A Brief History...

During the height of the Cold War, a government agency whose job it was to guide advanced defense research decided that the computers of the nation's major research universities should be connected. This agency was called ARPA, so the network which it created (designed to survive a nuclear war), was called ARPANet. ARPANet grew and grew, absorbing more schools, smaller networks, and eventually even individuals. Somehwere along the way it became what we now know as the Internet.

Tools for Access

For many people, the Internet is synonomous with the World Wide Web. However, until a very few years ago, the web was responsible for only a minute fraction of the traffic on the 'net. Most of this traffic was generated using three tools - e-mail, ftp, and telnet.

E-mail is a concept familiar to almost everyone at this point. The mail in question is merely in a computer, and it goes to an electronic "mailbox" somewhere else on the network.
Ftp, which stands for file transfer protocol, is also familiar, though often misunderstood. Ftp allows a user on one machine to connect to another across the 'net and transfer files across the connection. This is all that ftp can do. To actually access the other computer to view, edit, or execute these files requires telnet.

With telnet, a user can login to a remote machine and enter commands just as if he were sitting in front of it. The new kid on the block is the World Wide Web. Web browsers allow their users to send signals across the 'net to any site which has a web server, or daemon. This server's sole purpose in life is to wait for these missives and send back the documents which are requested.

How do I connect?

There are three major routes for connecting to the 'net. The oldest is the UNIX shell account. This is an account on a UNIX machine which consists of some disk space, a username, and a password. The user dials into the UNIX machine with a modem, enters the username and password, and has access to the disk space and whatever software is available on the computer.

The second method, rapidly becoming the most popular, is to access the 'net via a SLIP/PPP account. This allows a direct connection to the 'net via another computer which the user again dials into. The difference is that the user has no disk space on the other machine, and must provide all of his own software.

The last method of accessing the 'net is through the various online services. These generally provide some of the above services to varying degrees. Some, like Compuserve, offer telnet, e-mail, ftp, and ppp all in the same account. Others, like America Online, only offer e-mail and ftp, plus a special web browser that works without a SLIP/PPP connection.