The Internet and Its Services

By Syed Midhat Ali

Tutorial Quick Links:
Network Basics
History and Development of the Internet
The Internet Infrastructure
Internet Services
Showing Your Presence
Uses of the Internet

Network Basics
A network is a group of two or more interconnected computers sharing one common medium of communication.

Types of Network
According to graphical span, networks can be classified into two categories.

1. Local Area Network
2. Wide Area Network

Local Area Network
LAN comprises of computers placed very close, nearly in an area of about 100 meters. They are connected by fast, cheap and low range media such as cables, IR devices etc.

Wide Area Network
WANs may span thousands of kilometers. They are connected by media spread globally such as Tbase2 lines (Normal telephone lines), a high-speed fiber link or the geostationary satellites.
According to connectivity, networks can be classified into three categories.

1. Internet (or simply the "net")
2. Unix to Unix Copy Program (UUCP)
3. Because Its Time NETwork (BITNET)

Internet
Internet is not a single network but a group of many WANs. All activity takes place in real time at amazing speed. The computers connected to the Internet use the TCP/IP protocol. (See RFC 793 for information on TCP and RFC 791 for information on IP).

UUCP
UUCP is based on two computers connecting to each other at regular intervals of time, and executing a set instruction defined for them, such as to send or receive email or update a particular data.

BITNET
BITNET is a group of computers connected by point-to-point links using Network Job Entry (NJE) protocol.

History and Development of the Internet

1962 - The RAND Corporation begins research into robust, distributed communication networks for military command and control.

1962-1969 - The Internet is first conceived in the early ‘60s. Under the leadership of the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), it grows from a paper architecture into a small network (ARPANET) intended to promote the sharing of super-computers amongst researchers in the United States.

1963 - Beatles play for the Queen of England

1964 - ‘Dr Strangelove’ portrays nuclear holocaust which new network must survive

1965 - The DOD’s Advanced Research Project Association begins work on ‘ARPANET’

1965 - ARPA sponsors research into a "cooperative network of time-sharing computers."

1966 - US Surveyor probe lands safely on moon

1967 - First ARPANET papers presented at Association for Computing Machinery Symposium

1967 - Delegates at a symposium for the Association for Computing Machinery in Gatlinburg, TN discuss the first plans for the ARPANET.

1968 - First generation of networking hardware and software designed
Backbone: 50kbps ARPANET, hosts: 4

1969 -ARPANET connects first 4 universities in the United States. Researchers at four US campuses create the first hosts of the ARPANET, connecting Stanford Research Institute, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah.

1970 - ALOHANET developed at the University of Hawaii

1970-1973 - The ARPANET is a success from the very beginning. Although originally designed to allow scientists to share data and access remote computers, email quickly becomes the most popular application. The ARPANET becomes a high-speed digital post office as people use it to collaborate on research projects and discuss topics of various interests.

1971 - The ARPANET grows to 23 hosts connecting universities and government research centers around the country.

1972 - The Internetworking Working Group becomes the first of several standards-setting entities to govern the growing network. Vinton Cerf is elected the first chairman of the INWG, and later becomes known as a "Father of the Internet.". Backbone: 50kbps ARPANET, hosts: 23

1973- ARPANET goes international with connections to University College in London, England and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway.

1974- Bolt, Beranek & Newman opens Telenet, the first commercial version of the ARPANET.

1974-1981 - The general public gets its first vague hint of how networked computers can be used in daily life as the commercial version of the ARPANET goes online. The ARPANET starts to move away from its military/research roots.

1975 - Internet operations transferred to the Defense Communications Agency

1976 - Queen Elizabeth goes online with the first royal email message.
Backbone: 50kbps ARPANET+Sattelite, hosts: 111+

1977 - UUCP provides email on THEORYNET

1978 - TCP checksum design finalized

1979 Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, two grad students at Duke University, and Steve Bellovin at the University of North Carolina establish the first USENET newsgroups. Users from all over the world join these discussion groups to talk about the net, politics, religion and thousands of other subjects.

