They offer a means for providers of information to place that information on the network and they provide a means for users of information to explore the information space and to retrieve desired information. The most widely used services include electronic mail, bulletin boards, and retrieval and downloading files. The following provides a brief description of services and applications. Connections can be made with an estimated 30 million users, including subscribers to commercial services throughout the world. Electronic mailing lists enable users to join in group discussions and meet people over the Net.
Users subscribe to a newsgroup and then read and post messages.
A more sophisticated approach is an electronic discussion forum. Archie is an attempt to make the FTP more useful by organizing the available files and making it possible to search for specific information. Another means of file access is with the file-search utility called Gopher. Gopher uses hierarchical menus that lead to text documents, whereas FTP is better when you know the name of a specific file or program. The third way to find files is through the World Wide Web, which is the newest and fastest growing part of the Internet.