The Internet's the biggest network the world has ever seen. A network is a term that describes two or more computers that are hooked together by a physical device, such as cable, or a wireless device, such as infra-red or satellite wavelengths. Tens of millions use it every day, but few truly understand how it works. This chapter gives you a basic understanding of what the Internet is and how the World Wide Web relates to it.
Specifically, the chapter covers the following:
If you're slightly confused about what the Internet is, you're in good company. There's no neat answer. A definition that most experts can live with is that it's a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Proto-col (TCP/IP)-bound network of networks and their common, accessible resources. In short, it is a series of computers connected together that speak the same networking language (TCP/IP).
The Internet was born from many fathers, but ARPAnet, a U.S. Defense agency, and hence the Internet, sprang from the Cold War. The new net-work was meant to be one that would keep working even if parts were destroyed in a nuclear war. Data would be lost, but communications would continue.
In the late 1960s, the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) set about developing a network that tied together geographically distant computers using a technology of sharing data lines called packet-switching. In short, packet-switching lets data be divided into small chunks and sent across data lines (such as telephone lines) to another computer or to several computers. When the chunks of data arrive at the other end, they are assembled again in its original form.
From this original Internet (called the DARPAnet at the time) came other services such as e-mail, file transfer protocol (ftp), and Gopher. Eventually, the World Wide Web was added as well.
One service, Usenet newsgroups, though often confused with the Internet, is actually only one of its supersets. Usenet really isn't a network at all, but a distribution system whose messages consist of e-mail and publicly available messages bundled by topic (known as newsgroups).
Beyond even the Internet and Usenet is what Internet expert John Quartermain calls the Matrix. The Matrix is the sum of all networks that can communicate with each other. Every bulletin board system with Internet mail capacity and all important online services, such as America Online, CompuServe, and the Microsoft Network, are all part of the Matrix. In short, the Matrix is the superset of all networks that can communicate with each other—including the Internet.
The Internet is big and getting bigger every day. Although much of this growth springs from new Internet machines coming online, the major commercial online services are also merging with the Internet. America Online, CompuServe, and the Microsoft Network have added direct connections to the Internet by providing TCP/IP support to the Internet. This means that consumers can purchase an account with one of these services to get Internet and Web access, as well as access the propriety information on the commercial service.
Who controls the Internet? Although there's no grand committee of scientists or a federal agency in charge of the Internet, there are organizations that guide the Internet. These groups, such as the Internet Society (ISOC), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), try to direct, design, and approve changes in the Internet. These groups lead the worldwide Internet community by consensus rather then by any dicta or legal authority.
When someone wants to make a change to the Internet they submit a proposal to the IETF in the form of a Request for Proposal (usually referred to as RFCs). RFC documents, which automatically expire after six months, are essentially working notes, and not hard and fast standards. You can find all of the submitted RFCs by visiting the IETF Web site at http://www.ietf.org.
The Internet is no one's property. It's an open network that welcomes anyone who can connect with it and obey the rules of the road. You might think of the Internet as being the property of your Internet provider or your Internet software company; it's not. Although the Internet isn't free, one way or the other, access is always paid for. No company or government has any claim over its totality. Parts, to be sure, are controlled by companies such as IBM or consortiums such as the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX, pronounced kicks), but even the largest group holds only a part of the whole Internet picture.
In the early 70s, work progressed on a network protocol that could handle interconnecting heterogeneous networks. The resulting protocol was Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). TCP/IP's great strength is that it easily enables computers of different architectures and operating systems to communicate with each other.
For the Internet to make any sense of where a message or file should go, an addressing scheme is needed. On the Internet, each Internet host (or server) has a domain name. A domain name consists of labels separated by periods, such as in the following example:
vna.digex.net.
Computers don't understand the English language, as shown in the preceding domain name. What the Internet hosts use as addresses are IP addresses, which are integers separated by periods. In the preceding example, vna.digex.net's IP address is 164.109.213.7. Web addresses, such as www.disney.com, are actually IP addresses using the domain name addressing scheme. As you can see, it's much easier to remember domain names instead of a string of seemingly arbitrary numbers.