1980 - Mark Andersen turns 8. 14 more years till he revolutionizes the Web

1981 - ARPANET has 213 hosts. A new host is added approximately once every 20 days.
Backbone: 50kbps ARPANET+Sattelite+56kpbsCSNET, hosts: 111+

1982 - The term ‘Internet’ is used for the first time.

1982-1987 - Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf are key members of a team, which creates TCP/IP, the common language of all Internet computers. For the first time the loose collection of networks, which made up the ARPANET, is seen as an "internet", and the Internet as we know it today is born. The mid-80s marks a boom in the personal computer and super-minicomputer industries. The combination of inexpensive desktop machines and powerful, network-ready servers allows many companies to join the Internet for the first time. Corporations begin to use the Internet to communicate with each other and with their customers.

1983 - TCP/IP becomes the universal language of the Internet
backbone: 50kbps ARPANET+Sattelite+56kpbsCSNET, hosts: 562

1984 - William Gibson coins the term "cyberspace" in his novel "Neuromancer." The number of Internet hosts exceeds 1,000.
Backbone: 50kbps ARPANET+Sattelite+56kpbsCSNET, hosts: 1024

1985 - Internet e-mail and newsgroups now part of life at many universities
backbone: 50kbps ARPANET+Sattelite+56kpbsCSNET+1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET, hosts: 1024

1986 - Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio creates the first "Freenet" for the Society for Public Access Computing.
Backbone: 50kbps ARPANET+Sattelite+56kpbsCSNET+1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET, hosts: 28174

1987 - The number of Internet hosts exceeds 10,000.

1988 - Internet worm unleashed
backbone: 50kbps ARPANET+Sattelite+56kpbsCSNET+1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET, hosts: 56000

1988-1990 - By 1988 the Internet is an essential tool for communications, however it also begins to create concerns about privacy and security in the digital world. New words, such as "hacker," "cracker" and" electronic break-in", are created. These new worries are dramatically demonstrated on Nov. 1, 1988 when a malicious program called the "Internet Worm" temporarily disables approximately 6,000 of the 60,000 Internet hosts.

1988 - The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is formed to address security concerns raised by the Worm.

1989 - System administrator turned author, Clifford Stoll, catches a group of Cyberspies, and writes the best seller "The Cuckoo’s Egg." The number of Internet hosts exceeds 100,000.

1990 - A happy victim of its own unplanned, unexpected success, the ARPANET is decommissioned, leaving only the vast network-of-networks called the Internet. The number of hosts exceeds 300,000.
Backbone: Sattelite+56kpbsCSNET+1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET, hosts: 313000

1991 - The World Wide Web is born!
Backbone: Sattelite+1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET, hosts: 617000

1991-1993 - Corporations wishing to use the Internet face a serious problem: commercial network traffic is banned from the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET, the backbone of the Internet. In 1991 the NSF lifts the restriction on commercial use, clearing the way for the age of electronic commerce. At the University of Minnesota, a team led by computer programmer Mark MaCahill releases "gopher," the first point-and-click way of navigating the files of the Internet in 1991. Originally designed to ease campus communications, gopher is freely distributed on the Internet. MaCahill calls it "the first Internet application my mom can use." 1991 is also the year in which Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN in Switzerland, posts the first computer code of the World Wide Web in a relatively innocuous newsgroup, "alt.hypertext." The ability to combine words, pictures, and sounds on Web pages excites many computer programmers who see the potential for publishing information on the Internet in a way that can be as easy as using a word processor. Marc Andersen and a group of student programmers at NCSA (the National Center for Supercomputing Applications located on the campus of University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) will eventually develop a graphical browser for the World Wide Web called Mosaic.

1991 - Traffic on the NSF backbone network exceeds 1 trillion bytes per month.

