Technologies/Tools of the Internet

Throughout this course we will learn a lot about what technologies and software is required to effectively communicate through the Internet.

The following Internet technologies and software tools exist on the Internet and most will be studied in detail in this course: There are four basic technologies on which the Internet is based:

E-mail

-- allows users to send messages to each other.

Telnet

-- allows users to connect and user computers directly on the Internet.

FTP

(File Transfer Protocol) -- allows users to connect to a remote computer for the sole purpose of uploading/downloading files.

World Wide Web

-- Binding of above technologies. Supports the user friendly (easy) access to all forms of media (text, graphics, sound, video etc. in a hypertext framework. Special programs, Browsers, are required to access and use the WWW (e.g. Netscape).

Other tools developed to extend Internet functionality include:

Listserv

-- (E-mail list server) Discussion of common interests via E-mail.

USENET

-- News Groups. Discussion of common interests via a specialised medium.

Archie

-- search engine for FTP.

WAIS

(Wide Area Information Server) -- A popular way to search large bodies of electronic information. Key word search. Forerunner of WWW.

Gopher

-- the first user friendly interface for the Internet. Another important forerunner to the WWW and WWW browsers.