When you connect to the Internet, you must have a unique IP address that identifies you. You receive this IP address from your network administrator if you connect to the Internet using a local area net-work (such as at work) or an Internet Service Provider (ISP), which is usually the case if you connect to the Internet using a modem.
In many cases when you dial into the Internet through an ISP, you are assigned a dynamic IP address. Dynamic IP addresses are not permanently assigned to you but are assigned from a pool of IP addresses when you log into the ISP.
Normally, no one has to worry about IP addresses because the distributed name and address directory program, the Domain Name System (DNS), takes care of translating from domain names to IP addresses. This is a significant TCP/IP advantage. Sometimes, however, your DNS server will either be down or its address list will be incorrect. In that case, you might need to use the actual IP address to access the service or Web site.
Another TCP/IP advantage is that it's not bound in any way to a physical medium. Whether its wireless, token-ring, ordinary phone lines, or smoke signals, if you can transmit data through it, you can use TCP/IP on it. This interoperability is an important issue because of the diversity of computer systems and operating systems around the World connected to the Internet. If a system in Paris, France offers an online tour of Le Louvre Museum on a Sun Sparc Station (a type of computer that runs Unix), for example, you can view the site via the Web even if you are sitting in Chicago, IL running a Windows 95 computer. TCP/IP makes this connectivity possible.
There are three different end-user Internet connection levels, all of which spring from Internet Points of Presence (POP). An Internet Point of Presence is simply a place with modems, routers, and terminal servers that enables outside users to call in and connect to the Internet. The types of connections that are available as follows:
If you're interested in what happens when you call a POP, read this. If not, skip to the section "Making IP Connections." When you call a POP, you first connect with a modem. Your signal is then relayed to a server, which translates your call into TCP/IP data. The server then sends your transformed data to the local Internet host computer. In return, the server translates the Internet's computer responses into signals that your modem understands. The host computer, in turn, uses special networking hardware called routers to connect with the rest of the Internet. From where you sit, this process is completely invisible.
The only type of connection you should use to connect to the World Wide Web is IP. Although the other two connections enable you to connect to the Internet, and, in the case of the shell connection to the Web, you can't get all the features of the Web using these two connections. For this reason, only the IP connection is discussed here.
There are two ways to make an IP connection to the Internet when you dial into an ISP using a modem—SLIP and PPP. The method used is determined by the service you dial into. The oldest method is SLIP, Serial Line Internet Protocol, and is generally associated with older Unix systems. SLIP connections can still be made using Windows or Macintosh computers, but the installation process is usually difficult.
SLIP, although still popular, is slowly being overhauled by Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). One advantage that PPP has over SLIP is that it can automatically assign IP addresses, making it easier for the general populace (such as you and me) to establish an Internet connection. PPP can also encapsulate other network layer protocols, such as Novell NetWare's IPX, instead of just IP. The latter makes PPP useful for hooking into non-TCP/IP networks that are connected to the Internet by a router.
With either SLIP or PPP, your machine becomes an actual part of the Internet. To make use of the connection to the Internet and to access the Web, you also need TCP/IP programs, such as Telnet, FTP, or Web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator), installed on your computer.
There are several advantages to accessing the Internet through an IP connection. For instance, you can run multiple programs at once. In one Telnet window, you can be chatting with someone using Internet Relay Chat (IRC), transferring a file using an FTP utility, while at the same time surfing the Web using a Web browser.
"So how does the Web fit into all this?" you ask. Very easily, actually. From a structural point of view, the Web is made up of four parts, as follows:
Before we go into specifics, here are the basics. Like the Internet, the Web isn't under anyone's control. It is simply an open set of standards that work because everyone who uses it agrees to play by its rules.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guides the Web. The goal of the W3C is to develop the Web into a global information infrastructure capable of supporting commercial as well as research activities. In particular, the W3C intends to make sure that the Web doesn't fragment into incompatible sub-webs. There are other groups that shepherd the Web. Perhaps the most important of them is the same Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that establishes technical guidelines for the Internet.
