The information, once developed and stored, must be accessible to the community. There are several ways to provide access to an information store, but the Internet is becoming the most popular access method for community information networks. The Internet can be viewed as a world-wide information system that links users together through computers. The actual operation of the Internet is a complex and highly technical undertaking, but using the Internet is a reasonably straight forward task for the end user. Internet access can be obtained through a variety of public sector and private sector service providers.
Internet access requires that the user has a way of getting to the Internet access point.
Current estimates suggest that the number of homes with computers in the United States has tripled in less than ten years. Therefore adequate dial-up access in a community is considered a vital part of most CINs. Dial-up access not only requires modem, but communications software as well. Users will need stack and dialer software to make the basic link to a server. Stack software sets the basic communications protocol for the user's computer and prepares information for transmission while the dialer software dials the modem.