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Surfing the Internet

Copyright © 1997-2000, 2002-2005, 2007 by David E. Ross

The Internet includes four main forms of communication:

The Web

As a communication medium, the World Wide Web (WWW) is similar to television with a phone nearby. People compose Web pages collected into sites. These are broadcast to whoever chooses to receive them. I mentioned "a phone nearby" because some Web pages provide the viewer with the ability to return data to the Web server.

The tool for receiving a Web page is a Web browser, a client application that connects to a Web server. FireFox (and related Mozilla products) and Internet Explorer are two of the most popular Web browsers.

A number of commercial Web sites — search engines, national and regional ISPs, shopping sites — expend significant effort trying to get us to designate them as our browser's home page. Large sums of money are spent on entertainment and information content for these portals, and some are quite attractive. However, the page I want to see most often is my bookmarks file, which is what I now use for my home page. I can always visit any portal, and I have a few within my bookmarks.

IRC

Often called Chat, IRC is similar to communicating at a cocktail party. Everyone is talking at once; often it is difficult to follow a particular conversation. At least you know who is talking. Or do you? Everyone is identified by a nickname that may have no relationship to a person's E-mail address or real name. IRC is real-time. You see messages as they are sent (or within a minute or so, depending on the transmission lag) and you send messages. Only if someone has bothered to capture the flow of messages can anyone recall the communication later. Otherwise, if you are not connected while the messages are in transit, you do not see any of them.

On the other hand, for a very small group (two or three persons), IRC can be better than E-mail for conducting a conversation, providing the lag is relatively small. IRC can also be used for an on-line meeting, with the chairman exercising control through operator commands (which include the ability to remove an uninvited participant or to "silence" someone who keeps interrupting). And, yes, the flow of messages can be captured to provide the secretary of a meeting with a record for use in preparing minutes of the meeting.

For details, see Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Help, which covers the spectrum from very basic information for the novice to highly technical details on the inner workings. This also contains comprehensive lists of IRC servers in several networks as well as IRC commands. IRC requires the use of a special application. I use mIRC.

Newsgroups

A newsgroup is similar to a bulletin board. You post a message that is very much like an E-mail message. Anyone who sees the message can then post a reply for everyone else to see. For this, you use a news reader that connects to a news server (just as a Web browser connects to a Web server).

Almost all newsgroups are organized by subject. Newsgroups fall into several categories. The "big 8" (Usenet) have prefixes of comp.* (computer), sci.* (science), soc.* (society), news.* (newsgroups as the subject of conversation), talk.* (discussion groups), rec.* (recreation and hobbies), humanities.*, and misc.* (miscellaneous). These Usenet newsgroups are generally carried by most (if not all) news servers and are considered by some as the official newsgroups. These are the ones that require a formal vote for creation. The alt.* category include commercial and pornographic newsgroups as well as those with too limited an audience to justify the formal creation of a new Usenet newsgroup. Then there are national and local newsgroups, such as ca.* (Canada, California), austin.* (in Texas), etc. Finally, some computer companies maintain their own news servers with their own public newsgroups, relating to their products.

Newsgroup Etiquette

For a newsgroup to be a medium for informative and enjoyable discussion, certain conventions should be followed. While occasional violations of these rules are often ignored, repeated abuse of a newsgroup can lead to all kinds of unpleasant reactions. In some cases, messages have been posted with forged headers to cancel an abuser's messages — not merely the abusive messages but all messages from that individual. In other cases, complaints have been made to an abuser's ISP. If an ISP ignores such complaints in the case of serious abuse of a Usenet newsgroup, the administrators of other news servers have even resorted to blocking all messages originating from the server of the uncooperative ISP (the dreaded "Usenet death penalty" or UDP).

