Excerpt taken from Inside CompuServe, written by Richard Wagner, copyright (1994 by New Riders Publishing. ) Before looking at what the Internet is today, a brief look back at how it all got started can be helpful. The Internet actually originated in 1969 as an experimental network by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. The network (originally called ARPANET) was designed to enable grant scientists to communicate among themselves. ARPANET originally consisted of four computers, but by 1972, 50 universities and military research sites had ARPANET access. One notable theme of the early planners was fault tolerance and reliability; as a result, ARPANET was designed to allow many routes among the computers so that a message could arrie to its destination using any possible route, not a single fixed path. Therefore, if a computer went down, others could "move" around it and continue to talk with one another. With al of the computers being interconnected, designers had to develop a means by which these various computers could all "speak the same language". Their solution was to develop a communications protocol, which eventually became known as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). TCP/IP became the standard protocol used by the Internet in 1983 and remains the standard to this day. During the 1980s, several other networks (including a National Science Foundation network of five supercomputers) sprang up. Eventually, all of these public and private networks were interconnected to enable any computer on one of the subnetworks to access computers anywhere in the entire internetwork. Today, the Internet combines networks of academic, military, government, and commercial entities from the United States and over 40 countries. Explaining Key Internet Concepts By now you have at least some understanding of the Internet as a whole, but we need to explore further some of the terms used in the Internet. Not all these tools (or services) are currently available using CompuServe's Internet gateway. Electronic mail. One of the greatest benefits of the Internet may be something you already take for granted: email. Using the Internet as a gateway, you can send email from CompuServe to the political science department at the University of Iowa, researcher at Stanford University, America Online, GEnie, Prodigy, and a host of other online services or Internet sites. In CompuServe, you can send a message to an Internet address just as easily as you can to a CompuServe address. USENET Newsgroups. Newsgroups are discussion groups of people which focus on a specific subject. Newsgroups are Internet's equivalent to CompuServe forums. ListServ mailing lists. Mailing lists are email-based discussion groups. Instead of being sent to a specific individual on the list, messages are sent to a ListServ address so it can be distributed to everyone who subscribes to the list. FTP. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a tool for transferring files between computers on the Internet. You can use FTP to receive files from a remote host computer. Telnet. Telnet is a tool to allow you to log onto remote computers, access public files and databases, and even run applications on the remote host. In fact, as explained at the end of this chapter, you can even telnet to CompuServe from any Internet host. Gopher. Gopher is a tool to enable you to browse Internet resources. Typically, you can navigate the Internet using Gopher by selecting the desired item from a series of lists. You can then continue in a series of lists until you locate the information you are seeking. World Wide Web (WWW). While Gopher is a menu-based approach to browsing the Internet, the World Wide Web offers an innovative alternative. WWW enables you to browse the Internet by using a hypertext series of links (like a Windows Help file). When you a select a hypertext link, you may move to another place within the same location or to another computer thousands of miles away to browse that information. 7 Archie. Archie is a index to help you find files in over 1,000 FTP sites based upon the filename you specify. In practical terms, you could think of Archie as something like a CompuServe File Finder, such as IBM Filer Finder. The IBMFF accesses the libraries of hundreds of different forums to provide a database by which you can search for files. Veronica. There are many Gopher servers on the Internet. Veronica is a tool to help you find the Gopher server(s) containing information that you need. You can browse a Veronica menu just like you would a Gopher menu. Wide Area Information Server (WAIS). WAIS is a system to search Internet databases. You can do a keyword search using WAIS to retrieve all of the matching documents and then read them. If you need more information about the Internet, Go InetForum to access CompuServe's Internet forum. This forum is extremely helpful, whether you have basic questions about the Internet, want a list of national media email addresses, or want a listing of local service providers.