1992 - One million hosts have multi-media access to the Internet over the MBONE

1992 - The first audio and video broadcasts take place over a portion of the Internet known as the "MBONE." More than 1,000,000 hosts are part of the Internet.
Backbone: Sattelite1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET, hosts: 1136000

1993 - Mosaic, the first graphics-based Web browser, becomes available. Traffic on the Internet expands at a 341,634% annual growth rate.
Backbone: Sattelite+1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET+45Mbps lines, hosts: 2056000

1994 - The Rolling Stones broadcast the Voodoo Lounge tour over the M-Bone. Marc Andersen and Jim Clark form Netscape Communications Corp. Pizza Hut accepts orders for a mushroom, pepperoni with extra cheese over the net, and Japan’s Prime Minister goes online at www.kantei.go.jp. Backbone traffic exceeds 10 trillion bytes per month.
Backbone: Sattelite+1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET+45Mbps lines, hosts: 3864000

1995 - NSFNET reverts back to a research project, leaving the Internet in commercial hands. The Web now comprises the bulk of Internet traffic. The Vatican launches www.vatican.va. James Gosling and a team of programmers at Sun Microsystems release an Internet programming language called Java, which radically alters the way applications and information can be retrieved, displayed, and used over the Internet.
Backbone: Sattelite+1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET+45Mbps lines, hosts: 6642000

1996 - Nearly 10 million hosts online. The Internet covers the globe

1996 - As the Internet celebrates its 25^th anniversary; the military strategies that influenced its birth become historical footnotes. Approximately 40 million people are connected to the Internet. More than $1 billion per year changes hands at Internet shopping malls, and Internet related companies like Netscape are the darlings of high-tech investors. Users in almost 150 countries around the world are now connected to the Internet. The number of computer hosts approaches 10 million. Within 30 years, the Internet has grown from a Cold War concept for controlling the tattered remains of a post-nuclear society to the Information Superhighway. Just as the railroads of the 19^th century enabled the Machine Age, and revolutionized the society of the time, the Internet takes us into the Information Age, and profoundly affects the world in which we live. The Age of the Internet has arrived.
Backbone: Sattelite+1.544 Mbps (T1) NSENET+45Mbps lines+155Mbp lines, hosts: 15000000

1997 - Today some people telecommute over the Internet, allowing them to choose where to live based on quality of life, not proximity to work. Many cities view the Internet as a solution to their clogged highways and fouled air. Schools use the Internet as a vast electronic library, with untold possibilities. Doctors use the Internet to consult with colleagues half a world away. And even as the Internet offers a single Global Village, it threatens to create a 2nd class citizenship among those without access. As a new generation grows up as accustomed to communicating through a keyboard as in person, life on the Internet will become an increasingly important part of life on Earth.

The Internet Infrastructure
The Internet is set up in terms of domains and networks.

Domains
A domain is a reference to a computer connected to the Internet. Domain names contain the actual name of the computers, a domain prefix and sometimes a country code. The domain prefix shows the type of domain and the country code represents the country the domain belongs to. Some common domain prefixes are as follows

• .com - Commercial organizations and companies (e.g. yahoo.com)
• .edu - Educational institutes(e.g. harvard.edu)
• .gov - Government owned institutes(e.g. whitehouse.gov)
• .mil - Military domains(e.g. navy.mil)
• .net - Gateways and other networks(e.g. internic.net)
• .org - Private organizations(e.g. eff.org)
• .int - International domains (e.g. tpc.int)
• .to - Referral & redirection (click.to)

Networks
In very simple words a network is a group of domains usually held by one owner(though not necessary). A network contains all the required administrative tools for the administration of the domains in the network.

The dotted quad
The dotted quad is a 32-bit number but is actually represented by four groups of three numbers separated by dots. The general format of a dotted quad is ###.###.###.### where # is a number ranging from 0 to 255. Each group in the number is called an ‘octet’ because it represents 8 bits. The dotted quad is also called Internet numbers. The NIC keeps records of all the Internet numbers assigned to domains.

The first two or three octets of the quad represent the network of which the domain is a part. This is called the subnet. e.g. if the domains have the Internet numbers 169.126.145.36 and 169.126.145.98 they belong to the same network. The domain names that we use are first resolved into their Internet numbers by the computer and then sent over the Internet.

Internet Services
The Internet offers a large number of services, which are increasing day by day in number and usefulness. Some of the services Internet offers are listed below.