The reason for this close relationship between the Internet and the Web is quite simple: The Web can't exist without the Internet. The Web runs on the Internet like cars over bridges.
A browser is the client in the Web's client-server model. A client program is one that you interact with. The server, which you don't touch, supplies information to the client as it relays your requests to it. In short, a browser is your gateway to the Web. Everything that you see on the Web passes through the lens of your browser.
A browser can display only files that it understands. Most files you'll run into will be hypermedia files written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and any Web browser will be able to read them. Figure 2.1 shows you a raw HTML file; figure 2.2 shows you this same file in a Web browser.
Figure 2.1. HTML files enable users to view documents on the Web.
Figure 2.2. The HTML file in figure 2.1 displayed in a Web browser.
There will be some files that your browser may not understand. For example, most of the images and illustrations that you'll find on the Web will either be in Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) or Joint Photographics Experts Group (JPEG). Some files, such as other graphics files or files created in standard word processors (such as Microsoft Word), require the browser to use another program, called a viewer or helper application, to display these files. As time goes by and browsers mature, browsers will start incorporating viewers. Some viewers are available on the Internet and can be downloaded using your Web browser.
With the release of Netscape Navigator 2.0, another type of viewer application is supported—plug-ins. Plugs-in are applications that you install to work with Netscape to view and work with files that Netscape cannot handle directly. One such plug-in is WebFX. WebFX displays and enables users to view and inter-act with three-dimensional worlds on the Web written in the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML).
Many companies have developed plug-ins to work with Netscape to support many types of files, including the following types of files:
- Adobe Acrobat PDF files
- Microsoft Excel spreadsheets
- ASAP presentation files
- QuickTime video files
Web browsers try to deal with the file type problem by using Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). MIME began as extensions to the Internet's Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) (see table 2.1 for a sampling of MIME types), enabling mail messages to carry binary data such as programs, sounds, and pictures (instead of just plain text like e-mail messages). Since then, it's become a de facto standard for identifying file types on the Web.
Table 2.1. MIME Types
|
MIME Types/MIME SubTypes |
Extensions |
|
application/mac-binhex40
|
hqx
|
|
application/msword
|
doc
|
|
application/pdf
|
pdf
|
|
application/postscript
|
ai, eps, ps
|
|
application/rtf
|
rtf
|
|
application/zip
|
zip
|
|
audio/basic
|
au, snd
|
|
audio/x-aiff
|
aif aiff aifc
|
|
audio/x-wav
|
wav
|
|
image/gif
|
gif
|
|
image/jpeg
|
jpeg, jpg, jpe
|
|
image/tiff
|
tiff tif
|
|
image/x-portable-bitmap
|
pbm
|
|
image/x-portable-pixmap
|
ppm
|
|
image/x-xbitmap
|
xbm
|
|
image/x-xpixmap
|
xpm
|
|
text/html
|
html
|
|
text/plain
|
asc, txt
|
|
video/mpeg
|
mpeg, mpg, mpe
|
|
video/quicktime
|
qt, mov, moo
|
|
video/x-msvideo
|
avi |
Your browser's configuration settings has an area in which you define MIME types and helper applications to enable your browser to recognize and activate a helper application when you encounter a certain file type. Figures 2.3 and 2.4 show the configuration dialog boxes for two different Web browsers. Check your browser's documentation for the exact way you need to get your browser to work in cooperation with a helper application.
Figure 2.3. In Mosaic 2.0, you use the Viewers tab on the NCSA Mosaic for Windows Preference dialog box to set helper applications.
Figure 2.4. In Netscape Navigator 2.0, you use the Helpers tab in the Preferences dialog box to set helper applications.
Some of the most popular viewers for the file types that you're likely to encounter are listed in table 2.2.
