This Web page will answer the following questions:
What is the Internet?
(including viewing web pages, performing searches and downloading files)
The “Net” is simply a computer network, which is composed of computers and connections which speak the same protocol, and therefore permit information to be sent to differing systems. In a computer network an information message is routed to a particular computer. More accurately, the Net is an interconnected network of networks, where information can be sent to or received by particular networks, or particular systems within a network. As of August 1994, more than 20,000 networks on every continent connecting more than 3 million computers were part of the Internet, with 1,000 new networks and 100,000 computers per month being added (Levine and Baroudi, 1994).
An Internet Protocol (IP) address is assigned to every computer on the Internet. The IP address is hierarchically assigned, and the dotted octet numbers indicate the network, subnetwork and computer. Not only does each computer on the Internet have a unique address, it also has a unique name. Name servers are set up so users need only type in the name of the address (eg. gemnet.msu.edu). The names are much easier for humans to identify computers, rather than decoding dotted-octet IP addresses.
The essential components of the Internet are the people who use it and the information that resides on it.
How can I gain access to the Internet?
Very simply, to be on the net, a computer must either reside on a local area network that is connected to the Internet (direct connection), or it may connect to the Internet via a modem and telephone line. In the latter case, you are actually dialing into a computer system that is on the Internet.
Groups that provide access to the Internet are called Internet service providers or Internet access providers. If your city has a freenet, try that first because it’s free. At gopher://burrow.cl.msu.edu:70/11/internet/type a list of FREE-NET providers can be accessed. Two western Michigan sites that were found are Grand Rapids Freenet (http://www.grfn.org/) and MacNet an electronic service of the Macatawa Area Community Network (http://www.macatawa.org/). If free access is not available, investigate commercial providers.
Numerous sites currently exist on the net which provide links to service providers or lists of service providers, for example the Internet Access Provider Lists for Michigan (http://www.herbison.com/herbison/iap_meta_list_us_mi.html), An Incomplete List of Internet Access Providers with Michigan POP's (http//:www.hamjudo.com/michiganiap.html) and The List (http://thelist.iworld.com/), which provides graphic access to a list of providers.
In the absence of a local provider, try Delphi (http://www.delphi.com/) which provides national service to the Internet.
What can I do on the Internet?
Electronic mail is the most widely used Internet service. In order to send or receive e-mail, you must have an e-mail account on an Internet host computer which is running e-mail server software. You can send e-mail to anyone on the Internet by knowing their e-mail address, which is their account name (known as the mailbox) followed by the @ symbol, followed by the internet name of the machine their account is on (known as the domain).
Mailing Lists
Mailing lists, which are simply electronic mailing lists, are usually created for a particular group. If you are interested in a particular topic, you can subscribe to what is called a mailing list. The list itself has an e-mail address, and anything that someone sends to that address is sent to all the people on the list (Levine and Baroudi, 1995). With a listserv, messages are delivered to the persons e-mail inbox. List servers enable you to join, mail servers are programs that respond to e-mail messages.
Mailing lists are either managed manually or automatically. Subscribing and unsubscribing to a manually managed mailing list is simple, just send an e-mail to the list server with the message subscribe or unsubscribe. The list server will have one e-mail address for subscribe/unsubscribe messages and another address to send actual list messages.
The most widely used automatic mailing managers are a family of programs known as LISTSERV and Majordomo. To subscribe to a LISTSERV mailing list, send mail to LISTSERV@some.machine, where some.machine is the name of the particular machine where the mailing list resides. LISTSERV mailing lists usually end with -L. In order to subscribe to a list, which resides at msu.edu, send a message to LISTSERV@msu.edu containing the following line:
SUBSCRIBE "listname" "yourname"
To send a message to this list, mail to the list name at the same machine - providing a descriptive Subject will be most useful.
To unsubscribe, simply send a message to LISTSERV@some.machine containing the following line:
UNSUBSCRIBE "listname"
(see Levine and Baroudi, 1995 for LISTSERV tricks)
Majordomo is another widely used mailing list manager. The mailing address for Majordomo commands is majordomo@some.machine. To subscribe, send mail to Majordomo@some.machine, where some.machine is the name of the particular machine where the mailing list resides. In order to subscribe to a list which resides at msu.edu, send a messaged to Majordomo@msu.edu containing the following line:
subscribe "listname"
To send a message to this list, mail to the list name at the same machine - listname@msu.edu.
To unsubscribe, simply send a message to Majordomo@some.machine containing the following line:
unsubscribe "listname"
Take a look at Diane Kovacs Directory of Scholarly Electronic Conferences, it may prove to be a helpful site for examining what lists exist.
While some lists allow you to subscribe to electronic journals or newsletters, others allow you to electronically communicate back and forth with others.
Bulletin Boards
Electronic bulletin board systems (BBS) typically provide on-line services with a particular focus and at a local level. They can provide e-mail, chatting and forums. While most BBS are at a smaller scale, Usenet is a bulletin board with about 100 million characters of messages in more than 4,000 different topic groups. Usenet is also viewed as a newsgroup system which consists of a set of "newsgroups" with names that are classified hierarchically by subject.
Newsgroups
Similar to mailing lists, newsgroups are related to specific topics of interest. However, with newsgroups, people on computers with the appropriate software can "post" or send "articles" or "messages" to the newsgroup's server where they are stored. The articles are then broadcast to other interconnected computer systems through networks. Some newsgroups are "moderated"; in these newsgroups, the articles are first sent to a moderator for approval before appearing in the newsgroup. The servers store these e-mail messages by topic into “news groups”. There are over 4,000 news groups at last count (Buckley 1995). Users connect to the news servers using a “news reader” client program. With newsgroups, the user goes to a newsgroup site and can choose which messages to read.
