New To The Internet?

Welcome to my little Internet tutorial. I hope to explain what the Internet is, and how you can use it, with as little "technobabble" as possible. If you have any questions, you can always email me at psicop@snet.net.

What Is "the Internet?"

The Internet is simply a worldwide network of computers, all sharing information with each other, in a variety of ways. It is an open network, meaning it doesn't have a fixed size or capacity, and it's variable, in that it can do many different things.

Having said that, the Internet is not the same thing as the many services it carries. Perhaps the most difficult task facing people who are new to the Internet, is how to make use of its various services, and what each can (or can't) do.

Internet Services

Here, I'll list the best-known services that are carried by the Internet; each is explained below, so don't worry (for now) if this list appears to be gibberish:

• Domain Name Service (DNS)
• World Wide Web
  • Search Engines
  • Directories & Portals
• Email (Electronic Mail)
• Spam & Hoaxes
• Usenet (or, Newsgroups)
• FTP
• IRC and Instant Messaging
• Miscellaneous

Domain Name Service (DNS)

This is a service that even many veteran Internet users don't think about, too much. It's something that works transparently, sort of like "the man-behind-the-curtain" in The Wizard of Oz. But you do use it, even if you're not aware of it — and just like the Wizard of Oz, it's the key to the Internet.

You see, each computer attached to the Internet, has a number associated with it. It is this number which identifies it to other computers on the Internet, and constitutes that computer's "phone number" on the immense "switchboard" of the Internet. These numbers are known as "Internet addresses," and look something like this: 201.155.21.178.

Numbers, however, while they're easy for computers to use, are more difficult for human beings to deal with. Names are much easier for us to keep track of. Hence, the service known as DNS, which "maps" or relates numeric Internet addresses to actual names. In order to make those names more manageable, they're stylized, with endings according to their category: .gov means a government computer, .org means a non-profit organization, and the granddaddy, .com, meaning a commercial enterprise.

Just as Internet (numeric) addresses are blocks of numbers separated by periods, DNS computer names are also broken up this way. For example, the IRS Web site (boo!) is www.irs.gov, which means a computer called "www" which hosts the Web site, attached to a controlling computer for the IRS itself ("irs.gov"), which in Internet parlance is called a domain. Many Web sites reside on computers called "www" attached to a domain.

Now, I've gone into depth about DNS and what it does ... but the bottom line is, it's something that you'll use constantly, but invisibly. You might type a Web site name into a browser but you won't think of yourself as somehow using the DNS service.

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is not, as many people think the same thing as the Internet. It is but one service which resides on the Internet, but it's probably the most-used and useful of those services.

The World Wide Web was invented in the early 1990's based upon a concept called "hypertext." The idea is that documents can be linked to related documents, and related to other documents, and so on, coming back around in a grand web of links which encompasses an unbelievable number of documents.

The first Web documents were composed in a textual "language" called HTML, for Hyper Text Markup Language. Even now, the vast majority of documents on the Web (including most of the ones on this site) are in HTML. It is a versatile standard with many features. This standard is controlled by the World Wide Web Consortium.

The very first Web document viewers (called browsers) were rather crude, displaying only text. As time went on, they acquired the ability to include graphics, or pictures, in addition to text, and also added certain formatting capabilities (italic, bold text, etc.).

The power of the Web and the browsers that people use to view it, has grown steadily over the last 10 years. Web documents can now include scripts or programming, which permit dynamic documents, or documents which change over time or by viewer. For example, some Web sites can welcome you by name, or welcome you by time of day ("Good morning!"). This is but a small sample of what scripting permits.

Additionally, the Web is now used to convey multimedia information, such as sound, animated video, etc. This is now handled inside of browsers, whereas years ago, it had to be done by switching to another program.

Search Engines

No, these are not motors attached to the Internet! They are, instead, Web sites which allow a user to locate documents elsewhere on the Web.

The need for search engines became apparent, early on, as the Web grew to several thousand servers. The Web had many documents then, perhaps as many as a million, but until the search engines came along, it was hard to find them. You pretty much had to know where you were going and type in a known Web server address.

The first major Web search engine was known as Webcrawler. It was also called a "spider" (what other creature could navigate a Web expertly?). It looked for Web servers, and read all the documents on them, creating an index of "keywords" for each. Then, when a searcher arrived at Webcrawler, he or she could type in a word; Webcrawler would compare it to its list of keywords and documents, and produce a list of matching "hits."

Other search engines appeared, eclipsing Webcrawler, for they had more sophisticated keyword-extraction methods and could come up with more relevant "hits." Webcrawler was eventually bought by America Online and then spun off to a new company, Overture. The predominant search engines, now, are Google, AltaVista, and HotBot (also known as Inktomi).

