The Internet

• internet - a computer network
• Internet - the largest computer network
• Humble Beginings
• What's in it?
• What's out there?
• What can I do with on the Internet?
• The Future of Internet

In the beginning...

• 1969 - ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was created as a U.S. government experiment about how to build networks to withstand partial outages
• 1970's - Used by the U.S. military, U.S. defence contractors, and universities doing U.S. defense research
• early 1980's - split into ARPANET and Milnet -- the connection between these two networks was called the DARPA Internet or the Internet

Still growing...

• 1980's - NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network) created its own regional based network
• 1986 - NSFNET began replacing ARPANET and connecting mid-level and state-level university networks
• late 1980's - other countries began to connect to the Internet (U.K., Australia, Japan,...)
• 1990 - ARPANET sent its last packet

The Internet Today

• 10,000,000 users
• 5,000 networks
• 56 countries
• 7 contenents
• president@whitehouse.gov
• vice-president@whitehouse.gov

Domains

• edu - educational
• gov - government
• mil - military
  • llnl.gov - Lawrence Livermore Labs
  • nasa.gov - NASA
  • ssa.gov - U.S. Social Security Admin
    • gsfc.nasa.gov - Goddard Space Flight Center
    • jsc.nasa.gov - Johnson Space Center
      • krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov
      • gothamcity.jcs.nasa.gov
      • ceti.jsc.nasa.gov

Numbers and Addresses

Internet Numbers - cross reference to a machine name represented by four octets

• 139.169.31.12 - krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov
• 139.169.31.11 - gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov
• 128.183.36.23 - nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov

Email Addresses - represent individual accounts (aliases) on a single machine

• info@osf.org
• root@krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov

Email

• Sending Email
  • To: chief@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov
  • Subject: Monthly Report
• Receiving Email
  • From george@boombox.umn.edu
  • Date: Sat, 10 July 93 13:12:44 -0600
  • To: chief@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov
  • Subject: Monthly Report

Finger

• Displays information about users
• Finger user on local machine
  • root
• Finger user on remote machine
  • anthony@krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov
• Finger all users on remote machine
  • @krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov

Whois

• Search email directory (not a computer disk)
• Search for name
  • anthony
• Search at specific server
  • rs.internic.net mccoy

Netfind

• Searches Interent using whois, finger, and other types of services for email addresses
• Search by single name
• Search with keywords
• mccoy houston texas nasa johnson

FTP

• File Transfer Protocol - primary way of transfering files over the Internet
• Anonymous FTP - FTP without an account on the machine (using email address as password)
• FTP by Internet Number or Internet Address
  • 139.169.31.12 or krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov
• About 1000 Anonymous FTP servers exist

Archie

• Filename search for Anonymous FTP
• You run a client program locally
• Connect to one of several servers over the Internet
• You get a list of file names, dates, size, and location
• Archie servers represent about 75 GigaBytes of files

USENET

• Network News - World's largest bulletin board
• Subscribe to various groups
  • comp.sources.x
  • csci.space.news
  • alt.internet.services
• Read articles posted by other USENET users
• Post your own articles

Telnet

• Telnet - Login to remote machine using the TELNET protocol
• Similar to rlogin
• Many services available through telnet
  • library catalogs
  • weather
  • USA Today
  • databases

Gopher

• Gopher - distributed document delivery service
• Allows a neophyte user to access various types of data residing on multiple hosts in a seamless fashion
• Files of specified types (audio, video, images) may be viewed or played locally
• About 500 Gopher servers available

Veronica

• Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives
• Veronica - title search and retrieval system for use with Gopher
• May only be accessed through a Gopher client

WAIS

• Wide Area Information System - experiment, automating the search and retrieval of many types of electronic information over wide area networks
• Select sources to search (represented by topics or server location)
• Ask question about the information you want
• Select matches to retrieve file

W3

• World Wide Web - distrubuted hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents
• everything is a (possibly) hypertext document which may be searchable
• can provide WAIS and Gopher functionality in addition to its own functionality
• difficult to find out what has changed, what is new, or even what is out there

Recommended Reading

(Bibliography)

• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet by Ed Krol
• The Internet Companion by Tracy LaQuey ($10.95)
• Internet Users' Glossary by Gary Malkin and Tracy LaQuey
• Internet Voyager by Matthew Ciolek
• There's Gold in them thar Networks! or Searching for Treasure in all the Wrong Places by Jerry Martin
• Zen and the Art of the Internet by Brendan Kehoe ($22.00)
• Big Fun in the Internet with Uncle Bert by Jeremy Smith
• Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication by John December
• Internet Services List by Scott Yanoff
• Must Have Internet Resources by ???