1. The World Wide Web(WWW)
2. Electronic Mail(e-mail)
3. File Transfer Protocol(FTP)
4. USENET Newsgroups
5. Gopher
6. Internet Relay Chat(IRC)
7. Voice over IP(VoIP)
8. Wireless Application Protocol(WAP)
9. Telnet

Each is explained below

1- The World Wide Web
Introduction to WWW
Have you ever seen a spider cobweb? You might have noticed how various points are interconnected. The WWW is a similarly connected set of domains. It is the most important service of the Internet and the Internet would not flourish without it.

The Hypertext
You might have experienced the hypertext while browsing a dictionary. A dictionary or encyclopedia contains a mixture of text and graphics and contain cross-references. A large number of references are made within the dictionary but some may be from outside. It is the case with Hypertext. It also contains text, graphics, cross-references called hyperlinks and some other objects, which are out of the scope of this paper.

The HTTP Protocol
HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. it is the protocol controlling the transfer and addressing of HTTP requests and responses.(A request is a call to some resource, usually a file, while a response is the answer to that call).

Anatomy of a HTTP Header
The HTTP request consists of method of response, the requested resource and the version of HTTP. The HTTP request header might look like this:

get xyz.htm http /1.1
accept:*/*
accept_language:en-us
connection:keep_alive
host:yahoo.com
user_agent:mozilla/4.0 (compatible; msie 5.01;windows nt 5)

The first line of the header represents the method of transfer (GET), resource requested (A file named xyz.htm) and the version of HTTP (HTTP/1.1). The second line tells which MIME types to accept as response. The next four lines show the response language, the connection attributes, the domain name and the WWW Client. The HTTP response header is quite different from the request header.

http/1.1 200 ok
date:fri,22nd dec 2000,16:12:23 gmt
server: microsoft-iis/5.0
last-modified:thu 21st dec 2000,12:12:12 gmt

The last line indicates the HTTP version (HTTP/1.1), the HTTP response code (in this case, 200, indicating success). And the response status (OK). The second line is the time stamp, third is the info about the web server and last is a general information about the resource.

Hypertext Markup Language
The Hypertext markup language or HTML is used to create interactive web pages consisting of hypertext. HTML will further discussed in a later section

Web page and Website
A web page is a single file consisting of hypertext used as a basic element of the web. Web sites are group of web pages of usually same topic in one location owned by one entity. A domain can contain one or more web sites.

The Uniform Resource Locator
As the name indicates, a URL is a address used to give the location of a resource on the web. A typical URL looks like this:

http://www.microsoft.com/ms.html

The first part (http:) is the ‘service descriptor’ which tells the server to use the http protocol. The ‘//’ indicates the start of path (the root directory). The rest of the part up to the ‘/’ contain the domain name. The rest of the part specifies the complete path of the file to be fetched (ms.html). If the path is not specified, the web server uses a predefined filename (usually index.htm or welcome.htm). A TCP port can also be specified in the URL such as:

http://search.harvard.edu:4847

The TCP port can be anything from 0 to 65536.The normal http port id 80.

Common WWW Clients
A WWW Client is called a web browser. Some common web browsers available in market are:

1. Internet Explorer by Microsoft corp.
2. Navigator by Netscape Corp.
3. Inspire by Creative Labs
4. Neoplanet
5. Opera browser

Type the URL of any web page or web site in the address bar of a browser and press enter to display the web site.

2- Electronic Mail
Introduction
As we use the postal mail to send text, we can use e-mail to send text or hypertext. Email is a very efficient way of data transfer. It is said that a day will come when the postal mail would be dead for sending mere text.

E-Mail Addresses
Just as for regular mail, you have a mailing address. There is also an address for your email. The email address can be of the Internet form, UUCP form or the combination of both. The Internet form has a general format user@domainname
The UUCP form has the general format domainname!user.
The ! sign is called a ‘bang’.
Suppose we have a UUCP host connected to an internet domain, we could address a user on the UUCP host like this: user%uucphost@internetdomain
The Internet domain just cares about sending the mail to the UUCP host which then uses its own mail delivery system to deliver the message to the user

Anatomy of a mail header
A mail header proceeds every email message. A typical message header looks like this.

from:abc@xyz.org sun dec 24 20:14:54 2000
received:from xyz.org with smtp id aa21901
(4.1/smi for ravi@river.com)
date: sun 24 dec 00 20:15:00
from:abc
message-id:9105252105-AA0631@xyz.com
to:ravi@river.com
subject: test

The elements "From", "Received", "Date", "To" and "Subject" are self explainatory. SMTP ID is the unique ID of the mail delivery server. It is a unique identifier for the message.

