The Online World resources handbook

Appendix 1:
Selected online services

[INDEX] - [Expanded Index] - [Search]  - [NEXT] - [BACK]

   

Making a list of online services is difficult. Daily, new services are born, while others disappear. Addresses and access numbers are constantly changing. Only one thing is certain: Some details given in this handbook will be outdated, when you read it.

Agence France-Presse

America Online

offers Internet access, the CNN Newsroom (Turner Educational Services), the National Geographic magazine, PC World and Macworld, tailor-made graphical user interfaces for various types of personal computers, and more. It had over 17.6 million subscribers by Deptember1999, plus the many using the services of their CompuServe subsidiary.

APC

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is a worldwide partnership of member networks for peace and environmental users with host computers in several countries around the world. The APC nets have full Internet access (except FTP).
While all these services are fee based, they bring a wealth of information on environmental preservation, peace (including Greenpeace Press Releases), human rights, grant-making foundations, Third World Resources, United Nations Information Service, Pesticide Information Service, and more.
See Appendix 7 for more information.

ASCII Net

Japanese PC network for hobbyists. This online service had around 120,000 members in October 1996. Full Internet connectivity.

BITNET

"Because It's Time NETwork" started as a small network for IBM computers. In October 1994, BITNET encompassed 1,481 host computers by academic and research institutions all over the world. It had around 111,000 users (source: Matrix News 1995). Today, it is a dying network.
All connected hosts form a worldwide network using the NJE (Network Job Entry) protocols and with a single list of nodes. There is no single worldwide BITNET administration.
The European part of BITNET is called EARN (European Academic Research Network), while the Canadian is called NetNorth. In Japan the name is AsiaNet. BITNET also has connections to South America. Other parts of the network have names like CAREN, ANSP, SCARNET, CEARN, GULFNET, HARNET, ECUANET, and RUNCOL.

BRS

Bibliographic Retrieval Services . BRS/After Dark is a service for PC users. Has adatabases within research, business, news, and science. The service's strengths are medicine and health.

CDP Plus

Focuses on medical information. Offers databases mostly relating to biomedical fields.

CGNET

A network interconnecting a group of international research organizations.

CIX (England)

Compulink Information eXchange Ltd. (England) claims to be Europe's largest conferencing system. British online-service available by telnet, PDN services and direct dial. Full Internet access.

CIX (USA)

The Commercial Internet eXchange is a North American association of commercial Internet providers in which they agree to carry each others' packets of mail, and more.

Clarinet

A commercial supplier of wire services to Internet users: general, international, sports, technology, entertainment and financial news, plus special features and columns, press releases from major companies. Their stories are delivered by email, the web, and Usenet. The Usenet newsgroups for Clarinet begin with clari. (also called ClariNews).

CompuServe

has over 1,500 databases, 600 forums, 500 newspapers, online shopping from more than 170 stores and entertainment. It's like a large electronic supermarket. It was sold to America Online in September 1997.
The IQuest database service gives access to over 450 databases spanning the fields of business, government, research and news. Bibliographic and full- text searches (check http://www.iquest.n2k.com/).
Some IQuest databases are the property of other online services, like Brainwave for NewsNet, Dialog, and BRS, DataSolve (has TASS in the World Reporter database), Data-Star, and Questel-Orbit. However, it may be faster and cheaper to search them on CompuServe, than by directly contacting these services.
Knowledge Index offers over 120 of Dialog's more popular full-text and bibliographic databases, the full text of 33 major newspapers, scientific abstracts, reference sources, and more within 27 subject sections (1993).
CompuServe can be accessed though local access numbers in over 100 countries.

DATEX-J

A service of Deutsche Telekom (Germany) having around 800.000 subscribers (1995).

Data-Star

In 1996, it offered over 400 databases from a broad scope of disciplines. Data-Star is strong on pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, and automotive industries.

Delphi

Dialog

One of the first commercial dial-up online services. In 1995, The DIALOG service offered over 450 online databases, covering almost every discipline. Besides significant science and technology databases, it also boasted a large collection of full-text sources, plus a large collection of intellectual property files covering patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

DIMDI

Commercial service providing German business and biochemical information.

Dow Jones' Interactive

covers around 5,500 business and financial information sources . This includes a mix of newspapers (96), newswires (42), market reports, and company financials. (1998). Their Publications Library is a vast searchable database that includes all Dow Jones's publications. Also, DJI offers a comprehensive clipping service: continuous email notification of news items or articles or articles added to the Publications Library on topics and in publications selected by the user.

Business portal.

ECHO

European Commission Host Organization. Its I'M GUIDE provides information about online services within the European Common Market.

Exec-PC Network BBS (U.S.A.)

In January, 1995, it had over 300 incoming phone lines, and more than 650,000 files available for downloading (including the complete selection from PC-SIG California). Over 200 conferences focusing on owners of IBM compatible computers (MS/PC-DOS, Windows, OS/2, Windows, Unix), Apple Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST.

