Introduction to the Internet

This document is intended as an overview of many of the basic communication and information services available for users of the Internet. It describes many of the commonly used media and compares their usage in terms of form, distribution, and audience. Additional tutorials are indicated for learning critical Internet skills.

For more Internet guides and tutorials, check out the following links:

Information exchange on the Internet may be classified into 4 broad categories as detailed below. The organization reflects the ways in which the data is distributed and presented to the user. A reference has been created to explain and demonstrate the terminology used in the following descriptions.

Fixed-Form Information Exchange

The earliest types of communication on the Internet were based on messages exchanged in static form. Users would create messages that would be sent or posted to the system, and available for others to access and use at their convenience.

Electronic Mail: Message exchange between individuals or groups.
Network News: Public message and response bulletin board. (Tutorial)
File Transfer: Exchange of documents between hosts or servers/clients. (Tutorial)

Live Communication

There has been a recent trend toward real-time discussion services, typically used as a substitute for phone calls. Such services are useful for computer-mediated conversation, meeting people worldwide, and hours of entertainment.

Telnet: Server/Client communication protocol.
Talk: Two person text-based communicaton.
Internet Relay Chat: Multi-person text communication organized by channel. (Tutorial)
CU-See Me: Multi-person audio/video communication. (Tutorial)

Integrating Services

By collecting various information forms into a usable interface, the following services are user-friendly ways to organize and access Internet data. The recent growth and popularity are due to the ease of navigation.

Gopher: Menu-based information organization and retrieval.
World Wide Web: Hypertext document-based linking and retrieval. (Beginning HTML tutorial, Advanced HTML tutorial)

Information Searching

With the size of the Internet and the uneven distribution of valuable resources, finding information that is relevant or desirable can be a daunting task. Automated services provide useful interfaces for locating such data with little or no time investment.

Finger: Information about a particular user on a computer system.
X500: Searchable phone book of people or services.
Archie: Searching and retrieval of document archives.
Veronica: Gopher server searching.
WAIS: Generic keyword searching engine.

This document was created at the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Studies (SILS), but it has been designed for public use. Permission is hereby granted for unlimited print and electronic redistribution. Your feedback is encouraged.

fprefect@umich.edu - 6/25/95