Mailing lists
Mailing lists are special files kept on special servers assigned to special email addresses. Any message sent to the mailing list will explode out to all the email addresses contained within the file. The email address of a member will never be revealed to another member. In this way mailing lists keep security and privacy. The special addresses of a mailing list are four. If we have a list named groupmembers on a server abc.com he email addresses would be as follows.

groupmembers@abc.com	Main address
Groupmembers_subscribe@abc.com	Subscribe address
Groupmembers_unsubscribe@abc.com	Unsubscribe address
Groupmembers_request@abc.com	Request information on list

By using these addresses one can subscribe, unsubscribe or see the information about the mailing list. You can post a message to a mailing list by sending a mail to mail address. Some mailing list servers on the web are listed below:

1-egroups.com
2-listbot.com
3-topica.com

Attachments
You are not limited to sending only text via email. You can also send files with email. Any type of file of any size can be sent with the email. But remember, attaching a file too big would be a cumbersome job for you and equally cumbersome for the recipient.

E-Mail Protocols
Two protocols are commonly used for receiving mail

• Post Office Protocol (POP)
• Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP)

POP downloads the message from the Internet to your computer and deletes it form the server while the IMAP protocol downloads the message header from the server and downloads the body only when you want to read the message and keeps the message on server.

The Mail sending protocol is called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). The SMTP Server is just responsible for receiving the message in proper manner. The recipient may download it using a POP server and a client.

Web based mail
The need of hour is globalization. You may need your important email from anywere in the world. You cannpt stuck with your computer and downloaded emails everywhere. The solution to this problem is web based mail.
Web mail is provided free of cost on a web site with an ability to send and receive emails. You can create folders and store message up to a designated limit.. Some web sites offering web mail are as follows.

• hotmail.com
• mail.com
• email.com

Common e-Mail Clients
E-mail clients are called MAPI (Mail Application Programming Interface) clients. They have the basic functionality to send and receive mail and some other features, such as filtering mail etc. Some commonly used email clients are:

• Microsoft Outlook
• Netscape Messenger
• Eudora

3- The File Transfer Protocol
Introduction
The file transfer protocol is the primary method of transferring files over the Internet at very high speed. FTP makes it possible to transfer a file from a computer in Alaska to a computer somewhere in Australia.

Transfer Modes
Two transfer modes are used in FTP. ASCII and BINARY. ASCII mode is used for the transfer of files consisting of plain text while the BINARY mode is used all types of files not consisting of plain text (such as sound, video, executables, images etc.). ASCII is called type A (for ASCII) and binary is called type I (for Image). Various character translations take place between computers to make the file more readable in ASCII transfers. BINARY transfers do not make any changes to any character of file.

Basic FTP Commands
You have to enter some specific commands to use FTP unless you have a GUI FTP client. The list of FTP commands is very long but some important are listed below:

• open - This command is used to establish a connection to a FTP host. Example: open ftp.idsoftware.com.
• close - This command is used to disconnect from a FTP host. Example: close.
• bye - This command is used to quit the FTP client. Example: bye
• get - This command is used to download a file from a FTP host. Example: get agenda.txt c:\myagenda.txt. This command downloads the file agenda.txt and puts it into the c:\ directory with the name myagenda.txt. The second parameter is optional.
• put - This command uploads a file from the local computer to a FTP host. Example: put recipe18.txt pudding.txt. This command uploads the file recipe18.txt on the server by the name pudding.txt. The second parameter is also optional for this command.
• mget - This command downloads multiple files. You can specify criteria for the files by using wildcards. The arguments are same as get.
• mput - Used to upload multiple files. The arguments are the same as put.
• type - Used to change transfer mode. Example: type a or type I.

Anonymous FTP
A virtue of FTP is that you do not need to have a valid user account on the target domain. You can access the files on the FTP site by using an anonymous user account if the domain allows you. You enter the user name as anonymous and the password is your email address.