FidoNet

is an amateur electronic mail network founded in 1984 for automatic transfers of files from one place to the other at night, when the telephone rates are low. FidoNet are in countries all over the world, and consists mainly of personal computers (IBM/Amiga/Macintosh...).
FidoNet systems exchange documents by using a modem and calling another FidoNet system. Communication can be either direct to the destination system (calling long distance) or by routing a message to a local system.
Each computer connected to FidoNet is called a node. In November 1995, it had over 35,000 nodes in 96 countries (source: FidoNet host table). The number of nodes used to be growing at about 40 percent per year, but this levelled off when the Internet's strong growth started. In 1997, it had around 30.000 nodes.
Most nodes are operated by volunteers, and access is free. FidoNet is believed to have over 2.56 million users (1994/Matrix News).
Conferences (called ECHOs or Echomail) are broadcasted between interested nodes, and may thus have thousands of readers. The selection of echomail conferences on a given FidoNet board can be as unique as the rest of the system. A typical FidoNet Echomail conference gets 50 to 100 messages each day. Any connected BBS may carry 50, 100, or more echomail conferences.
In addition to, electronic mail, Fidonet distributes programs, pictures, and text files. NetMail is Fidonet's simple, person to person, electronic mail message system. FidoNet users can also send and receive mail through the Internet.
The list of member bulletin boards, the Nodelist, may be retrieved from most boards. Each node has one line on this list, like in this example:
,10,Home_of_PCQ,Warszawa,Jan_Stozek,48-22-410374,9600,V32,MNP,XA

The commas are field separators. The first field (empty in this example) starts a zone, region, local net, Host, or shows a private space (with the keyword Pvt).
The second field (10) is the node number, and the third field (Home_of_PCQ) is the name for the node.
The fourth field (Warszawa) is a geographical notation, and the fifth field (Jan_Stozek) is the name of the owner. The sixth field is a telephone contact number, and the other fields contain various technical information used in making connections.
FidoNet has six major geographical zones: (1) North America, (2) Europe, including Russian Asia, (3) Australasia, (4) America Latina, (5) Africa, (6) the Asian Pacific.

FT Profile

has full-text articles from Financial Times in London, from several European databases (like the Hoppenstedt database), and the Japanese database Nikkei. Profile is available through Telecom-Gold, and can also be accessed through other online services. Clipping service. CD-ROM. Web address:

GEnie

The General Electric Network for Information Exchange was initially set up as a joint venture between GE and Ameritech.

GE Information Service Co. (GEIS)

Online service operated by General Electric. Available in many countries. GEIS' QUIK-COMM service integrates multinational business communications for public and private mail systems. Its services include Telex Access; and QUIK-COMM to FAX, which allows users to send messages from their workstations to fax machines throughout the world.

GENIOS

German online service. Offers data about companies in the former DDR, the Hoppenstedt business directories, and more.

GlasNet

International network providing low-cost telecommunications to nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union. Email, fax, telex, public conferences. Email: support@glas.apc.org.

IASNET

The Institute for Automated Systems Network was the first public switched network in the former Soviet Union. Its main goal was to provide a wide range of network services to the scientific community in the xUSSR, including access to online databases, a catalog of foreign databases, and conferencing (ADONIS).

IBM Global Network

was announced in July 1994 as a worldwide value-added network (VAN) incorporating the Advantis network. In December 1998 it was purchased by AT&T (U.S.A.), offered access in 900 cities in 100 countries, and Internet access from 1350 places in 53 countries.
Its IBM Internet Connection gives users access to the full range of Internet services (World Wide Web, Gopher, FTP, Newsgroups, Telnet and E- mail), and OS/2 Warp provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for the user.

ILINK (Interlink)

A network for exchange of conferences between bulletin boards. At the peak, they had BBSes in U.S.A., Canada, Scotland, England, Norway, France, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and other countries.

Infonet

Vendor of packet data services with local operations in many countries around the world.