Directories & Portals

A Web directory is a listing, usually hierarchical, of other Web sites. A portal is (typically) much more — a directory, but usually with a search engine, a news and information site, and so on. I will go over these together, as they're related. Think of a Web directory as being the Yellow Pages, while search engines are the white pages.

The need for directories became apparent early, for the same reasons as the need for search engines. It rapidly became impossible to keep up with all the Web sites. Categorical arrangements made it easy to find what one wanted. But since they required human intervention — that is, someone actually had to place the Web site in it — chances were good that what you got would actually be worth browsing.

The first major directory, and still the granddaddy of them all, was Yahoo. There are others, such as Lycos, LookSmart, Excite (now all but defunct). Most of them grew into portals, which proved to be their undoing; the effort and expense required to operate a good portal was considerably greater than just running a directory, and most portals lost money. Yahoo was the only one to become both, yet survive.

Google also has a Directory, in addition to its search engine, but it isn't a portal. Perhaps its pared-down, minimal nature is what makes it appealing.

Most of these directories get their basic listings from a common source, the Open Directory Project, an open-to-all listing created by Netscape just prior to its acquisition by America Online.

Email (Electronic Mail)

Email, or electronic mail, is perhaps the single most useful part of the Internet. For a lot of people, email is the Internet — they don't have or want Web access. Email is much older than the Internet, in fact; it originated on IBM mainframe computers, as a way for users connected to the same mainframe to page each other.

Email has the distinction of being the oldest service running on the Internet (it even predated DNS!). Email allows people to send text messages to each other quite easily and quickly.

Note that email addresses are not like Web or machine addresses. For email, they consist of a user name, an @ sign, followed by a domain. For instance, my email is psicop @ snet.net ("psicop" being my user name, and "snet.net" being the domain).

Using email requires some sort of email client, or email management program. It can be a separate program running on your computer, or, with some providers, it can be accessed through a Web site (where the Web server acts as if it were an email client).

Over the last few years, email has been "beefed up" so that it can transmit file attachments. These can be pictures, music, documents, etc. which is changed over into an email-transmissible form by an email client, sent over the Internet, then decoded by the receiving client. Many people find this incredibly convenient.

Spam

Spam is the name given to unsolicited email advertisements sent by email or by any other messaging service. Originally, the term was used on Usenet to speak of advertisements posted to newsgroups which were topically irrelevant, but this quickly spread to email.

Estimates claim that about 1/3 of all email messages sent out on the Internet, are spam. Considering there are millions of emails sent each day, this is a monumental amount. If you spend any time on the Internet you will soon begin getting spam in your email inbox. Here are some things to remember:

• Some spam messages include a Web link or email address which claims to remove you from the sender's list. Never, ever do this. All it will do is confirm, for them, that they sent to a valid email address. You'll end up getting more spam, not less.
• In the case of pornographic spam (not uncommon, unfortunately) or other offensive messages, you should report report it to your Internet Service Provider (ISP). They will track it down and attempt to take action.

Though it's not advertising, there's another form of spam: hoaxes. These are typically stories warning about computer viruses (malicious programs that sneak into your system and can cause all sorts of havoc), or appeals to action, such as, looking for a missing person, sending cards to a sick boy, etc. 99.9% of these are hoaxes, or "urban legends." Anytime you get an email saying, "pass the word," don't! That's what the hoaxer wants — to clog up email servers and Internet traffic with useless messages. Investigate hoaxes and urban legends here, here and here.

By the way — as far as anyone knows, the name "spam" comes from a Monty Python's Flying Circus skit in which people sing "Spam, spam, spam, spam ..." over and over. In the same way, the first spam messages were repeated across many Usenet newsgroups.

Usenet (or, Newsgroups)

Usenet is the name of a message-board system which was established on the Internet, fairly early on, to enable collaboration among many people. Usenet messages are similar to emails, but rather than going to an email account, they are placed in a newsgroup devoted to that topic, for anyone to see.

Like email, Usenet requires a client of some sort. Most recent browsers have Usenet-reading capability. There are also Web sites which collect Usenet messages, display them, allow searches, and allow a user to post to them. The best-known is run by Google.

Over the years, the messaging and discussion capabilities of Usenet has been eclipsed by various Web sites which offer similar services, which are quicker and easier to use (Delphi Forums, Ezboard) than a Usenet client. But since Usenet messages can contain file attachments — just like email — many newsgroups have become repositories for file-sharing. You can find music, images, and much more on Usenet.

Around 1990, the newsgroups were arranged in a topical, hierarchical fashion, with periods separating the name components (according to Internet convention). Newsgroups beginning with "soc," for example, deal with social sciences. Thus, "soc.history" covers the field of history. "soc.history.medieval" deals specifically with medieval history. And so on.

