I-B. Overview of The Internet

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1. What is an "online service"?

  1. Any service provided by a computer or a network of computers which is located remotely from the site of the accessing computer

2. Types of Online Services - A Summary

  1. Commercial Services (credit card checking, ATM machines)
  2. Dial-up services (library catalogs, banking)
  3. E-mail (on LAN, WAN, BBS, commercial service or the Internet)
  4. News Groups (on LAN, WAN, BBS, commercial service or the Internet)
  5. The Internet (including FTP, Telnet, Gopher, WAIS, finger, etc).   For more background and historical information about the Internet, browse to Internet Histories
  6. The World Wide Web
  7. Commercial Portals (AOL, CompuServe, MSN, Prodigy, AT&T, Sprynet)

3. For a concise description of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and how they work, see How the Net Works

4. How the various Online Services relate to one another:
The OnLine Computing Environment

4. Some Terminology:

  1. Link (or Hyperlink). Links can be to locations in the same document, to locations in other documents on the same server, or to locations on other documents in different servers all over the world. Links are sometimes "broken" for one reason or another (a web site is closed down or changes location without prior notification). In these cases, the link is unworkable.
  2. URL (or Uniform Resource Locator). Just as some links are "broken," similarly some URLs fall to function. The most common result is a "This Page Cannot be Displayed" or a "Not Found 404 error message." Sometimes clicking on the Refresh Button on the toolbar will solve this problem.
  3. HTTP (or HyperText Transfer Protocol). This is usually displayed as the first part of a web site address (followed by the URL). HTTPS indicates that you are browsing in a secure site.
  4. HTML (or HyperText Markup Language). All the pages on the web -- their text, pictures, graphics, links, etc. are created by using HTML. To see what the HTML of a particular web page looks like, open the View Menu of your browser and choose Source.

5. For information on the hardware that makes the Internet work, see Hardware Requirements

6. For information on browsers, plug-ins, etc. (the software used to access the World Wide Web, see Software Requirements and Options

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