Glossary of Internet Terms

Internet - The Internet is a collection of computers throughout the world that are linked together to form a giant web of information. The Internet uses a common data transfer protocol (TCP/IP) so that all of the individual networks can communicate with each other. Several domains within the Internet exist: COM for commercial ventures, ORG for organizations, EDU for educational institutions, GOV for government, MIL for military, NET for network organizations, and all the other countries have their own domains.

IP Number - Every computer in the Internet has an identification number (Internet Protocol Address) associated with it that individually identifies it. Example: 128.118.56.2

Gopher - This system, developed at the University of Minnesota, was one of the first widespread informatics applications and the first attempt at making information dissemination user friendly. A network of gopher servers contain data arranged in interconnecting menus and computer files. You would then use Gopher software to navigate these menus and files. Gopher has been largely superseded by the World Wide Web.

World Wide Web (WWW) - The next level of informatics which employs a hypermedia information retrieval system. While Gopher is menu based, WWW uses hypermedia - highlighted words in the document link to other documents. The protocol used to transfer files on the WWW is called Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP), and files are written in a language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), hence the htm or html extension on the files. Another page on the WWW can be referenced using link in an HTML document. When viewed in a Browser, such as Netscape Navigator, Mosaic, Internet Explorer, or one of the other numerous browsers, the link appears different from the rest of the page. By clicking on it, the page that the link refers to is opened. Addresses on the world wide web take the form <http://dept.univ.edu/document.html>.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - FTP allows you to transfer computer files between computer accounts in different Internet hosts. It can be used to download a file to your computer, or to post a file to another computer elsewhere.

Telnet - Telnet allows the user to establish a terminal session with any Internet host providing a telnet serverBy using telnet you can access a computer in another location and, for example, read your e-mail or run a program on that computer. The only software needed for this is an internet connection, a telnet client on the computer you are working on, and a telnet server (usually referred to as a daemon) on the computer you are connecting to.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) - A URL is a way to write an address on the internet. A URL takes the form: <protocol://computer{.subnet}.network.domain/directory{/subdirectory}/file.extension>.
For example, the URL <http://webfoot.csom.umn.edu/faculty/phds/jesper/default.htm> tells the user that the protocol to use is http. The computer to connect to is called Webfoot, and it is on the CSOM subnet at the University of Minnesota (UMN) which is in the UMN domain. The file to retrieve is called default.htm, and it is in the /faculty/phds/jesper/ directory of the computers web root directory. By contrast, the URL <ftp://ftp.apple.com/pub/readme.txt> references the ftp protocol. The server is called ftp, on the Apple network, in the commercial domain. The file readme.txt is in the pub directory.

E-Mail (Electronic Mail) - E-mail is a compute function that allows you to send an "on-line" memo to another computer user. E-mail addresses take the form <name@dept.school.edu>. Several different software packages can be used to manage your e-mail account (Examples include Fetch, Pine, ...). One of the key features of e-mail as a correspondence tool, is that it allows you to collect and manage a database of your correspondences. Another key feature of e-mail is that it is essentially free. It is also the absolutely fastest way to communicate with someone.

Electronic Discussion Group (or E-Mail Discussion List, or LISTSERV) - You subscribe to the list via their e-mail account. Messages from other the list subscribers are automatically sent to your e-mail account. You can participate in the discussion by sending an e-mail to the list. To subscribe you send a message to the managing address with the following information in the body: SUBSCRIBE [space] list name [space] your name.

News Groups (or Usenet News, or Bulletin Board) - Net News (as it used to be called) is an electronic bulletin board composed of about 22,000 individual discussion boards. As opposed to an e-mail discussion list, which operates on a "push" basis, news groups operate on a "pull" basis. You have to actually select which material to see, and download it. You can also choose to contribute to the Net News if you like.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) - IRC is a form of live discussion. You can log on to an IRC channel, and chat with people from across the world in real-time. IRC channels exist for any topic you can think of.