Untangling the World Wide Web

It seems that we have been pelted by a barrage of new terms
related to the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the National
Information Infrastructure lately.  What are these things and
how can they help us to access useful resources?

As you have probably heard by now, the Internet is a worldwide
collection of thousands of computer networks that allow people
to communicate.  Users of any of the networks on the Internet
can communicate with users on any of the other networks in a
variety of ways.  One individual can send a message or
information to another individual via electronic mail, or an
individual or organization can distribute a message or
information to a large number of individuals via an information
server.  The latter is the area which has recently been
achieving the most progress.

The World Wide Web (WWW or simply "the Web") is a protocol
which operates on top of the Internet.  It is a seamless
networked information space of hypermedia documents which are
accessible via browser tools such as Mosaic, Cello, and Lynx.  

These browser tools operate in much the same way as Gopher and
FTP in that they can provide you with access to files on other
machines.  In addition to the features of Gopher and FTP,
however, browser tools have added versatility.  FTP, commonly
referred to as "anonymous FTP," allows you to retrieve
documents, files, programs, and other archived data from
anywhere on the Internet as long as you know the location of
the file and the name of the machine you want to access.
Gopher is a menu-based document delivery service.  It allows
you to access information from all over the world without
having to know a specific machine name.  Web browser tools
allow you to use all the features of FTP and Gopher with the
added benefit of hypertext navigation.

Mosaic is the most widely used graphical interface and is
available for a variety of platforms including Windows,
Macintosh, and XWindows.  Cello also provides a graphical
interface, but is only available for DOS.  You can use
text-based browsers such as Lynx to navigate the Web, but you
won't have access to the full array of resources that are
available.

So how does the National Information Infrastructure fit in?
The NII is the concept of a web of communications networks,
computers, databases, and consumer electronics that will "put
vast amounts of information at users' fingertips." Things like
the Internet and the World Wide Web are already a part of the
NII.  

For more information, refer to Thomas Boutell's "World Wide Web
Frequently Asked Questions List."  It is available via
anonymous FTP from:

	rtfm.mit.edu 

in: 

	/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/faq.  

For information on FTP, send e-mail to:  

	mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu

with the phrase:

	send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources

in the body of your e-mail message.
.