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Thousand Oaks |
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Thousand Oaks |
Articles
- Table of ContentsSome thirty years ago, the government faced a strange strategic problem. How would authorities successfully communicate after a nuclear war?
Post nuclear America would need a command-and-control network linked from city to city, state to state, base to base. But no matter how thoroughly that network was armored or protected, its switches and wiring would always be vulnerable to the impact of atomic bombs.
And how would the network itself be commanded and controlled? Any central authority would be an obvious and immediate target for an enemy missile. The government mulled over this grim puzzle in deep military secrecy and arrived at a daring solution. This brainchild was made public in 1964. In the first place, the network would have no central authority. Furthermore, it would be designed from the beginning to operate while in tatters.
The principles were simple. It would be assumed that the network itself would be unreliable at all times. It would be designed from the get-go to transcend its own unreliability. All the nodes in the network would be equal in status to all other nodes, each node with its own authority to originate, pass, and receive messages. The messages themselves would be divided into packets, each packet separately addressed. Each packet would begin at some specified source and end at some other specified destination. Each packet would wind its way through the network on an individual basis.
Only final results would count. Basically, the packet would be tossed like a hot potato from node to node to node, more or less in the direction of its destination, until it ended up in the proper place.
If large pieces of the network had been blown away, that simply wouldn’t matter; the packets would still stay air-borne, lateraled wildly across the field by whatever nodes happened to survive. This rather haphazard delivery system might be "inefficient" in the usual sense, but it would be extremely durable.
During the 60s, this intriguing concept of a decentralized, blast proof, packet-switching network was studied by MIT and UCLA. The National Physical Laboratory in Great Britain set up the first test network based on these principles in 1968. Shortly afterward, the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) decided to fund a larger, more ambitious project in the United States. The nodes of this network were to be high-speed supercomputers or what passed for supercomputers at the time. These were rare and valuable machines which were in real need of good solid networking for the sake of national research and development projects.
In fall 1969, the first such node was installed at UCLA. By December, 1969, there were four nodes on the infant network which was named ARPANET after its Pentagon sponsor. The four computers could transfer data on dedicated high-speed transmission lines. Each one could even be programmed remotely from the other nodes. Thanks to ARPANET, scientists and researchers could share each other’s computer facilities by long-distance. This was a very handy service for computer-time was precious in the early ‘70s. In 1971 there were fifteen nodes in ARPANET; by 1972 there were thirty-seven nodes.
By the second year of operation, however, an odd fact became clear. ARPANET’s users had warped the computer-sharing network into a dedicated, high-speed, federally subsidized electronic post-office. The main traffic on ARPANET was not long-distance computing. Instead, it was news and personal messages. Researchers were using ARPANET to collaborate on projects, to trade notes on work, and eventually, to downright gossip and schmooze. People had their own personal user accounts on the ARPANET computers and their own personal addresses for electronic mail. Not only were they using ARPANET for person-to-person communication, they were very enthusiastic about this particular service—far more enthusiastic than they were about long-distance computation.
It wasn’t long before the invention of the mailing list, an ARPANET broadcasting technique in which an identical message could be sent automatically to large numbers of network subscribers. Interestingly, one of the first really big mailing lists was "SF-LOVERS" for science fiction fans. Discussing science fiction on the network was not work-related and was frowned upon by many ARPANET computer administrators, but this didn’t stop it from happening.
Throughout the ‘70s, ARPA’s network grew. Its decentralized structure made expansion easy. Unlike standard corporate computer networks, the ARPA network could accommodate many different kinds of machine. As long as individual machines could speak the packet-switching "lingua franca" of this new unmanaged network, their brand names, their content, and even their ownership were irrelevant.
ARPA’s original standard for communication was known as NCP, "Network Control Protocol." As time passed and technology advanced, NCP was superseded by a higher-level, more sophisticated standard known as TCP/IP. TCP, or "Transmission Control Protocol," converts messages into streams of packets at the source, then reassembles them back into messages at the destination. IP, or "lnternet Protocol," handles the addressing, routing the packets across multiple nodes and even across multiple networks with multiple standards—not only ARPA’s pioneering NCP standard, but others like Ethernet, FDDI, and X.25.