Table 2.2. MIME Types and Viewer Programs
|
Type/Subtypes |
Mac Viewers |
Windows Viewers |
|
application/msword
|
MS-Word
|
MS-Word
|
|
application/pdf
|
Acrobat
|
Acrobat
|
|
application/postscript
|
Not Needed
|
GhostScript
|
|
application/rtf
|
MS-Word
|
MS-Word
|
|
application/wordperfect
|
WordPerfect
|
WordPerfect
|
|
application/zip
|
StuffIt
|
PKzip
|
|
audio/basic
|
Sound Machine
|
WPlany
|
|
audio/x-aiff
|
Sound Machine
|
WPlany
|
|
audio/x-wav (wav)
|
Sound Machine
|
WPlany
|
|
image/gif
|
JPEGView
|
LView
|
|
image/jpeg
|
JPEGView
|
LView
|
|
text/html
|
Netscape, Mosaic
|
Netscape, Mosaic
|
|
text/plain text
|
Netscape, Mosaic
|
Netscape, Mosaic
|
|
video/mpeg
|
Sparkle
|
MPEGPlay
|
|
video/quicktime
|
Simple Player
|
Quick Time Video Player
|
|
video/x-msvideo
|
N/A
|
Video for Windows |
What happens when your browser can't determine the file type? The browser will display a screen like the one shown in figure 2.5. This screen prompts you to make a decision about what the browser should do with the file. In older browsers, you didn't get a prompt like this; instead, the browser would attempt to display it like a regular HTML file and you ended up with a screen full of garbage, or in the worst cases your program crashed.
Figure 2.5. When you encounter an executable file, Netscape Navigator 2 prompts you to save the file onto your hard disk.
With Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, you can set it up to automatically execute programs you download from the World Wide Web or Internet. Although this is a quick way to launch programs, you should probably first download the file to your hard drive and then run a virus-checking program to determine if the program you just downloaded is safe from damaging viruses. After you check the program and it is safe, you then can execute it from your hard drive.
If it weren't for hypermedia documents, we wouldn't have a Web to play on. The vast majority of Web documents are written in HTML. HTML, as you'll see, isn't without its problems for online publishers, so some authors are looking toward other hypermedia authoring languages or systems. The most important of these is Adobe's Acrobat and its Portable Document Format (PDF).
Before we discuss conflicting standards, let's take a closer look at HTML and PDF. HTML comes from Standard General Makeup Language (SGML), ISO 8879h. SGML is a set of rules for creating document grammars—the rules on how a document should be formatted. The specification for the SGML rules is a Document Type Definition (DTD). In SGML, documents are written in ASCII text, but may represent anything from a speech to dance choreography.
HTML is a rogue SGML DTD. Although HTML looks and acts like an SGML DTD, HTML doesn't obey all SGML rules. There are efforts afoot to regularize HTML into a true SGML DTD.
HTML and its descendants, HTML+, HTML 2.0, and HTML 3.0, are far more limited than SGML. In essence, HTML is a small collection of tags for formatting documents. Because of this, HTML lacks the grace and power of even an early desktop publishing program. In short, an HTML author has only the most limited control over what his reader will see on the screen.
The latest version of HTML is HTML 3.2. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), headed by Tim Berners-Lee and made up of representatives of several leading Internet developers (including Netscape, Microsoft, IBM, and Macromedia), agreed to release HTML 3.2 in mid-1996 as a benchmark for later revisions to the HTML specifications. Up to this point, many developers have created their own HTML tags to work only with their Web browser, splintering the HTML language and making it difficult for Web page authors and developers to know which HTML tags are approved by the W3C. The W3C has agreed to include HTML tags developed and published prior to December 31, 1995 in HTML 3.2. Tags and extensions to HTML, such as style sheets and page layout specifications, developed after this date will be added to later HTML versions that are adopted as supplemental documents to the HTML specifications. You can read more about HTML by looking at the Internet Resources section in the directory part of this book.
So why do we use HTML? It's really very simple. HTML is an open standard. Anyone can use it without paying a penny for it. Although HTML editors, such as Microsoft FrontPage 1.1, SoftQuad's HoTMetaL Pro, Netscape's Navigator Gold 2.0, and Brooklyn Software's HTML Assistant Pro, make writing HTML documents easier, you can write in HTML with any ASCII editor. One such ASCII editor is Notepad, which is distributed with Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.