• Stay on topic. Each newsgroup is defined by its subject matter. Do not try to discuss the breeding of dogs in rec.pets.herp or a "get rich quick" scheme in soc.org.nonprofit.
• In general, offering to buy or sell anything is off-topic in a Usenet newsgroup. However, there are some marketplace Usenet newsgroups.
• Limit cross-posting. Some news servers will reject messages cross-posted to as few as five newsgroups. Then the message will not appear at all, not even in only one newsgroup.
• Do not include or attach binary files to a message unless the word binary appears in the name of the newsgroup. This includes both graphics files (e.g.: .gif, .jpg) and audio files (e.g.: .mp3). Binary files take far more space on a news server than do the simple text files of a message. Rather than invest in more storage space, an ISP might merely cancel any message with a binary file; alternatively, the news administrator might shorten the expiration time — to as short as one day — for all messages in a newsgroup that seems to have many binary files. Also, news servers tend to transmit binary files much more slowly than do Web and FTP servers. The best way to distribute a binary file is to post a newsgroup message that contains a link to a Web page from which the binary can be downloaded.
• For Usenet newsgroups, become aware of their charters. Charters describe additional restrictions on the messages that can be posted to a newsgroup. Some charters also describe waivers of the above conventions.

Also see Netiquette Guidelines (RFC 1855).

E-Mail

To me, the best feature of E-mail is that I deal with message when I want, not when the sender wants. E-mail does not interrupt my dinner or wake me in the middle of the night. When exchanging messages with my daughter, who lives three time zones away, we each read and respond when we are available without regard for whether the other is also available.

The worst feature of E-mail is mass-mailed commercial advertising ("spam"). The only surfing involved in E-mail is the collecting of addresses for spam. If you do not like spam and want to fight back, visit my Spam Web page.

E-mail is very much like a post card. It could be read by anyone along the path it takes from the sender to the recipient. If you want secure E-mail — more secure than sealing a letter in an envelope — you should consider using PGP.

Since I favor the benefits of dealing with E-mail on my own time, not on the sender's time, I really do not like the various instant message tools (e.g.: AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM)). When I install various other Internet software capabilities that include AIM, I always remove or disable it.

Some caution is necessary when using E-mail.

• Once you send E-mail, you usually cannot unsend it. Only when you are within an intranet system (e.g.: at work) where both you and the recipient use the same E-mail server, there might be a recall capability.
• Like a post card or letter sent via postal mail, the recipient keeps a copy of your message. You can erase your own copy, but you cannot erase the recipient's copy. You have no control over this. Even if you use a service that automatically erases a message after the recipient reads it, you cannot stop the recipient from capturing a copy of the text while reading it.
• Your own Internet service provider (ISP) or the recipient's ISP might retain copies of all E-mail messages in their E-mail server archives. In Europe, laws are being considered that would mandate such retention for as long as seven years. Archived messages are subject to subpoenas and search warrants. Many ISPs will comply with such demands without even telling the affected customer, another reason to use PGP when sending E-mail.
• E-mail goes beyond post cards and letters. The recipient can easily send copies to others without your permission. No Xerox machine, envelope, or postage stamp is needed. If you used PGP to encrypt your message before sending it, the recipient can easily decrypt the message and then distribute it worldwide.

Obviously, you should really be sure of the thoughts you have written and that you want someone else to see them before you send an E-mail message. Can you trust the recipient not to further distribute your message? Would you be embarrassed if others saw how you ignored spelling, grammar, and punctuation? Would your comments cause trouble in your family or at work?

Internet Software

I have collected a number of software tools useful when surfing the Internet. Some are mainstream (e.g.: Netscape), and others are esoteric. I moved the information about these tools to a separate Web page to speed the loading of the page you are now reading (by reducing its size). That page contains both descriptions and download links for those tools. I also have a glossary of the Internet terms I use not only in the descriptions of those tools but also elsewhere in my Web site.

Speed

Connections to the Internet are generally rated in terms of bits per second. At one time, modems could handle data at 9,600 bits per second (9.6 Kbps, where the K indicates kilo, the Greek prefix for thousand). With eight bits in a one-character byte, a 9.6 Kbps modem could handle 1.2 KBps (using b for bit and B for byte). When the only data being sent were brief computer commands and the only data received were one or two lines of computational results, this was sufficient.

With the advent of the Web with not only text but graphics, greater speeds became necessary. The small animated graphic near the beginning of this page is over 60,000 bits. With two other graphics and more than 20,000 characters of text, viewing this page requires the downloading of almost 640,000 bits. A 9.6 Kbps modem would require more than a minute for this relatively small and simple page. When I bought my first PC, 28.8 Kbps modems were quite common, but I got a more advanced 33.6 Kbps modem. At that time, few ISPs supported even that speed, let alone the 56 Kbps that now seems to be the limit for dial-up modems. With a 56 Kbps modem, I now download this page in less than 12 seconds.

