Basic Services of Internet
The Internet today is a large-scale network of millions of computers that allow fast and easy communication between the Internet users across the globe. The basic services or applications that make use of the Internet are as follows.
• Electronic mail (E-mail)
• WWW ,
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
• Telnet
Electronic mail:
E-mail is one of the most popular features of the Internet. It permits users to send and receive messages and files to one another via modems almost instantly. The term, 'e-mail' applies both to the Internet e-mail system based on Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and to the Intranet systems allowing users within one organization to e-mail each other. SMTP is a simple, text-based protocol, where one or more recipients of a message are specified and then the -message text is transferred. The messages in an e-mail service can contain not only text documents but also images, audio and video data. The audio and video data is converted into the format that a computer accepts—such as GIF and JPEG file format—before it is attached to the e-mail message. With the e-mail service, the Internet has proved to be a productive communication tool for millions of users.
The advantages of e-mail are as follows:
• E-mail is faster than ordinary mail.
• An e-mail is sent through the Internet, and thus it transcends the geographical boundaries. It can be sent to distant places instantly at a very low cost.
• E-mail documents can be stored in a computer and easily edited.
WWW:
WWW or W3 is a collection of on-line documents stored on the servers around the world that, are connected to the Internet. On-line documents are written in 'HTML language, which provides links to the other documents stored on a Web server. These hypertext on-line documents on the Internet are known as Web pages.
WWW uses an Internet Protocol (TP) called HTTP for interaction between the computers on the Internet. Any computer on the Internet, which uses the HTTP protocol, is called a Web server, and any computer, which can access that server, is called a Web client. In a client-server model, a link can be shown on the screen in multiple ways, such as highlighted text or different colored text. A link is a special type of item in a hypertext document, which connect, the document to another document that provides additional information about the hypertext document. These documents can be accessed over the Internet using a Web browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.
File Transfer Protocol:
FTP is an application protocol for exchanging files between computers over the Internet. It is the simplest and the most commonly used method to download or upload a file from / to a server—for example, to download a document or an article from a Website. Like other technologies, FTP also uses the Internet's TCP/IP to enable data transfer. The following Figure shows the interaction between an FTP client and an FTP server.
FTP also works on a client-server principle, where FTP client program is used to make a request to the FTP server. Files that can be stored on computers are referred to FTP servers. The basic FTP support is usually provided as a part of the TCP/IP suite of programs. You can use FTP using a simple command line interface—for example, from the Windows MS-DOS prompt window—or use a commercial program that provides a GUI. Using FTP you can update files on a server. Your Web browser can also make FTP requests to download the programs you request from your Web page. Typically, you would require a login to an FTP server. However, publicly available files can be easily accessed using anonymous FTP.
Telnet:
Telnet is a protocol that allows you to access someone else's computer (host) provided you have been given the permission to do so. It is typically called remote login. HTTP and FTP allow you only to request specific files from remote computers, whereas Telnet allows you to log on as a regular.
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