Browsers and servers can both be configured to use HTML documents with assurance that any server or browser that comes their way will be able to use their documents. Another important point here is that these documents can be read on any platform. Whether you're using a Macintosh, a PC, or an X-terminal, you can read HTML documents.
In response to author and publisher problems with HTML, Adobe is suggesting that their Acrobat 2.0 portable document format editor is the solution. Although Acrobat offers writers and publishers much greater control over the look of their documents, and it's far more powerful for organizing documents and making them searchable, its problems are the reverse of HTML's. Adobe is making free PDF readers avail-able, and the application programming interface (API) is an open standard, but you still need Acrobat to create PDF documents.
Another problem with Acrobat files is their size. A PDF document carries along its own collection of fonts which means that the PDF files are bigger and take longer to transport across the Internet, a real issue for users connected via slow-speed modems.
As you've read, the Internet and WWW comprises many computers connected together in a large, worldwide network. Not all of these computers on the Internet offer Web content. Some offer content and files in other formats. On the other hand, many computers do offer Web content, and new Web servers appear weekly. For a computer to provide Web content, they must have the Hypertext Transfer Protocol installed on it.
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a simple data transfer protocol that binds the Web together. Essentially, the protocol consists of a set of messages and replies for both servers and browsers. In HTTP, documents, files, menus, and graphics are all treated as objects. HTTP relies on the Universal Resource Identifier (URI), enclosed in the Universal Resource Locator (URL), to identify files.
HTTP runs on Web servers, not on the computer that has the Web browser. A Web server is software that, upon receiving a browser request, sends the requested document back to the browser. The server doesn't worry about what the document looks like or how a menu is presented to the client—that's the browser's job. If for some reason it can't send the file—maybe the machine that document is on is down for repairs or upgrades—the server sends a simple error message letting the user on the other end know that the server is not responding.
Another issue that Web servers have to support is some type of security mechanism. Until recently, servers have had no way of encrypting information or authenticating users. Secure servers work by encoding sensitive information. The exact method varies from system to system, but the idea is always the same. Your private information is encrypted so only the receiver can read it.
This issue of security might not seem very important for most users and most sites to date. However, if you conduct any form of business over the Web, this is vital. Likewise, if you purchase anything over the Web, you want to be sure your transaction is secure.
One form of doing business on the Internet is a credit card transaction. Commercial sites must have a way of making sure that a customer's credit card number is secure and not accessible to others. Such sites must also make certain that any valuable information they send out can't be read by Internet eavesdroppers or anyone not authorized to receive the information. Business-class Web servers, such as Netscape Communications' Secure Commerce Server and Microsoft Internet Information Server 2.0, can handle these concerns. Freeware servers, however, do not have these capacities. Unfortunately, for businesses and consumers, freeware servers make up the majority of the Web today.
Why are freeware servers so popular if they lack security? Because they are free. Freeware applications, such as Web servers, are products in the public domain that anyone can freely download and use. Although the price is right, usually freeware products have limitations or lack of advanced features you might find in expensive commercial products.
Uniform Resource Locators are the addresses of Web resources. Usually, an URL (pronounced earl) leads to a Web document or file, but that's not always the case. An URL can point you to a single record in a database, the front-end of an Internet program such as Gopher, or the results of a query you made using another program. URLs give you more information about your destination than just ordinary file names. Not to remind you of Freshman English, but figure 2.7 demonstrates how to diagram the URL found in figure 2.6.
The first section (http:) tells you the type of resource you're connecting to. In this case, it's an HTTP resource. Other common resource types are the following:
Figure 2.6. A typical Web page with its URL.
The double slashes (//) in the URL address indicate that you're requesting information from a Web server. If you are accessing a file on your local machine, you would use triple slashes (///).
Next, you have the Internet domain name and address of the Web server (www.ibm.com). When you have a complete address such as this, it's called a fully qualified domain name. The letters at the end of the address, depending on the naming style used by the site, either tells you something about who owns the server or where the server is located.
