The Internet is a difficult thing to describe, because it means different things to different people. To the hardware jocky it is an evoloving collection of interconnected wires and routers directing packets of information from place to place. To the professional, it is a huge electronic library, growing daily in terms of information resources that can be accessed, processed, and integrated into their work and personal environments. Too many, the Internet has become a community where friends are made, ideas shared and grown, and work conducted in collaboration, independent of time and space.
The basic concepts behind e-mail parallel those of regular mail. You send mail to people at their particular addresses. In turn, they write to you at your e-mail address. E-mail has two distinct advantages over traditional methods of distance communitions. Messages sent over the Internet transported much faster than the postal system. Rather than taking days for your text message to reach its recepient, it can arive in only hours, minutes, or even seconds depending on the quality of your (and the recepient's) Internet connection.
Anonther advantage is that e-mail communication is independent of time and space. The traditional telephone requires that both parties be in specific locations and a specific time. E-mail messages arive at the parties electronic mail box and can be picked up at their convenience and from a variety of locations.
Telephones, of course, are increasingly matching this characteristic of e-mail with voice mail and cellular communication, but another important advantage of Internet mail is that since it is disk-based, messages can easily be archived and called up at a later date for referencing.
The World Wide Web
The second and most used interface is the World Wide Web (WWW). Developed in Europe as a way for Physicist to access information, WWW provides a hypertext interface with the Internet. This facilitates incorporating links to related files within the viewd information. For instance, you may be looking at a document about WWW and see the word, Interface, which is accented in some way. By clicking on the word with your mouse, another document comes to the screen which discusses Interface in particular.
Network Discussions
For many, the most powerful benefit of the Internet is having access to other people of like interests. Through mail lists and newsgroups, teachers can ask questions, express concerns, solicit collaboration and share successful practices to thousands of other teachers forming a effective support network. Chat and Multi-User Domains also provide forums for real time discussions.
Cyberspace Term originated by author William Gibson in his novel "Neuromancer", the word Cyberspace is currently used to describe the whole range of information resources available through computer networks.
Domain Name The unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on the right is the most general. A given machine may have more than one Domain Name but a given Domain Name points to only one machine. Usually, all of the machines on a given network will have the same thing as the right-hand portion of their Domain Names, e.g.
gateway.gbnetwork.com
mail.gbnetwork.com
www.gbnetwork.com
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) -- The coding language used create Hypertext documents for use on the World Wide Web.
Hypertext Generally, any text that contains "links" to other documents - words or phrases in the document that can be chosen by a reader and which cause another document to be retrieved and displayed.
IP Number Sometimes called a "dotted quad". A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g.
165.113.245.2
Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP number - if a machine does not have an IP number, it is not really on the Internet.
Mail list A (usually automated) system that allows people to send e-mail to one address, whereupon their message is copied and sent to all of the other subscribers to the maillist. In this way, people who have many different kinds of e-mail access can participate in discussions together.
Modem (MOdulator, DEModulator) -- a device that you connect to your computer and to a phone line, that allows the computer to talk to other computers through the phone system. Basically, modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans.
Newsgroups The name for discussion groups on Usenet.
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) -- This is the suite of protocols that defines The Internet . Originally designed for the UNIX operating system, TCP/IP software is now available for every major kind of computer operating system. To be truly on the Internet , your computer must have TCP/IP software.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator) -- The standard way to give the address of any resource on the Internet that is part of the World Wide Web (WWW). A URL looks like this:
http://www.matisse.net/seminars.html
telnet://well.sf.ca.us or
news:new.newusers.questions
The most common way to use a URL is to enter into a WWW browser program, such as Netscape, or Lynx.
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Minimum Hardware Requirements14.4 kbs or 28.8 kbs modem or direct IP connection |
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Inside Intranets...April 11, Internet World magazine, (c) 1996 Mecklermedia Corporation.
Inside Intranets...April 18, Internet World magazine, (c) 1996 Mecklermedia Corporation.
Inside Intranets...April 18, Internet World magazine, (c) 1996 Mecklermedia Corporation.
Digital's Intranet Comes Together It started small but became vital, Web Week, Volume 2, Issue 1, January 1996 (c) Mecklermedia Corp.
Question for Small Firms: Can Intranet and Internet Coexist?, Web Week, Volume 2, Issue 4, April 1996 (c) Mecklermedia Corp.
Once-Utilitarian Intranets Get The Message: Design Counts, Web Week, Volume 2, Issue 2, February 1996 (c) Mecklermedia Corp.
Intranet Products, Internet World magazine, (c) 1996 Mecklermedia Corporation.
HTML Authoring Products, Internet World magazine, (c) 1996 Mecklermedia Corporation.
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