Newsgroups that may prove useful in watershed management include:
Discussion Name: LAKES-L
Topic: Lake and watershed management Subscription
Address: MAJORDOMO@BADGER.STATE.WI.US
Moderated? Yes
Archives:
Contact Address: James Vennie LAKEBB@DNRMAI.DNR.WISC.GOV
Submission Address: LAKES-L@BADGER.STATE.WI.US
Keywords: Lake management - Reservoir management
VR: 11th Revision 8/1/96Discussion Name: AQUIFER
Topic: Discussion of aquifer pollution and groundwater recharge.
Subscription Address: listserv@vm.csata.it
Moderated? No
Archives: Private
Contact Address: TURSO@vm.csata.it
Submission Address: AQUIFER@vm.csata.it
Keywords: Aquifer Management
VR: 11th Revision /1/96Discussion Name: AUDUBON
Topic: Discussion of the role of the National Audubon Society. The range of topics (NAFTA to habitat restoration) mirrors the "Think Globally, Act Locally" attitude of its founders.
Subscription Address: AutoShare@rip.physics.unk.edu
Moderated? No
Archives: Yes
Contact Address: Robert I. Price price@rip.physics.unk.edu or price@platte.unk.edu
Submission Address: audubon@rip.physics.unk.edu
Keywords: Audubon Society - Environmental Studies
VR: 11th Revision /1/96Discussion Name: ENVIROLAW
Topic: Environmental and natural resource law students throughout the world
Subscription Address: mailserv@oregon.uoregon.edu
Moderated?
Archives:
Contact Address:
Submission Address: ENVIROLAW@oregon.uoregon.edu
Keywords: Environmental Law
VR: 11th Revision /1/96Discussion Name: GLRC
Topic: Great Lakes Research Consortium Information Service
Subscription Address: GLRC-Request@listserv.syr.edu
Moderated? Yes
Archives: No
Contact Address: Jack Manno JPMANNO@mailbox.syr.edu
Submission Address: GLRC@listserv.syr.edu
Keywords: Great Lakes Research - Fresh Water Biology
VR: 11th Revision /1/96Discussion Name: WATER-L
Topic: Discussion list about water quality
Subscription Address: listproc@listproc.wsu.edu
Moderated? No
Archives: No
Contact Address: wright@wsu.edu
Submission Address: WATER-L@listproc.wsu.edu
Keywords: Water - Environment
VR: 11th Revision /1/96Finding newsgroups and mailing lists of interest can be time consuming. Several sites have been established to make this easier, Finding Newsgroups and Mailing Lists (http://www.synapse.net/~radio/finding.htm#Finding Newsgroups) is a most helpful site.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
FTP allows you to transfer files either in ascii (text) mode or binary (image) mode over the Internet. With FTP you can either get files from a remote site, or put files there.
Telnet
Telnet allows you to make a connection to a remote computer across the Internet. You can then use programs available on the remote system.
Surfing techniques...
Early techniques for manuevering through the Internet included Gopher and WAIS. Gopher servers are menu based file/document servers. The menus on gopher servers are text based, unlike the more aesthetic graphical menus on the Web.
By far, the most commonly used technique is the World Wide Web (Web). The Web is the collective term for Web servers and clients on the Internet. Web servers store hypertext documents that Web clients (browsers) download and display on a client’s system. The Web has multi-media capabilities, with hypertext documents, called Web pages, which may contain text, images, animation, sound, video or hot links to other Web pages. Hypertext documents allow words to be specified as links to other Web documents. These highlighted words appear in a color, specified by your browser’s Preferences setting, and are called hyperlinks. By clicking the hyperlinks, a user navigates, or surfs, through the Web from one page to another.
In order to access the Web, you need: a Windows capable PC; a Web client program (browser) such as Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer, NCSA Mosaic, Cello, Lynx and WinWeb; and either a direct connection to the Internet, an on-line service subscription or a Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) or Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connection. On-line services include: Compuserve, America Online (AOL), Prodigy, Genie, Delphi, and Microsoft Network. These services make Internet connection simple by providing a windows client program and a special phone number.
So, with Web access what can I accomplish...
View Web pages
Every document at a Web site has a unique address called a Uniform Resources Locator (URL). Using the example, http://www.iwr.msu.edu/edmodule/ilmfrm1.htm, the first part “http://” indicates what type of server is at this location. The Internet address for the Web site follows the server type, this tells you where the document is located. In our example, the Web server is located at the Institute of Water Research (iwr), Michigan State University (msu), which is an educational (edu) institution. The /edmodule/ part of the URL tells you that the document ilmfrm1.htm is in the /edmodule directory on this server.
Search for documents
Given the vast amount of information available on the Web, its no wonder that there is no master directory of all the Web Sites available on the Internet. However, several organizations have assembled Web resource directories that provide subject-oriented searches, including:
At times subject oriented searches are limiting or yield unsatisfactory results, in these cases search engines can prove very useful.
When your topic does not fit into the category structure of a subject directory, you can launch an Internet search engine that will search other Web pages by titles, subject, or keywords. Popular search engines include:
Create lists of favorite sites (Bookmarks)
Bookmarks represent the browser’s address book. You can add Web URL locations to the address book by using the Add Bookmark option.
Download text, images, sound and video
Download files from FTP sites (data, freeware, shareware) e.g. MapThis, NCSA Mosaic which is a public domain browser (ftp.mcsa.uius.edu).
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