Other than TCP and IP, the three main protocols in the TCP/IP suite are Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and TELNET Protocol, each of which is discussed at the end of this document.
As early as 1977, TCP/IP was being used by other networks to link to ARPANET. ARPANET itself remained rather tightly controlled, at least until 1983 when its military segment broke off and became MILNET. But TCP/IP linked them all. And ARPANET itself, though it was growing became a smaller and smaller neighborhood amid the vastly growing galaxy of other linked machines.
As the ‘70s and ‘80s advanced, many very different social groups found themselves in possession of powerful computers. It was fairly easy to link these computers to the growing network-of-networks. As the use of TCP/IP became more common, entire networks fell into the digital embrace of the Internet, and messily adhered. Since the software called TCP/IP was public domain, and the basic technology was decentralized and rather anarchic by its very nature, it was difficult to stop people from barging in and linking up somewhere. In point of fact, nobody wanted to stop them from joining this branching complex of networks which came to be known as the "Internet."
Connecting to the Internet cost the taxpayer little or nothing since each node was independent and had to handle its own financing and its own technical requirements. The more, the merrier. Like the telephone network, the computer network became steadily more valuable as it embraced larger and larger territories of people and resources.
In 1984 the National Science Foundation (NSF) got into the act through its Office of Advanced Scientific Computing. The new NSFNET set a blistering pace for technical advancement, linking newer, faster, shinier supercomputers through thicker and faster links that were upgraded and expanded again and again, in 1986, 1988, 1990. And other government agencies leapt in: NASA, the National Institute of Health, the Department of Energy, each of them maintaining a digital presence in the Internet confederation.
The nodes in this growing network-of-networks were divided into a few basic varieties. Foreign computers, and a few American ones, chose to be denoted by their geographical locations. The others were grouped by the six basic Internet "domains": gov, mil, edu, com, org and net. Gov, mil, and edu denoted governmental, military and educational institutions which were, of course, the pioneers, since ARPANET had begun as a high-tech research exercise in national security. Com, however, stood for "commercial" institutions, which were soon followed by the eager nonprofit "orgs."
ARPANET itself formally expired in 1989, a happy victim of its own overwhelming success. Its users scarcely noticed as ARPANET’s functions not only continued but steadily improved. The use of TCP/IP standards for computer networking is now global. In 1971, a mere twenty-one years ago, there were only four nodes on the ARPANET network. Today there are tens of thousands of nodes on the Internet scattered over one hundred and fifty countries, with more coming online every day. Millions of people are using this gigantic mother-of-all-computer-networks.
The Internet is especially popular among scientists and is probably the most important scientific instrument of the late twentieth century. The powerful, sophisticated access that it provides to specialized data and personal communication has increased the pace of scientific research enormously.
The Internet’s rate of growth in the 1990s is spectacular, almost ferocious. It is spreading faster than cellular phones, faster than fax machines. Last year the Internet was growing at a rate of twenty percent per month. The number of "host" machines with direct connection to TPC/IP has been doubling every year since 1988. The Internet moved out of its original base in military and research institutions, into elementary and high schools, as well as into public libraries and the commercial sector. Today the commercial sector is the largest sector of the Internet.
Why do people want to be "on the Internet?" One of the main reasons is simple freedom. The Internet is a rare example of a true, modern, functional anarchy. There is no "Internet Inc." There are no official censors, no bosses, no boards of directors, no stockholders. In principle, any node can speak as a peer to any other node as long as it obeys the rules of the TCP/IP protocols which are strictly technical, not social or political.
The Internet is also a bargain. The Internet as a whole, unlike the phone system, doesn’t charge for long-distance service. And unlike most commercial computer networks, it doesn’t charge for access time either. In fact, the Internet itself, which doesn’t even officially exist as an entity, never charges for anything. Each group of people accessing the Internet is responsible for maintaining their own machine and their own section of line.
The Internet’s "anarchy" may seem strange or even unnatural, but it makes a certain deep and basic sense. It’s rather like the "anarchy" of a language. Nobody rents or owns a language. As a speaking person, it’s up to you to learn how to speak and use your language properly. Would language be improved if the "The Language, Inc." had a board of directors and a chief executive officer, or a President and a Congress? There would probably be fewer new words and fewer new ideas. People on the Internet feel much the same way about their own institution. It’s an institution that resists institutionalization.