In the U.S., most, but not all, sites use organizational type designators. Some sites do use geographical identifiers, in which case they usually correspond to the site's home state. A few sites mix organizational and geographical domain names. The most well-known organizational identifiers are shown in table 2.3.
Table 2.3.
|
Designator |
Meaning |
|
com
|
Commercial Site
|
|
edu
|
Educational Site
|
|
int
|
International Site
|
|
mil
|
Military Site
|
|
net
|
Internet Site #
|
|
org
|
Organization Site *
|
|
# These are sites that are meant primarily to enable people connect with the Internet.
|
|
|
* Sites that are run by an organization like the Electronic Freedom Foundation use this designator.
|
|
Almost all non-U.S. sites use two-letter country identifiers after the organization identifier (this is the .com in the preceding example). For example, ".uk" is the United Kingdom, ".ja" is Japan, and so on. (This example is a site located in the U.S. and was accessed in the US, so no country identifier is needed.
In some countries, notably the U.K., the order in the domain name fields are reversed from typical U.S. practice. That is, instead of the following:
www.thisplace.somwhere.uk,
the address in the U.K. would read:
www.uk.somewhere.thisplace
Both styles are equally valid.
Continuing with the example URL, the (/Features/Harlem/) part is the path to the destination file. Windows and DOS users in particular should note two things about this path structure:
At the end of the URL is the actual resource or resource name. In this example, it is a file Harlem.html. The file extension (.html) tells you that the file is an HTML document. Systems that cannot handle filenames with extensions longer than three letters, such as MS-DOS or Windows 3.1, use three letters instead. For example, a Windows 3.1 server would list the same file with an extension of .htm. Windows 95 and Windows NT, on the other hand, can support long filenames. On these servers you can have files ending in .html.
When you put all the components together, the address works in the following manner. The whole network is held together by links. Your browser scampers over the strands of TCP/IP with an HTTP request to an URL. At the other end of the URL sits an HTTP server that sends the requested information back, using HTTP.
If you start with your browser and take it step by step, the first thing you will see is the loading of your default home page. This home page is the document that's been set for you to visit whenever you start the browser. A home page can be stored on your local machine or on a remote Web site.
Next, it takes your home page's URL and tries to find the IP address for its Internet site. A browser, like almost all client-server Internet applications, does this by checking with its known DNS. If it can't find the DNS, the program returns an error message. Now, armed with the IP address of the destination site, your browser sends out an HTTP request.
If all goes well, this request is received by the server's HTTP program. Normally, HTTP programs run as daemon—programs that are always running in the background and are constantly checking to see if they need to perform their job. After the HTTP daemon receives your request, it relays it to the appropriate service.
When your request is an HTML document, the HTTP daemon fetches the document and sends it to you using HTTP. If it's some other resource that HTTP can access directly, it still follows this routine.
HTTP works differently, however, when you call upon other Internet services such as FTP or Gopher. In these cases, HTTP acts as your go-between. For instance, when you transfer a file with FTP, the HTTP server logs you in with a login id of anonymous and uses your Internet address as a password.
This might all sound terribly complicated, but you really don't need to be concerned. When all you want to do is use the Web, you never see the layers of complexity underlying your browser. This, after all, is the idea of the Web—to make information access easy. What you do need to be concerned with, however, is how you use the tools that the browser puts at your disposal. This is discussed in the next section.
The Tragedy of the Commons is a historical concept that explains the economic collapse of medieval English villages. Because everyone in a village tended to overuse and abuse the land held in common (which is where the "commons" got its name), the village commons were ruined for everyone. What does that have to do with the Internet and the Web? Everything.
Like the commons, Internet resources are not infinite. As more and more users crowd into the Internet, the "free" resources of the Internet—from FTP sites to WWW servers—are pushed to work harder and harder. In the immediate future, it will become more difficult to get a quick response from many Web resources. Worse still, you might not be able to use some Internet resources at all because they are too busy.