FTP by mail
If you do not have a FTP client, you can still use email for FTP file transfers. Send an email to the FTPmail server (usually ftpmail@domain). Put anything in the subject line. Start the body with an appropriate open command and put any number of commands in the body. The commands will be carried out in the order they are written and the result will be emailed back to you. If you use a get or mget command, the resulting file will be attached with the email.

Common FTP clients
You can always type the command ftp on your Windows 9x, Windows NT or UNIX machine to invoke a command oriented FTP client. Some common GUI clients are as follows:

• CuteFTP
• WS-FTP

4- USENET Newsgroups
Introduction
Newsgroups is a special service, which allows discussions to take place. You post articles to a group. Someone comments or replies, some other guy comments on the reply and this thread is continued.

Newsgroup History
In the beginning, there were conversations, and they were good. Then came Usenet in 1979, shortly after the release of V7 Unix with UUCP; and it was better. Two Duke University graduate students in North Carolina, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to exchange information with the Unix community. Steve Bellovin, a grad student at the University of North Carolina, put together the first version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on the first two sites: unc and duke. At the beginning of 1980 the network consisted of those two sites and phs (another machine at Duke), and was described at the January rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were never released beyond UNC and duke. Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did another implementation in the C programming language for public distribution. Tom Truscott made further modifications, and this became the "A" news release.

In 1981 at the University of California at Berkeley, graduate student Mark Horton and high school student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality and to cope with the ever-increasing volume of news---``A'' news was intended for only a few articles per group per day. This rewrite was the ``B'' news version. The first public release was version 2.1 in 1982; all versions before 2.1 were considered in beta test. As The Net grew, the news software was expanded and modified. The last version maintained and released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1.

Rick Adams, then at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination of the maintenance and enhancement of the news software with the 2.10.2 release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of news was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was added to the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspired by ARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems. In late 1986, version 2.11 of news was released, including a number of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and other features. The current release of news is 2.11, patchlevel 19.

A new version of news, becoming known as "C" news, has been developed at the University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer. This version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. The package was released to The Net in the autumn of 1987. For more information, see the paper News Need Not Be Slow, published in the winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings. Usenet software has also been ported to a number of platforms, from the Amiga and IBM PCs all the way to minicomputers and mainframes.

Hierarchies
The newsgroups are arranged in a tree like structure. There are seven main categories(like stems) and the newsgroups start from the categories(like branches). There are ten major categories:

Comp	Newsgroups related to computer
Misc	Miscellaneous groups
Sci	Groups containing scientific information
Soc	Groups related to social issues
Talk	Debate oriented newsgroups
News	Groups concerned with USENET Network
Rec	Recreational groups
Alt	Groups that may contain anything.
Gnu	Groups containing interests about the Free Software Foundation
Biz	Business related groups

The NNTP protocol
NNTP stands for Network News Transfer Protocol. It is the protocol used for the propagation of Internet news. NNTP keeps a unique message-id for every message in a newsgroup. It asks the requesting clients if they have the message with a particular ID. If they do not have it, it sends the message. This procedure is performed to avoid duplication of messages.
More information on NNTP can be found in RFC-977

Moderation
Moderation is a tool to keep the discussion focused and in target. All the articles are posted to the group’s moderator. (A moderator is a user assigned this task. It can be the administrator itself or any other user.). The moderator receives the message and puts it in the proper group if it is not. He may edit the message or completely delete it if it is not up to the mark. He might post individual message or a composite digest of messages after a fixed number of days.

5- Gopher
Introduction
Gopher was a method of forming indexed structures to reference files on the Internet. It is now dead, as the new services, WWW and FTP had been added a long time ago.

6- Internet Relay Chat
Introduction
The Internet is a means of communication and we make most of our communication by talking. IRC was added in 1988 by Arkko Oikarinen to give us the feeling of ‘talking’ on the Internet.

How it works
Every IRC server has a number of channels or chat rooms. A room is an area where users connect and chat. Dialogs can be sent to the whole room or individual users. The dialogs are typed in a box in an IRC client and enter is pressed. The IRC server decodes the emoticons in the message (if any) and sends it to the destination room or user. Users in the room are identified by their nickname or ‘nick’.