The Internet belongs to everyone and no one. Still, its various interest groups all have a claim. Business people want the Internet put on a more sound financial footing. Government people want the Internet more fully regulated. Academics want it dedicated exclusively to scholarly research. Military people want it spy-proof and secure.
All these groups remain in a stumbling balance today, and the Internet, so far, remains in a thrivingly anarchical condition. Once upon a time, the NSFNET’s high-speed, high-capacity lines were known as the "Internet Backbone," and their owners could rather lord it over the rest of the Internet. Today there are "backbones" in Canada, Japan, and Europe, and there are even privately owned commercial Internet backbones especially created for carrying business traffic. Today privately owned desktop computers can become Internet nodes. You can carry one under your arm and soon, perhaps, on your wrist.
But what does one do with the Internet? The Internet is composed of four basic features: mail, discussion groups, long-distance computing, and file transfers.
Internet mail is "e-mail," electronic mail, faster by several orders of magnitude than the US Mail, which is scornfully known by Internet regulars as "snail mail." Internet mail is somewhat like a FAX. It is electronic text. But you don’t have to pay for it, at least not directly, and it’s global in scope. E-mail can also send software and certain forms of compressed digital imagery.
The discussion groups, or "news groups," are a world of their own. This world of news, debate and argument is generally known as "USENET." USENET is, in point of fact, quite different from the Internet. USENET is rather like an enormous billowing crowd of gossipy, news-hungry people, wandering in and through the Internet on their way to various private backyard barbecues. USENET is not so much a physical network as a set of social conventions. In any case, there are currently about 6,000 separate news groups on USENET. Naturally there is a vast amount of talk about computers on USENET, but the variety of subjects discussed is enormous, and it is growing larger all the time. USENET also distributes various free electronic journals and publications.
Both net news and e-mail are very widely available, even outside the high-speed core of the Internet itself. News and e-mail are easily accessible over common telephone lines. The other two Internet services, long-distance computing and file transfer, require what is known as "direct Internet access" using TCP/IP.
Long-distance computing was the original inspiration for ARPANET and is still a very useful service for some. Programmers can maintain accounts on distant, powerful computers, run programs there, or write their own. Scientists can make use of powerful supercomputers a continent away. Libraries offer their electronic card catalogs for free searching. Enormous CD-ROM catalogs are increasingly available through this service. And there are fantastic amounts of free software available.
File transfers, using file transfer protocol (FTP), allow Internet users to access remote machines and retrieve programs or text. Many Internet computers allow any person to access them anonymously, to simply copy their public files, free of charge. This is no small feat since entire books can be transferred through direct Internet access in a matter of minutes. By 1992, there were over a million such public files available to anyone who asked for them, and many more millions of files were available to people with accounts. Internet file-transfers are becoming a new form of publishing in which the reader simply electronically copies the work on demand, in any quantity he or she wants, at no cost. Internet programs, such as "archie," "gopher," and "WAIS" have been developed to catalog and explore these enormous archives of material.
The headless, anarchic, million-limbed Internet is spreading like bread mold. Any computer of sufficient power is a potential spore for the Internet, and today such computers sell for less than $2,000 and are in the hands of people all over the world. The spread of the Internet in the 90s resembles the spread of personal computing in the 1970s, though it is even faster. It may even be more important because it offers those personal computer users a means of cheap, easy storage and access that is truly planetary in scale.
The future of the Internet may be even bigger and exponentially faster. Commercialization of the Internet is a very hot topic today with every manner of wild new commercial information-service promised. The federal government, pleased with an unsought success, is also still very much in the act. NREN, the National Research and Education Network, was approved by the US Congress in fall 1991 as a five-year $2 billion project to upgrade the Internet "backbone." NREN will be some fifty times faster than the fastest network available today, allowing the electronic transfer of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in one hot second. Computer networks worldwide will feature 3-D animated graphics, radio and cellular phone-links to portable computers, as well as fax, voice, and high-definition television. A multimedia global circus!
How does one gain access to the Internet? If you don’t have a computer and a modem, get one. Your computer can act as a terminal, and you can use an ordinary telephone line to connect to an Internet-linked machine. These slower and simpler adjuncts to the Internet can provide you with the net news discussion groups and your own e-mail address. These are services worth having—though if you only have mail and news, you’re not actually "on the Internet" proper.