In this situation, you should be patient. Many of these resources are maintained by volunteers or workers for whom your desire to access a file comes way behind the needs of the group that owns the server. Getting pushy will only help bring about the day when some resources are closed to the general population. Eventually, the Internet's resources will catch up with demand, but the key word is eventually. The biggest improvement for the Internet will be the expansion of high-speed backbones. As more of these come online, the Net's overall speed will rise to meet demand. In the meantime, practice patience.
Don't take out your frustrations on your ISP's help desk staff. Most slowdown and blockage problems have nothing to do with your ISP.
Almost all Internet sites that carry resources do not supply these resources as their primary job. This situation is changing, however. Many Web sites are being set up expressly for the purpose of supplying Web services to users, not to supply the Web with information. For better or worse, most of these new sites are commercial sites, and you will more than likely experience difficulties if you call on them during normal business hours. Accessing resources will almost certainly be slower, and you're likely to find tighter restrictions on the use of the resource. Nights and weekends are the best times for Internet surfing. According to many studies conducted, the bulk of Internet traffic is between the hours of 11:00 am and 1:00 pm, when most people are on their lunch time.
A good reason for noting a resource site's location is that the closer you are to a resource, the more likely you are to have a connection take only a few jumps. The fewer links between you and another Internet computer, the better your chance of getting a clean, fast connection.
Is your session running slowly? You might want to turn off the inline images feature, using whatever method is appropriate to your browser. You won't get the pretty pictures, but you will get the text much faster.
To avoid the busy, popular sites, look around for mirror sites, which contain the exact same information as their primary sites. Once found, mirror sites are great for saving time and energy. If a site is an international link, it may be slower than a domestic connection. The Internet is global, but think local whenever possible.
What is Netiquette? Netiquette is online etiquette. In its most essential form, it can be summed up as the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Netiquette begins with respecting your fellow users. Far too many people seem to think that just because they're online, they've been given license to be rude. Wrong! Insults sting just as hard when written on cathode ray tubes as they do in person. In fact, words often sting even harder in e-mail and news-group messages than they do face-to-face. What's written in cold letters of electron fire cannot be softened by a light-hearted tone. On the Internet, no one can see you smile. What you think is funny or light-hearted might be taken in deadly earnest. Think twice, and write once—you'll be far happier for it.
Online arguments can get quite heated, but there's never any call to resort to insults. Unlike real life, where sometimes you can't walk away from an argument, on the Internet, you can always walk away.
When online arguments occur in newsgroups and they don't die down, the message threads, or discussions, in which they occur are called flames. When things get really out of hand and arguments are breaking out in all discussions, you have a flame fest—something you never want to get involved with.
If you find yourself involved in a flame, try to get out of it. Most of the time, you can't win online arguments—you can only pour more fuel on the fire. Unless your idea of a good time is spending every day arguing, the best way to treat a flame is to "just say no." In other words, you could just refuse to respond to the argumentative message, or you could send one last message saying, "I have my view, you have your view, we don't agree; I'm not going to post to you on the newsgroup or the mailing list about this issue anymore." That's it.
If you can't stand hearing from someone again, check to see if your browser's newsreader has an automatic kill function, which is a setting that automatically deletes someone's message based on their Internet address, subject matter, or what have you. That way, you never have to read another word from whoever is annoying you.
There are other points of netiquette that are important. First, when you're sending e-mail or Usenet newsgroup postings, you should attach what's called a signature to your message. This should be your name, your e-mail address, and perhaps a few words about yourself. What it shouldn't be is long. Resist the temptation to insert long quotes or ASCII art in each and every one of your e-mail addresses. An ideal signature is no more then three lines long. If you want to tell the world more about yourself, you can always set up a personal home page on the Web and include its URL in your signature.
Another no-no is sending a newsgroup message out asking if anyone knows where so-and-so is. Those millions of newsgroup readers don't know where so-and-so is and couldn't care less. Because almost all browsers have built-in links to Internet white pages services, there's no need to pester other news readers with your request.