As an alternative, IDSN connections provide 128 Kbps. T1 connections can even reach 6 Mbps (M indicates mega, Greek for million), but the cost of a T1 connection can generally be justified only for businesses with demands for transferring large amounts of data. (I had a T1 connection at work before I retired.) The ISP I use can provide DSL connections at 144 Kbps for $99 per month; they also have DSL as fast as 7.2 Mbps at a price beyond the means of most consumers. Now I hear advertisements on the radio for fiber-optic connections that are faster than DSL and cheaper than T1. Verizon (when it was still GTE) advertised instant downloading, but that is impossible.

Yes, we all seem to want faster downloading. But there is a limit, and the speed of your Internet connection is not the only constraint. You also need a fast processor on your PC to handle the flood of bits, a large memory to hold them, and a fast hard drive for the excess when a very large Web page exceeds memory. You have all that? It still is not enough, but it is all you can do.

I noticed a number of Web pages that seemed to load at the same slow rate whether I was at home (56 Kbps) or at work (1 Mbps, almost 18 times faster). While listening to music via RealPlayer at work, a streaming broadcast would often be interrupted when the bit rate dropped below 10 Kbps. We have reached the point where the speed of the Internet — browsing Web pages, receiving E-mail, downloading MP3 files, viewing streaming video — is now constrained by the server at the other end of your connection and by the infrastructure between you and the server. Thus, before you spend money on a faster Internet connection, you should evaluate not only whether you need it but also whether a faster connection will really improve your ability to access the Internet. Ask yourself: "Can I download now at the rated speed of my existing connection?" If the answer is frequently "No", then a faster connection cannot help.

I once downloaded a version of Netscape Communicator from the Netscape Web site that was almost 23.5 MB (far too large). With my 56 Kbps modem, it should have taken about 56 minutes. However, Netscape's server was able to deliver only 28.5 Kbps. Thus, it took 2 hours and 14 minutes. Why would I pay for a faster connection when the Internet beyond my connection cannot even respond at the speed I already have?

Since then, I changed to using Mozilla as my browser. One version that I downloaded was 12.4 MB, which took approximately 40 minutes to download. That means the Mozilla download server was delivering about 41.3 Kpbs or less than 75% of the rated speed of my modem. (In other tests, I have verified that my modem will indeed download 56 Kbps.) More recently, I downloaded a new, 7.9 MB version of PGP. The PGP download server was able to deliver only 23.2 Kbps, less than half the demonstrated speed of my modem. Adobe's server delivered only 43.2 Kbps for downloading the 8.9 MB version 6 of Acrobat Reader. Even the great Micro$oft could only deliver 36.7 Kbps when I downloaded a new 13.6 MB version of Media Player. DSL service or a cable modem cannot provide any better performance from those servers.

One other consideration before adapting to a faster Internet connection: The faster connections are permanent (not dial-up) with fixed IP addresses. While a permanent connection means you avoid the effort and delay of connecting through a dial-up modem, it also means that you need a good firewall (software that creates a barrier against outsiders from accessing your computer) to protect you from hackers. Also, a fixed IP address gives snoops (including advertisers) the ability to trace your Web-surfing activities back to your specific computer; that is, your ability to maintain privacy while Web-surfing is impaired.

Internet distance significantly affects speed. UCLA is only 30 miles from my house. However, I discovered that I could obtain a faster response from a server in Sunnyvale, California (more than 300 miles away), than from a server performing the same function located at UCLA. The two servers operated at about the same speed. However, a trace of the route taken by data between my PC and those servers showed that messages — from me requesting data and from them replying — traveled through twice as many routers and intermediate servers for UCLA than for Sunnyvale. In terms of Internet distance, Sunnyvale was half the distance to my PC than was UCLA although the former was more than 10 times the physical distance. Some very popular Web sites have mirror sites, copies that are available in order to reduce the traffic to the main site. Selecting the closest mirror site — in terms of Internet distance — can result in a noticeable improvement in performance.

Last updated 26 June 2007

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