Emoticons
What is conversation if the other chatter does not know about your facial expressions? The emoticons are the solution to this problem. They are some specific characters, some clients convert them into faces, and others might display them as they are. Tilt your head to the left to see them. For example, : -) is a grin (translated as J ), : - ( is a frown (translated as L ), :-p is a smiley sticking its tongue out.

Uses of IRC
IRC is mostly used by the people to pass time in gossip but it may be used as an intercom in an office network.

Common IRC clients
Some common IRC clients available in he market are:

• mIRC
• VIRC
• PIRCH

7- Voice over IP
Introduction
VoIP is a method of voice communication on the Internet. This system sends voice data digitally as discrete packets over the net, instead of the traditional PSTN protocol. Another protocol, called RTP may also be used for better voice transmission. VoIP can take one of the several forms listed below:

• Voice Mail - There are several programs that can send your own voice as email. You just record voice using your record device and send it via email.
• Voice Chat - Voice chat is the most common use of VoIP. They are several programming running on IRC network that use voice transmission for chatting. Everyone wanting to chat must have a full duplex sound card, some sort of speakers, and a record device (usually a mic.).
• PC to phone calls - The most interesting aspect of VoIP is PC to phone calling. You can place calls to more than 100 countries free of cost. Just dial the number on one of the clients and talk right away. PC to phone calling clients may be software or web sites. Some of the clients are listed below.
  • Net2Phone
  • Hottelephone.com
  • Media Ring
  • Dialpad.com

Live audio broadcasts
There are many sites offering live audio content delivered directly to your computer all due to the virtue of VoIP. This type of transfers uses RTP and requires some special software such as RealPlayer or Media player 7.

Legal issues regarding VoIP
VoIP has proved to be a great shock for telephone service providers. As VoIP is toll free, they are facing a great loss. VoIP is prohibited in many countries where telephone service providers are the sole Internet service managers (as in Pakistan).

8- Wireless Application Protocol
Introduction
Laptops and palms were the only source of mobilization in the computer field. However, why buy a costly laptop only for browsing the net or checking email. You can use a relatively cheaper mobile phone for using the WWW and email.

What you need to use WAP
You must have the following information to use WAP:

• A WAP supported mobile phone
• Dial up number


• Call type (either analog or ISDN)
• IP address
• Login name
• Password
• Bearer (either SMS or data)
• Idle time before disconnecting
• Start up page

Configuring your phone
Most mobile phones come configured. However, in case you need to reconfigure it, or its not configured, you must follow some simple steps. There should be a menu named ‘Internet’ or ‘Services’ depending on the make and model of your device. In this menu, you must choose ‘setup’ or ‘access’ or something similar. Fill in the required information stated above which would be provided to you by your ISP.

Using WAP
WAP also runs on the HTTP protocol. It is a service similar to the WWW. WAP sites are called ‘decks’ and individual WAP pages are called ‘cards’. If your phone allows you to enter the URL of a WAP card, then good else you can go to site http://wap.com and enter the URL there to go to a location.

The Wireless Markup Language
WML is the language used to create WAP cards. It is much like a subset of XML, which is an emerging web development technology.

Some phones with WAP support

• Nokia 7110 - GSM 900/1800.
Nokia 9110i Communicator - GSM 900. Also HTML browser.
• Nokia 6210 - GSM 900/1800 supports EGSM 900.
• Siemens C35i - GSM 900/1800.
• Siemens S35i - GSM 900/1800.
• Siemens M35i - GSM 900/1800.
• Motorola T2288 - GSM 900/1800.
• Motorola v.2288 - GSM 900/1800.
• Motorola Timeport P7389 - GSM 900/1800/1900
• Ericsson R320s - GSM 900/1800.
• Ericsson R380 - GSM 900/1800 supports EGSM 900. Phone/PDA.
• Ericsson MC218 Mobile Companion
• Alcatel One Touch View db WAP @
• Neopoint 1000 - PCS CDMA.
• Panasonic GD93 - GSM 900/1800.
• Mitsubishi Trium Geo WAP - GSM 900/1800.
• Samsung SGH-A110 - GSM 900/1800.
• Samsung SGH-810 - GSM 900.
• Sanyo SCP-4000 - CDMA. Supports WML and HTML.
• Sony CMD-Z5 - GSM. Support both WML and HTML.

