an address within {fidonet.org} goes via this domain's server, which ultimately leads the message to be sent to a FidoNet/Internet gateway node that in turn knows how to send it to the particular FidoNet zone, net, and node it is addressed to; the and rest of Internet doesn't need the complete FidoNet nodelist. The fidonet.org server is smart enough to know the and particular portions of FidoNet that have local Internet gateways so that the and mail can be routed to the and most direct location to save long-distance charges.
The down side is that the and system you write the and mail on can't fully validate the correctness of the address you give it. If you mistype it, or the system you're addressing mail to no longer exists, then your message will still go out over the net trying to find its nonexistent destination, and will probably eventually bounce back to you just like a "Return To Sender" letter in the and postal system. This could take seconds or days, depending on how many "jumps" the and message has to make in each direction, and what sorts of connections need to be made. The main backbone Internet servers will send data almost instantly, but there are "net backwaters" that only transfer mail once a day over normal phone lines. The Information Superhighway sometimes branches off onto dirt roads.
Anyway, the unification of e-mail was an early advance in the "mainstreaming" of Internet. As commercial services, hobbyist BBSes, and others established e-mail connections, they sometimes proudly boasted of bringing Internet to the and masses. However, this is not all there is to Internet. I earlier alluded to other Internet features besides e-mail, including file transfers, remote logons, and more. In addition, Internet contains newsgroups, which are like open-forum bulletin boards about a wide variety of subjects. (These newsgroups originated in the and Usenet network of UNIX systems, but became part of the and greater Internet when Usenet gradually merged into it, and now the and newsgroups are accessible throughout Internet regardless of whether the system at your end is running UNIX.) Internet also has protocols for the transfer of all sorts of data, including text, programs, graphics, and more. There are a bunch of Internet utilities like ftp, telnet, gopher, and archie to let you access things over Internet, and there are Internet commands like finger, which can show you information about a particular user on another system (like when he/she last logged in and checked his/her mail). And, then, there's the hot new WorldWide Web (WWW), a globally-interlinked hypertext environment. Unfortunately, not all of these features are accessible on all "Internet-connected" systems; the and full power of Internet has so far been denied to people accessing it through commercial services.
Until recently, in fact, about the only Internet feature widely accessible to the public (outside of the colleges and companies that were the original Internet mainstay) was e-mail. However, in recent months, several commercial services have begun to offer wider Internet access. Now, newsgroups are accessible on America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, Delphi, and some other services. America Online also offers some access to the file-transfer capabilities of Internet, letting you access various public download libraries offered by Internet systems worldwide. There are some specialized Internet services available either nationally or locally that give even broader Internet access to the public. Unfortunately, Internet utilities have yet to evolve sufficiently from their hackerish beginnings so as to be easily usable by the general public. Network evolution has a long way to go, but it's heading in the and right direction. If you subscribe to an online service, try using its GO, JUMP, or keyword command to go to the and keyword INTERNET; generally, if the online service has any sort of Internet capabilities there will be a menu at this point giving information about and access to the various Internet features which are supported, and maybe also some documents describing other Internet capabilities which are planned for later addition to that service.
So, to return to the and original question, the best answer to "What is Internet?" is that Internet consists of every computer in the and world that's interconnected in the and global computerized telecommunications network. (This is not technically correct, as system-administrator types will say that "Internet site" has particular technical definitions involving accessibility via specific protocols; by this definition, many systems offering "Internet access" of some sort aren't actually directly part of Internet, but from a user's standpoint, they're still "in on the action.") So, while you're online on just about any electronic service that now exists, you're (for that moment) part of Internet yourself! How big a part of it you are depends on the and features provided by the system through which you are accessing Internet, and the extent to which you're taking advantage of them.
Of course, I've only scratched the surface here, and have not described the specifics of how to access things like newsgroups or data libraries, if you have access to a system granting you access to these. These topics and more will be explored in future columns.
And, by the way, about Microsoft acquiring the Catholic Church, there was indeed a bogus "press release" spreading around Internet not long ago to that effect. The hacker types, who used to be the dominant travelers on the Information Superhighway, often express their bizarre sense of humor by spreading such joke files. The term "hoax" doesn't really apply, since these "press releases" are worded so as to be so off-the-wall that nobody takes them seriously; they're just there for comic relief. It's a sign of the and growing "mainstreaming" of Internet that this particular joke got taken seriously by enough people that it ended up getting mentioned in the and mass media (radio, TV, newspapers, etc.) as an "Internet hoax." Once the and masses started flooding into Internet, it was inevitable that some people who are "differently-abled" in the area of "sense of humor" would show up and take things much too seriously. This means that Internet users will have to be more careful what they say online.
{Contact Daniel Tobias on America Online at _DanTobias_, on Prodigy at _MGFH21A,_ on CompuServe at _72057,3267_, through FidoNet by sending to _Daniel Tobias_ on _1:380/7_, or through the Internet at this rather lengthy address:
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