If you’re on a campus, your university probably has direct "dedicated access" to high-speed Internet TCPI/IP lines. Apply for an Internet account on a dedicated campus machine, and you may be able to get those hot-dog long-distance computing and file-transfer functions. Some cities, such as Cleveland, supply "freenet" community access. Businesses increasingly have Internet access and are willing to sell it to subscribers. The standard fee is about $40 a month—about the same as TV cable service.
Finding a link to the Internet is becoming much cheaper and easier. Its ease of use will also improve which is advantageous since the savage UNIX interface of TCP/IP leaves plenty of room for advancements in user-friendliness. Learning the Internet now, or at least learning about it, is wise. By the turn of the century, "network literacy," like "computer literacy" before it, will be forcing itself into the very texture of our lives.
Although the World Wide Web (WWW) was born earlier, it was not until 1993 with Mosaic, a program which allows people to use a graphical interface to browse the Internet, that the utilization of the Internet exploded. Fewer than 100 sites existed in 1992; this number is estimated to be near 60,000 by the end of 1995 in 175 countries. At the present growth rate, doubling every 12 to 18 months, the forecasted number of sites on-line by the turn of the century will be 300,000 with an estimate of over 200 million people using the facilities of the WWW. A California research firm, IDC, states that there are presently 38 million users of the Internet.
With the recent torrent of Internet and WWW related media coverage, a common error occurs when considering the Web and the Internet to be synonymous. In actuality, the Web is a collection of protocols and standards used to access the information available on the Internet. On the other hand, the Internet is the physical medium used to transport the data. The World Wide Web defines and unifies the "languages" used to retrieve the data available on the Internet.
The World Wide Web’s initial goal was to provide a single, unified means of accessing hypermedia documents from anywhere on the Internet. The development of NCSA Mosaic successfully captured the WWW’s power in a seamless interface that hid much of its inherent complexity. This interface made accessing sites throughout the world as simple as point and click. Mosaic’s ease and flexibility of use substantially contributed to the popularity of the Web. While the functionality achieved by Mosaic was not fundamentally different from that of other applications already available, Mosaic’s attractive interface quickly established a devoted user-base. In addition, Mosaic’s cross-platform availability offered Web access to users on Unix, Windows, and Mac machines.
The Web is primarily defined by three standards: URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). These standards are used by WWW servers and clients to provide a simple mechanism for locating, accessing, and displaying information available through other common network protocols such as FTP, Gopher, and telnet. However, HTTP serves as the primary protocol used to retrieve information via the Web.
One of the fundamental features of the Web is its hypertext orientation; Web documents may include links to other documents. In the Web context, these hyperlinks can point to information repositories located anywhere on the Internet. Hyperlinks have two features that enhanced their popularity; they are free and widely available and provide embedded links within textual documents. They may also provide links to sounds and images. As such, they combine hypertext with multimedia.
Hypertext is a way to link and access information of various kinds such as reports, notes, databases and computer documentation. Texts are linked together in such a way that one can go from one concept to another to find the information one wants. The network of links is called a "web." This type of system is clearly distinguished from those systems which follow a hierarchical model. The web is not hierarchical; therefore, it is not necessary to climb all the way up the tree before you can go down to a different but related subject. The links of the Web today also have the ability to cross machine boundaries with simple, common protocol for exchanging hypertext documents, a concept embodied in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
Hypermedia
The WWW’s seamless integration of linked graphics, audio, and video makes creating Web sites and accessing the Web both fun and interesting.
Uniform Resource Locators
URLs provide a standard means for consistently locating Internet documents. URLs offer a simple addressing scheme that unifies a wide variety of disparate protocols.
While the format of a URL is protocol-dependent, so that the format of a "mail to" URL is very different from that of an "http" URL, the majority of the URLs are similar to the format used by HTTP, Gopher, and FTP. These URLs specify the three pieces of information necessary to retrieve a document: the protocol to be used, the server and port to which to connect, and the file path to retrieve. While the FTP URL can be used to specify additional information, the typical format of these URLs is protocol://server-name:port/path.
