when you say "The Net" you are referring to the Internet, right?
The Internet is a label applied to a conglomeration of networks
across the world. Since you refer also to Usenet, a service
provided on the Internet, it appears you are in fact referring to
the Internet, and not some other network or subnetwork. you might
be interested in obtaining a copy of Brendan Kehoe's free guide,
"Zen and the Art of the Internet", a very good introductory level
description of basic information regarding the Internet. It is
available via anonymous ftp from world.std.com if you have access
to ftp service. Here's what you do:
...at the unix shell prompt, type
ftp world.std.com
...it will come back with a request for you to enter
your user id. (it may be very slow) type:
anonymous
...then it will ask you for your mailing address in lieu
of a password. type:
hauben@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu
...you should see connection banner messages. you then
type:
cd /obi/Internet/zen-1.0
...and you should see:
250 CWD command successful.
...now here you have to make a choice. If you have a postscript
compatible printer, and about 500K free disk space and can
endure a 15 or 20 minute connection to world.std.com (depending
on the transfer rate of your communications equipment) I recommend
that you retreive the postscript version, "zen-1.0.PS" (without
the quotes, for example:
get zen-1.0.PS
...but if you don't have that capability, then try
get zen-1.0.txt.Z
...or if you don't have access to the unix command "uncompress", try
get zen.zip
...which should give you a ZIPped version of the file you can
extract using PKZIP or whatever it's called. If you don't have
either of these, type:
get README
...and read that file to see what else you can do. the book appears
to be broken up in the /obi/Internet/zen-1.0 directory by chapter,
each section having a ".texi" format which I don't recognize, but
perhaps you can get it that way. can get help on the ftp commands
at the ftp> prompt by typing "help". To end your ftp session, type
"quit".
If you don't have access to ftp, then I recommend you pick up an Internet
introductory level book at the college library or a good bookstore to use
as a first reference for your paper. After reading such a book, you will
probably get answers to some of the questions you asked and will have new
questions to ask.
good luck!
robert h
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16