

\| About the Class \| The World Wide Web \| Using Eudora E-mail \| \| What is the Internet? \| FTP-Telnet-News-Etc. \| More Information \|

What is the Internet?

Information Protocols
Uniform Resource Locators
How Do I Get Connected?

The Internet is a globe-spanning INTERconnection of computer NETworks. The Internet (or "net") allows information to be exchanged between the millions of connected computers. To access this information, you need a computer with the necessary software, and a connection to the net.

All of the computers on the Internet speak the same lauguage: TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). Many of the computers on the net act as "Servers" -- these machines pass out the information. To access this information, your computer must run special "Client" software which can interact with the servers. You may use a different client program on your Mac for each type of information you wish to access. Some programs, such as Netscape, are clients for more than one kind of Internet information.

Below is a table summarizing some of the categories of information available on the Internet:

Type of Information	Protocol Name	URL Prefix	Example Clients
Electronic Mail: Private messages between people, and messages to people from automated mailing list servers.	Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP)	mailto	Eudora, Netscape, PINE
World Wide Web pages -- contain information in the form of text, graphics, etc., plus interactive forms. "HyperText" links between pages.	HyperText Transport Protocol	http	Netscape, Internet Explorer, Mosaic, Lynx
Software programs or data files (text, pictures, movies, etc.) for downloading to your computer.	File Transfer Protocol	ftp	Fetch, Netscape, ftp
USENET Newsgroups: Messages posted by users for everyone to read, covering thousands of topics.	Net News Transport Protocol	news	NewsWatcher, Netscape, PINE
Login and use another computers on the net.	Telnet Protocol	telent	NCSA Telnet, telnet
Gopher information servers: Linked directory menus; Mainly text-based information.	Gopher Protocol	gopher	TurboGopher, Netscape

Uniform Resource Locators (or, Where_is_it@on.the.net?)

To tell someone else how to find a specific location, address, or piece of information on the Internet, you need to specify its "address." This is done using a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). We will spend a considerable amount of time in class working with URLs.

URLs have the format:

prefix://server_computer_name/path_to_directory_or_file

...Where the "prefix" is one of those given in the table above (to specify the kind of information), the "server_computer_name" is the IP address or domain name of the server computer, and "path_to_directory_or_file" is an optional directory pathway pointing to a specific directory or data file on the server.

E-mail address are somewhat different (see the discussion on the e-mail page).

What??

Here are some examples of URLs:

ftp://ftp.megacorp.com/pub/products/new_stuff.txt	This URL says to use a file transfer protocol (ftp) client to connect to the server "ftp.megacorp.com" and get a text file named "new_stuff" which is in a public directory about products.
http://www.megacorp.com/welcome.html	This URL says to use a world wide web browser (http protocol) to connect to the web server "www.megacorp.com" and view the "welcome" web page.
mailto:beach@la.unm.edu	This URL tells you that you can send e-mail to beach (that's me!) at the mailserver of "la.unm.edu" (our campus mailserver). This is often written as just: <beach@la.unm.edu>
telnet://libros.unm.edu	This URL says to use a telnet client to connect directly to the computer "libros.unm.edu" -- this is the UNM Main Campus Library card catalog computer, and it will let anyone log on.
news://lynx.unm.edu/rec.models.rockets	This URL can tell some newsreader clients to connect to "lynx.unm.edu" (the news server we use) and display the messages in the "rec.models.rockets" newsgroup.

You will often see URLs enclosed in angle brackets (the < and > symbols) in running text to make it clearer that this string of characters is a URL. The brackets are not part of the URL. People often write down just part of the URL if the think the rest is obvious (for example, "www.scifi.com" is obviously a world wide web address -- it is the SciFi Channel's Home Page).

How Do I Get Connected?

To gain access to the Internet, you need a computer with the necessary software installed, and you need a connection to the net.

In this class, we will mainly be concerned with how to use the Internet from the Macintosh computers on the UNM-LA Campus Network. We have an excellent set-up, with good client software installed, and a fast, full-access direct connection to the Internet. The University pays for the access -- you don't pay (other than the fact that your tuition and fees pay for part of it).

If you want to access the Internet from your home or business, you will need the following:

A Computer (sufficiently powerful to run the needed software)
A Modem (allows your computer to talk to other computers over telephone lines)
TCP/IP Software (allows your computer to talk the language of the Internet)
PPP or SLIP Protocol Software (allows a full-access Internet connection over phone lines)
Client Software (for the types of information you want to access)
An Account with an Internet Service Provider

TCP/IP: The Macintosh computer gets the ability to speak TCP/IP from the MacTCP control panel software (on older Macs) or the TCP/IP control panel software (under Open Transport on newer Mac Systems). This software now comes free with Mac System software.

FreePPP is a free program which will allow your Mac to talk over a modem connection using "Point to Point Protocol." There are other free programs for using a SLIP ("Serial Line Internet Protocol") connection, but PPP is better.

Clients: All of the excellent client software we will use in class is free (Netscape is only free because you are a student -- normal humans have to pay for it). You can copy this software from our hard disks, or download it from the net.

Internet Service Provider: Ah...This part costs money. ISP's usually charge between $15 and $30 per month, plus initial set-up fee, depending on the deals they offer. You want to find an ISP that has a local dial-up number -- otherwise you would end up paying long-distance charges to your phone company.

Here are some links to the Web Pages of several Internat Service Providers with Los Alamos or Santa Fe dial-up numbers:

Note: UNM-LA does not have PPP or SLIP dial-up connections.

On-Line Services: An alternative to getting a full-access account from an ISP, is to connect to an On-Line Service, such as America On-line, Compuserve, Prodigy, etc. (Note: Many of these On-Line Services are now also ISP's.) You can get access to e-mail and other Internet resources through an account with these companies, but you may be limited in your choice of client software or services. It is often easier to connect to an on-line service than it is to wrestle with setting up a full-access account.

For free Compuserve software, call: 1-800-848-8199
For free America Online software, call: 1-800-827-6364