The Net

Most people today get on the World Wide Web and think this all the net has to offer. The web may be a useful part where you can find almost anything but it is also the most commercialized and has more garbage that any other part of the net.

Telnet:9

Telnet is one of the older parts of the net. Telnet was started as a way to remotely log on and use the resources of a computer remotely. It is a bit more primitive than the web but the lack of 'commercialism' more than makes up for it. :-) In fact, Windows 95-98 (I'm not sure if the NT based Windows have it) comes with a nice but primitive Telnet client. If you click on START then RUN and type in Telnet it will come up for you. Its rare nowadays that you get something for my favorite price (FREE!) so enjoy! Another couple of goodies included with Windows are a Tracert and a Ping command. Tracert can be used to map the path your computer takes to get you to a remote site on the Internet (Or a LAN using TCP/IP). This can be useful in diagnosing problems connecting to a remote site. If you can't seem to connect try doing a tracert and seeing where the connection stops. Your problem will likely be between the last listed 'hop' and the next step. Ping is another useful utility that came for free with Windows. Ping can be used to tell you a lot of useful things. If you are a net gamer you may want to ping a few servers to see which would be best to connect with. The most important thing you want to have is a low TTL (Time To Live) time. This is how long it takes your computer to get a response from the other device. Ping will also keep track of how many packets come back and don't come back. Both of these little gem's are easier to run from a Dos Prompt window as they have many command line options. If you'd like to see the Ping command at its best PING 127.0.0.1 (This will always be your own machine on TCP/IP networks) The response times SHOULD be extremely quick and reliable.

Telnet is still widely in use. Originally Telnet was used to connect to and control computers remotely. One of the more common modern uses is for MUDding. MUD's are Multi User Dungeons. A lot of these are based on Advanded Dungeons and Dragons and some usually have around 300 players on at any one time. One that I can easily recommend is Materia Magica.
My character in Materia Magica is named Olias.

Chess server

Chess.LM.COM

4Usenet4

AT&T deciced not to provide Usenet access after the Comcast Merger. I urge everyone who is or is considering becoming a Internet customer of theirs to email them! I can not imagine how they expect to provide 'basic' Internet access and compete with everyone else including some free ISP's which DO provide Usenet servers.

Usenet has been around since 1979 and resembles the old style Bulletion Board Systems (BBS) for messaging. If you are looking for information, Usenet's set of newsgroup's far surpasses the web for ease of use and amount of useful information. This is also a good source for binaries such as MP3's, video clips etc. You will need a newsreader first to get any real use of these. The readers bundled into Netscape and Explorer are about as useful as the Telnet and FTP clients that come bundled with Windows. Each group has a specific topic and sometimes can have as much Spam or commercial advertisements as the web these are quite a bit easier to skip by and some of the better readers have filtering and advanced scoring that can make this less bothersome.

Xnews - Possibly the best Newsreader for binaries and text!

Newsrover News reader - software site but has a good explanation of Newsgroups

Free and Public Usenet News Servers This list is updated often and allows you to make comparisions before trying a server.

List of free Newservers and Web newservers

Search Usenet with Google groups!

If you can imagine it, its probably already a newsgroup!

>=<FileTransferProtocal<=>

FTP is a method of sharing files over the Internet. Large databases can be searched and files downloaded. There are FTP clients out there that can automate a lot of this process and even retry and resume transfers that become interrupted.

AutoFTP free FTP client for Widnows

"World Wide Web!

The web is the part of the net most people think of. This is also the most commercialized. Try submitting your site to any search engine. At least these people are honest and up front before they try to take your money. Most sites out that have anything useful on them seem to be small private ones and even these are getting harder to find as most search engines give priority to those who opt to pay for "express submission." In other words commercial sites get listed first even though they may have very little to do with whatever your actually searching for. The web got its name because each site links into other ones and can resemble a large spider web with pointers to sites all over the place. What made the web possible and as popular as it is today was the introduction of HTML that made web pages full of color and multimedia a breeze. With HTML you can easily link to other documents or add in a video clip with a few simple keystrokes. A lot of people (even those that have made web pages) don't realize that a lot of this code has been implemented into word processors and other programs so that links can easily be added to other files or to web pages from a Wordperfect document. Give it a try sometime. Type in "http://members.verizon.net/mlaferriere/" into a text document with your word processor sometime. If everything is setup properly the color should change to let you know the PC knows it is a hypertext link and you should be able to click on it and get right onto that website. This also holds true with most other document types nowadays as well. You can put links (even dynamic ones) into Email, Spreadsheets, pull in live stock quotes into spreadsheets and more. One thing that annoys me about as much as *SPAM* on the WWW is new sites posting half of their address without the WWW. Anyone who has been around the net long enough to use Telnet will likely feel the same way. Telnet address's where originally assumed when an address had neither a FTP or a WWW preceding it. Ach! Oh well... However I still think the WWW has the best potentional to revolutionize our society. Much as the Great Library of Alexandria was a vast storehouse of knowledge so to is the WWW. That is if you have the time and energy to sift through the spam. If you can think of a question it is likely anwered somewhere on the WWW!

HTML Gear from Lycos powerful add-ons to enhance your website for the small price of a banner on your pages. Here you can find Guestbooks, Link Managers, Feedback, News headlines and the ever popular webpolls!

Fastcounter.COM an easy quick small way to add a semi-free counter to your website. Requires you to get a .NET password and registration

moreover.com probably the largest and easiest to configure free news and information tickers for your website. Can be setup to show articles with certain keywords.

All News Tickers I'm sure there are others but... ;-) from Kresch.com Dynamic content that is easy to add to any website!

A great place to learn HTML and see examples! From Case Western Reserve University.

Jimtools.Com. This site has a NICE auto submit feature, link checker, spell checker, HTML checker, re directors and much more! A good one to check out

Use this to create text for your website:

This incredible *FREE* little counter gives you all sorts of useful statistics such as where, how and what browser your visitors are using!

WAIS

WAIS is Wide Area Information Servers protocol.

Gopher

Gopher is an *SPAM FREE!* information retrieval system.

International Gopher Network (based at University of Minnesota)

All the Gopher Servers in the World

Search Gopherspace using Veronica 2

Large list of Gophers sorted by subject

IRC

IRC Internet Relay Chat. Makes commercial chatrooms look like an old fashioned party line!

IRC usually literally tens of thousands of different users on at any time (A quiet time actually! It is usually around 100,000!) depending on which IRC network you use. EFNET is I believe one of the original if not the first network. Undernet, IRCNET and DALnet are three other popular ones. The IRC literally spans the globe and you get a very diverse group of users compared to a commercial chatroom. You will need a client to access the IRC but there are a few web based IRC clients out there. Mirc is is probably still the most common client for PC's running Windows and is extremely flexible and has many add's and scripts and such.

IRC newsgroup

Undernet webchat my personal favorite IRC network.

DALnet allows you web access from their frontpage.

Email Mike!

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