The string identifying the protocol should not be capitalized. For example, the URL for the HTTP protocol should always begin with http://, not HTTP://. Some clients, such as Netscape, can handle this error while others, like Lynx and NCSA Mosaic, cannot. In the latest version of Netscape, this string may be omitted.
The server name is case-insensitive. Therefore, you can use the host name WWW.W3.ORG or www.w3.org. The server name can be a host name or an IP address. However, the use of an IP address is discouraged because it makes the address less flexible.
The port number and its preceding colon can be omitted for any of these protocols. If the port number is not present, the default port for the given protocol will be used. While the specifications permit the trailing slash to be omitted if no path is specified, it is generally good practice to leave the slash. Every time a Web client is asked to follow a link, it breaks the URL into its constituent parts and uses the protocol section to determine how to proceed.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTP is the primary protocol used to distribute information within the World Wide Web. It is a relatively simple, highly flexible protocol used to deliver information rapidly across the Internet. One of the initial goals of HTTP was to provide a simple algorithm that would ensure rapid response times.
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language, a language derived from SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language,) is the latest major innovation associated with the World Wide Web. HTML is similar to many other markup languages that define areas of text by "tagging" them with a specific format. The tags determine how the text should be rendered for the user.
Additionally, HTML provides the capability to create hypertext links between documents or pieces of documents. These links are used to represent the relationships between documents. Using hypertext links, a user writing on a topic could mark a piece of text as being linked to another document on a related topic. The links are the threads of information that form the structure of the World Wide Web.
Putting the Pieces Together
The HTML, HTTP, and URL specifications have worked in chorus to make the World Wide Web a tremendous phenomenon. Understanding the Web requires an understanding of how these components work, individually and together. Additionally, as these specifications rapidly evolve and are replaced, the advantages and compromises of the new technologies can be clearly evaluated in term of past successes.
Late in 1993, the founder of Silicon Graphics, James Clark, announced the formation of Mosaic Communications Corp. Later renamed Netscape Communications Corp., the company wrote a new version of Mosaic, called Netscape, from scratch. By 1994, the number of Web browser programs had skyrocketed. Spyglass, in Savoy, Ill., became the marketing and licensing arm for all commercial versions of the Mosaic.
While tool development is important, the explosion of Web content is an equally important part of the story. There are approximately 50,000 Web servers known to be online now, and this is expected to double every year for the next several years. New services vary from artistic tours of the Louvre to White House pages, and from company information from IBM and Microsoft to real-time displays from NASA. Federal Express has even put its package-tracking database online on the Web.
Somebody once summed it up best when they said, "The true unsung heroes here are the hundreds or even thousands of people all over the world who devoted large chunks of their time to put information content on the Web. Without them, NCSA Mosaic, Netscape, and the Web would be nothing."
- FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
- Telnet
- Gopher
- Veronica/Jughead Searches
- World Wide Web (WWW)
Every individual using the Internet, either directly or via an Internet provider, is given an E-Mail address. Utilizing this address and a simple mail program, anyone on the Internet may send a letter to anyone else on the Internet, or any of the major online systems such as Compuserve, America Online, and Prodigy, regardless of where the receiver is on the planet, at no cost.
ANONYMOUS FTP (FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL)
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) copies a file from one computer to another. Users can search directories on computers worldwide, locate a file and transfer a copy of it to their own machine. The most useful computers have an access code called "Anonymous FTP" where users are allowed to access files without obtaining a special access code.
TELNET
TELNET is a way of logging on to remote computers and using their public files. While many computer systems do not allow anyone without an authorized account onto their system, there are some systems that allow limited access to public areas. You cannot transfer files, but you can use programs on the remote system. Through telnet, you can connect to the Library of Congress, look up Census data, study Supreme Court decisions, gather weather reports from around the world, and much more. Vast arrays of online libraries and databases exist throughout the Internet, and telnet is the tool that enables users to access them.
GOPHER
Gopher, named after the University of Minnesota mascot, is one way to move around the Internet without having to learn all kinds of computer commands. Many organizations have established their own gophers as a way to allow members to use the Internet more easily and effectively.
VERONICA / JUG HEAD SEARCHES VIA GOPHER
Veronica and Jughead search Gophers worldwide. Once you have established a connection with another computer via Gopher, you may use Veronica or Jughead to search its databases.