9- Telnet
Introduction
Telnet is a terminal interface to command oriented servers such as UNIX and LINUX servers. It may be used to connect to one of the several ports (named telnet, echo, daytime, chargen, qotd) or one of the TCP ports on the server.

Uses of telnet
Telnet has a very limited number of uses now. Telnet can be used from any type of machine to get the command prompt of the other computer running a telnet server.

Showing your presence
When you get onto the Internet, you must show that you are there. There are a number of ways to do this:

Get your email
The first and furthermost step you should take to prove your existence on the net is to get your email address. You ISP will automatically provide you your email address but you can always make any number of them using the free web based email services. It is a good idea to keep one personal and one business email. You might have to test many of the web-based mails until you find the one that suits your needs.

Create your website
Create your website to tell the people about you, your family, your business or anything you want. You can create your website in any one of the WYSIWYG editors such as Microsoft FrontPage, Microsoft Word (though not pretty as FrontPage), Netscape Composer or by using your favorite text editor, such as notepad, to create your web page in any of the languages, such as HTML, XML, WML or server side techniques such as ASP, PHP, JSP or ColdFusion.
Among all of these, HTML is the simplest and only it will be discussed here.

Basic HTML
Like any other computer language, HTML has some specific reserved words. HTML reserved words are called tags and are written between angle brackets (<>). Some of the tags are ‘containers’ and they take a starting as well as an ending tag. For example, <HTML> is the starting tag and </HTML> is the closing tag. Some important HTML tags are discussed below.

<HTML>	Starts a new HTML document. Container
<HEAD>	Starts the HTML header. Container
<BODY>	Starts the HTML body. Container
<H1>, <H2>…<H6>	Starts a heading of level 1 to 6. Container
<B>, <I>, <U>	Bold italic and underline. Container
<IMG>	Insert and image or video
<A>	Anchor. Inserts a link or target. Container
<TITLE>	Used to give the title of the web page. Container

Publishing your web site
You can get a domain for your web site by paying a fee and upload your site to the domain. Alternatively, you can upload your site free on one of these sites.

• Geocities.com
• Homepage.com
• Freeservers.com
• Tripod.com
• Many many more

Uses of the Internet
The uses of the net are unlimited. Some of them are listed below:

Carry out your business
You can use the Internet as your business showroom. A intelligently built website might be your door to the future. Introduce your business, your products and your services on your website. You can build an e-shop or make some other arrangement for the visitors to place orders manually (a rather odd way).

Chat & Collaborate
You can chat with someone else on the Internet. Maybe with your family members, business partners, your physician, friends or maybe a stranger by the virtues of VoIP and IRC. You can also work on a document or project with your colleague and share the file simultaneously between you.

Entertain yourself
Internet is also a great source of entertainment for people. Some sites offering entertainment are:

• Teenstation.com
• Mp3.com
• Smashits.com
• Many, many more

Do research
Internet is a great source of information on every topic. You can search every topic for your needs. Collect any amount of information you can that suits your needs and use this information for your purposes. However, remember that we must abide by copyright laws.

Shop on the web
You can use the web as your shopping mall. Browse the web for the product you want, compare prices from various vendors and buy the product that is most feasible for you. You must have a credit card for shopping on the web.

Start your journey now
It is expected that you might already have started your journey on the Internet. If you have are not a member of the Internet community yet, join now. Internet is a totally new world, which cannot be explained in words. It has to be experienced in order to understand it. You will come to know about new things as you spend more time online. Contact your local ISP to get an Internet connection now. There are several ways you can connect to the Internet.

• Dial up modem connection (over the telephone line, low speed)
• DSL, ISDN or Cable connections (high speed)

Internet use is sometimes charged on a per hour basis. If you are a bulk user then you can get an unlimited package. Even if you do not have a computer, you can also use Internet in a cyber cafe (slightly more costly).