Before posting anything to a newsgroup, you need to ask yourself what would be appropriate for the group and of interest to its members. The only way to know if what you have to say is important is, very simply, to read the newsgroup. Once you have a feel for its subject, then you can start writing. Before posting to any newsgroup, look for its frequently asked question (FAQ) file. More on FAQs in an upcoming section.
There are several other related issues. When you reply to a message, don't copy the entire—or even most of—the message in your response. Nothing is more annoying then reading screen after screen of quoted text to see "And I agree" at the end.
You should also resist the temptation to post messages to more than one newsgroup—lest ye be flamed. Find the one newsgroup that's appropriate for your message and send it to that group alone. In the same vein, make sure that your subject line is specific and concise.
Another thing to consider is where your article is going to go. Most of the main newsgroups are distributed throughout the world. If you want to sell your computer, it's not a good idea to post it somewhere where there really aren't any potential buyers. Someone in Zambia should not have to consider whether a thousand bucks is too much for your Apple IIc when it's unrealistic for them to buy it at all. (It's about a 100 times too much, by the way.)
The trick here is to use the distribution feature. When the news system prompts you for a distribution, don't press Enter. When you hit Enter, the system usually defaults to "world," and that's not where you want your ad to go. Instead, after checking with your POP's help feature, type a more appropriate distribution. For instance, many sites have a distribution of just the state that the system
is in so that your ad would only go out to people nearby.
By the way, don't think of actually advertising for a commercial business over Usenet newsgroups. It's highly frowned upon.
Many online women, or users with feminine names, get tons of unwelcome attention. All too often, they're constantly bombarded with lewd mail messages or online chat requests from jerks who know nothing about them save they might be female. Okay, guys, in two words: Stop it! Acting like an idiot doesn't get you anywhere in the world, and it doesn't get you anywhere on the Internet either. Yes, you can meet people and make friends on the Internet—even your spouse-to-be—but you don't do it by pounding on every available door. You certainly don't do it by trying to smash through someone's virtual window. No one likes a cyberstalker.
When you were sixteen, did you expect to be able to climb into a car and drive it away into the rush hour crush? No, you probably didn't. You might have understood how the wheel turned, how to push down the gas pedal, and how to slam on the brakes, but you hadn't yet learned the finer, more important details of driving.
Learning how to drive on the Internet highway can be a lot like your first time in a car. You might know the commands to cruise around the Web and how to mail a message to a newsgroup, but that does not mean you're an expert. To answer both basic and advanced questions, users throughout the Internet turn to FAQ files.
FAQs are exactly that: collections of questions and, more importantly, answers. Some FAQs cover the nut-and-bolt details of getting Internet tools to work. Others are about making the best possible use of Internet resources, explaining a newsgroup's theme, or how to behave in certain areas of the Internet. FAQs can tell you everything from what the "T" in James T. Kirk stands for (Tiberius), to how to find a Web server for AmigaOS.
FAQs are invaluable for learning how to be a responsible Internet driver. Whether you're using a new resource or beginning to read a new Usenet newsgroup, one of the first things you should do is look for its FAQ.
You can find FAQs in many places. Most FAQs began in Usenet newsgroups, and that's where the vast majority of them can still be found. In news-groups, FAQs are published on irregular schedules. Some are published as often as every week, others are updated perhaps as seldom as once a year.
Two moderated newsgroups, alt.answers and news.answers, consist entirely of FAQs and other regularly published information of interest to the entire Net community. Even if you're not interested in newsgroups, you should, at the very least, sign up for news.answers. If you're new to the Internet, you should also sign up for news.newsusers.questions and news.announce.newsusers. Here, you can find all the vital FAQs. The FAQs you can't live without are shown in the following list:
All of the above, save the last, can be found in the news.answers, news.newusers.questions, and news.announce.newusers newsgroups.
The World Wide Web FAQ is found in the comp.infosystems.www.users and comp.infosystems.www.providers newsgroups. If you don't have newsgroup access, don't despair. You can go to the following URL for a HTML front-end to the FAQ.
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/FAQl
