Further, some hosts have gateways to other hosts, which have further gateways to still more hosts. Archie is a collection of resource discovery tools that together provide an electronic directory service for locating information in an Internet environment. Originally created to track the contents of anonymous ftp archive sites, the archie service is now being expanded to include a variety of other online directories and resource listings. Collectively, these files represent well over 50 Gigabytes of information, with additional information being added daily. Anonymous ftp archive sites offer software, data and other information which can be copied and used without charge by anyone with connection to the Internet.
Gopher is one of the best ways to locate information on and in the Internet.
As Archie is to ftp archives, Veronica is to gopherspace. The result of a Veronica search is an automatically-generated gopher menu, customised according to the user's keyword specification. Items on this menu may be drawn from many gopher servers. Unlike Archie, the search results can connect you directly to the data source. The user tells the client, in plain English, what to look for out in dataspace.