Internet 101:
An Overview of Internet Resources and Functionality

• collaboration in research or clinical setting
• professional memberships/participation and continuing education
• publishing
  • making information available in new ways (e.g., NJ-CIP News)
  • reducing cost of distribution or "time to market" (e.g., Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in Adobe Acrobat format)

Electronic Mail

• passive means of communication from the reader's standpoint
• no more secure that a post card
• two basic forms:
  • ad-hoc: one-to-one or one-to-many
  • reflector lists and listservs: one-to-many; some additional features like archiving (e.g. IMMNET-L)
• strengths: easy, flexible, can support non-text transfers if done right
• weaknesses: insecure without heroics, hard to control junk mail
• good for collaboration, weak for publication

FTP

• file transfer from a remote host
• wide variety of server platforms support it, even desktops
• both character-based and graphical clients supported
• two basic modes:
  • password-protected
  • "anonymous"
• strengths: easy, flexible, can support wide variety of file types
• weaknesses: commands can be cryptic, not always sure what you're getting
• crude but useful for publication and distribution, weak for collaboration

Telnet

• establish a terminal session to a remote host
• essentially insecure
• inherently character-based
• useful on the Internet to attach to legacy systems or non-Internet-baed bulletin boards that provide a back door

Gopher

• created at the University of Minnesota as their CWIS
• structure of text-based menus and documents
• inherently character-based
• can span multiple servers
• can use desktop or host-based clients
• can support download of non-text file types
• strengths: supports text documents which are easy to create
• weaknesses: supports text documents which are easy to create
• better than ftp for publication, weak for collaboration

NetNews

• public, Internet-based bulletin boards
• active to the reader: you have to go out and look at them, nothing comes to you automatically
• majority of information character-based, but distribution of binary files possible
• thousands of topics...
• many discussion groups filled with novice participants as the Internet explosion continues
• by-and-large no hierarchy to discussion (other than "threaded" readers)
• strengths: mature, wide variety of information, many discussions are near "real-time"
• weaknesses: too much information, no "private" conferences below the "domain" level"
• good for collaboration (weaknesses aside), poor for publication

• sci.med
• sci.bio
• alt.support.cancer
• alt.support.mult-sclerosis

World-Wide Web

• flexible way to deliver wide variety of information
• client/server protocol developed at CERN (particle physics lab in Geneva), Mosaic broswer developed at NCSA at Univ. of Il. Urbana-Champaign
• integrates multiple clients - gopher, ftp, netnews - in one browser
• uses graphically-rich HyperText Markup language (HTML)
• can support text-based client with some functional limitations
• servers run on a wide variety of platforms, including desktop computers
• documents can be made to look real nice!
• technical details
  • server varieties: NCSA, Netscape, secure servers
  • basic html (e.g. NJ-CIP home page versus the source HTML)
  • document types
  • security features: domain and password protection
  • "map" feature (e.g. this presentation)
  • forms and transactions
• strengths: very rich set of tools, easy for almost anyone to publish
• weaknesses: hard to find things, hard to tell what information is "official", VERY hard to tell what information is factually correct
• VERY good tool for publishing, can be used effectively for collaboration as well

• Great strength in many of these tools, especially WWW, is that you do not need to know (or care) where you need to go to get information - just follow the path. Given the fragility of the Internet in many instances, this is also a great weakness
• Biggest problem is probably quality of information