WORLD WIDE WEB (WWW)
Computers hooked into the Internet system can use hypertext capabilities to manipulate electronic text, graphical images, videos and sounds. The World Wide Web is another way of accessing the information available in computers and computer systems around the world in a format that is easy to use, learn and manipulate. It is the "Windows" GUI (Graphical User Interface) of the Internet. The main unit of a computer utilizing the WWW is a Home Page (HP). This HP is a hypertext document consisting of text and graphics which may also contain links to other documents (pages) on this computer or any other computer utilizing the WWW. The link is a segment of text or graphic which, when clicked upon with a mouse, takes you to a distant location. Utilizing these links, a user on the WWW may browse through a world of computers with the click of a button.
| Archie | A search engine developed to explore and retrieve files from the Internet archives. |
| ARPA | Advanced Research Projects Agency. |
| Authoring | Software that creates an HTML document for publication on the WWW. |
| Backbone | A major high-speed access point to which networks are connected. |
| Browser | A program used to search, retrieve and view the text and graphic pages on the WWW. |
| Cyberspace | A term used to refer to the total online environment (Internet). |
| Daemon | A program that runs on a Unix workstation, waiting to handle requests. |
| DNS | Domain Name Service - a means by which numeric IP addresses are mapped to friendlier domain names. |
| Electronic Mail. | |
| FAQ | A list of frequently asked questions and their answers. |
| Firewall | Software that restricts traffic to a particular area of a network. |
| FTP | File Transfer Protocol - allows users to access and retrieve programs or text. |
| GIF | Graphics Interchange Format - a commonly used type of graphic format on the Internet. |
| Gopher | A menu-driven tool for locating information on the Internet. |
| Home Page | The initial entry point, which often serves as a main menu, into a Web document. |
| HTML | Hypertext Markup Language. |
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol. |
| IAB | The Internet Architecture Board - the "ruling council" that establishes standards. |
| IETF | The Internet Engineering Task Force - a volunteer group of technical experts. |
| IMAP | Internet Message Access Protocol - defines commands for mailbox activity. |
| IMHO | In My Humble Opinion - a polite way to state your opinion on the Internet. |
| IMSP | Internet Mail Support Protocol. |
| IP | Internet Protocol. |
| IP Address | The numeric address of a computer connected to the Internet. |
| IRC | Internet Relay Chat - an Internet-based application that allows users to interact. |
| ISP | Internet Service Provider - an organization that provides connections to the Internet. |
| JPEG | Joint Photographic Experts Group - an image compression standard. |
| Link | A connection between two points; a communication link. |
| Listserv | A program allowing private mailing lists to be maintained and sent. |
| MILNET | Military Network. |
| Mosaic | A graphical browser for the Web developed by NCSA. |
| NCP | Network Control Protocol. |
| NCSA | National Center for Supercomputing Applications. |
| Newbie | A novice to the Internet. |
| NNTP | Network News Transfer Protocol - a TCPIIP protocol that defines how newsgroup work. |
| NREN | National Research and Education Network. |
| NSF | National Science Foundation. |
| NSFNET | The National Science Foundation Network. |
| Ping | A UNIX program that checks to make sure another computer is online. |
| POP | Point of Presence - the closest location for a user to connect to the Internet. |
| Posting | An individual article sent to a USENET. |
| PPP | Point-to-Point Protocol - allows a machine to connect to the Internet via a phone line. |
| SGML | Standard Generalized Markup Language - defining the structure of digital documents. |
| S-HTTP | Privacy and authentification extensions for the Hypertext Transport Protocol (HUP). |
| SMTP | Simple Mail Transfer Protocol - the protocol that defines the transfer of e-mail. |
| Snail Mail | Mail sent with a stamp. |
| TCP/IP | Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. |
| TCP | Transmission Control Protocol. |
| URL | Uniform Resource Locators - the hieroglyphic address given for a particular site. |
| USENET | An informal group of systems that exchange news. |
| WAIS | Wide Area Information Service - developed to catalog the enormous Internet archives. |
| White Pages | Lists of Internet users that are accessible through the Internet. |
| WHOIS | A database that provides information about a host computer. |
| WYSIWYG | What You See Is What You Get. |
Articles
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