At the moment, there are well over 50,000 different groups. A large percentage of these, though, have little to no activity or content, and aren't worth your time. Navigating them all is still daunting. Perhaps a good approach is to use Google Groups and its hierarchical menu to find something with potential, and view some of the messages to see if it's worth your time. Then, set up your newsgroup client to monitor that newsgroup.

FTP

FTP means File Transfer Protocol, and when the Internet first began, it was the primary way in which information was shared between computers. It is still commonly used, however, the World Wide Web has eclipsed it, since the Web can do everything that FTP can do, and much more, and often, more quickly.

Most Web browsers permit files to be downloaded via FTP, and in many cases, this "switch" happens invisibly. The browser just takes care of it for you. Sending files via FTP is more problematic, as most FTP servers require you to log in — that is, provide a user name and password that the server recognizes — and the browser must be configured, in advance, to do this for you.

For those times when you must deal with FTP, there are still FTP clients available. These are usually very simple programs, as FTP is itself relatively simple, making it easy to use.

If you decide to get into creating Web pages, you'll want a good FTP client, or at least, a program like HTML-Kit that can transmit files via FTP.

IRC and Instant Messaging

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and it is also a very old service running on the Internet. It allows several people to chat, in a text format, in real time. Typically someone types a line of information, which is sent to the IRC server that the person is logged into; that information is then transmitted, or relayed, to all the other users logged into that chat room.

Using IRC requires a client; the capability of using the IRC service is not included in most Web browers.

Since IRC relies on instant movement of information, it's subject to problems, such as lag (messages not getting out immediately), broken connections, and so on. This inherent unreliability has resulted in a couple of efforts over the years.

First, there are now many Web sites which operate as if they were IRC servers, But since connections and transmissions between Web clients and servers is much more stable, many of the reliability problems experienced with IRC, do not happen here.

A desire for a reliable, one-to-one messaging system — faster than email, even — has spurred the creation of several instant messaging services. Unfortunately, these don't all interoperate. The most popular of these are ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger. These are not only messaging services which operate over the Internet, but are client programs you must install and run on your computer.

Miscellaneous

You may notice in the "address bar" of your browser window, that you often see http:// at the front of a Web address. Well, that actually belongs there, and is necessary for the computer. HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transport Protocol, and is the way in which Web files are sent to your computer. When you type an address without it, your computer simply assumes you meant to begin it with http://, and puts it there for you.

Also — you've also probably seen Web addresses which start with a Web server name and domain (say, www.wherever.com), followed by a slash (/), something more, maybe another slash, ending with a filename (say, filename.html). Web servers are computers with files on them, and those files are arranged in directories (also called folders) just like the files on your own computer.

The extension, or the last segment of a file name, usually tells what sort of file it is. File names ending in htm or html are, obviously, HTML files, or native Web documents. Files ending in txt are plain-text files. Files ending in gif are graphic images in the GIF file format, while ones ending in jpg or jpeg are images in the JPEG file format. Files may also end in cfm or asp; these are scripted pages which are sent to your browser as if they were HTML documents. You may also see shtml, which is Static HTML, meaning simply that the document doesn't change. Most Web documents of the HTML variety, could be called SHTML! You may also see other extensions including html or htm, which are simply variant implementations of HTML.

At any rate, all of these file types, as well as others, are all handled natively by a Web browser. This makes them quite versatile, indeed. Other kinds of files must be displayed or handled by other programs:

• mid, wav, ram, avi, mov, mpg, mpeg, au: These are multimedia files which are played by a multimedia program (such as Apple QuickTime, Windows Media Player, or Real Player. Some are just sound, others can include video animation. Often, browsers are set up to call, or invoke, the player program, for you, so that you won't have to do anything special.
• exe, hqx: These are executables (programs) for DOS/Windows and Macintosh, respectively. These are usually run by the operating system once they've been retrieved.
• zip: This is a ZIP-compressed file. It must be opened using an "unzipping" program, of which there are many to be had on the Internet. Some very-recent operating systems can open these natively.
• pdf: An Adobe Portable Document Format file. Also called an Acrobat file (after the program that generates them). Adobe offers free Acrobat Readers for many systems.
• mp3: The third revision of the MPEG multimedia file format, a lot of music on the Internet is now in the mp3 format. There are many mp3 players available. Again, many recent computers play these natively.

You may also have noticed that I said that Web browsers these days handle many different Internet services — and they do, aside from messaging and chat. Even then, it's very likely that these will all be integrated into a single client, which in turn will be embedded in your computer's operating system. Developers are working toward a day when you will not see any difference between information on your computer and information obtained from the Internet.

Feel free to email me, at psicop@snet.net.