Internet

The name comes from "inter-networking," which is the process of connecting multiple host computers and their associated networks together to create a larger network.
What started as ARPANET, was by July 1996 a large group of over 134,000 interconnected independent networks in 175 countries supporting mail, news, remote login, file transfer, and many other services (source: http://www.nw.com). All participating hosts use the TCP/IP protocol.
While electronic mail and the World Wide Web are the net's most popular applications, users also have access to ftp and telnet. Ftp gives interactive access to remote computers for transferring files. Telnet gives access to a remote service for interactive dialog. You can telnet several bulletin boards through Internet, like telnet://conrad.appstate.edu. (Login as "info")
It is not possible to calculate the number of interconnected networks any more, but by July 1997, hosts in 214 countries provided net connectivity.
There are other major wide area networks, such as the BITNET and DECnet networks that are not based on the TCP/IP protocols and are thus not part of the Internet. However, it is possible to communicate between them and the Internet via electronic mail because of mail gateways that act as "translators" between the different network protocols involved. See The Matrix below.
The number of hosts grew from 213 in 1981, through 313,000 in 1990, to 93,047,785 in July, 2000. (Source: Internet Software Consortium). A host used to be a single machine on the net. The definition has changed due to virtual hosting, where a single machine acts like multiple systems (and has multiple domain names and IP addresses).
The number of users is claimed to double every year. In January 1994, the Internet Number FAQ estimated some 16 million users. Two years later, Matrix News estimated 36 million users of computers who could distribute information by interactive TCP/IP services (like WWW, and FTP), and 57 million users who could access information by interactive TCP/IP services.
By June 1998, the Internet had an estimated 129.5 million users, according to Nua Internet Surveys. By November 1997, the number was 86 million users.
For a different view of the figures, check Global Internet Statistics.  They estimate the number of each language population on the Internet (native speakers): those who have access to the Internet on a worldwide scale (that is, who have email access) or to the Web. They classify  by languages instead of by countries, since people speaking the same  language form their own online community no matter what country they happen to live in.
Already by August, 1991, over half the registered networks on Internet were commercial.
In addition, private enterprise networks have an estimated 1,410,000 hosts using TCP/IP (Source: The Internet Demographic Survey, January 1994.) These offer mail exchange with the Internet, but not services such as Telnet or FTP to most parts of the Internet, and are estimated to have some 7.5 million users.
One important feature of the Internet is that no one is in charge. The Internet is essentially a voluntary association. Somehow it all works.
Some of its direction comes from a group of volunteers called the Internet Society run more like a council of elders than a business.
No one organization collects fees from Internet users or networks. Each user and service pays its own way. There are rarely any additional charges for sending and receiving electronic mail (even when sending to other networks), retrieving files, or reading Usenet Newsgroups.
For more on the Internet, check out the sources listed at the end of Appendix 6.

Statistics

History

Internet and The Matrix

The Matrix is also called "WorldNet." It includes all the networks in Internet, and in addition a long list of networks that can send electronic mail to each other (though they may not be based on the TCP/IP protocol). Think of it as a larger network using the Internet as a telephone exchange.
The Matrix includes Internet, BITNET, DECnet, Minitel (France), Usenet, UUCP, PeaceNet, IGC, EARN, Uninett, FidoNet, CompuServe, Alternex (Brazil), ATT Mail, FredsNaetet (Sweden), AppleLink, GeoNet (hosts in Germany, England, U.S.A.), GreenNet, MCI Mail, MetaNet, Nicarao (Nicaragua), OTC PeaceNet/EcoNet, Pegasus (Australia), Portal, PsychNet, Telemail, TWICS (Japan), Web (Canada), The Well, CARINET, DASnet, Janet (England), X.400, SprintMail, and many more.
These peripheral networks create a larger Matrix Internet that reaches 155 countries (January 1995), and provide many millions of people with lowest common denominator email connectivity.
Matrix News estimated that 71 million users were able to exchange email with other users on the Matrix, versus 27.5 million as of October 1994 .

Istel

Vendor of packet data services, who used to have operator-owned nodes in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Holland, Spain, Sweden, England.

Kompass

Publisher of corporate directories with affiliates all over the world. Their databank has about 1.5 million companies in 70 countries (2000). Also at www.kompass.net. More details in Chapter 11.

MCI Mail

Microsoft Network

MSN started in September 1995. They claimed 250,000 members by mid October, 1,000,000 members in March, 1996, and 2.3 million customers in July 1997. The service had relationships with long distance carriers to provide local access numbers in 50 countries, and it's access software was localized in 26 languages.

LEXIS-NEXIS

A full-text legal information service offering many specialized law libraries, covering all areas of law practice.

MetaNet

Minitel

French videotex service marketed in several countries by France Telecom. It was originally based on a special videotex graphics display format (Teletel), had over 25,000 services, and appeared like a large French online hypermarche. In October 1998, it claimed over 35 million users. Access required software for emulating Minitel menus and function keys, or any VT100 compatible terminal.

NEC PC-VAN

Used to be Japan's next largest online service with around 1,77 million users by the end of 1996.

Newsbytes News Network

Brainwave for NewsNet

In 1997, NewsNet was taken over by Telebase and integrated with its Brainwave service.
The Brainwave database of newsletters contains the full text of specialized industry newsletters that provide information on companies, products, markets, and technologies; trade and geopolitical regions of the world; and government funding, rulings, and regulation and other legislative activities which impact the industries and regions covered. It provides searchers with facts, figures, analysis, and current information affecting a broad range of industries and sectors.
The database includes more than 650 specialized industry newsletters published, with additional titles added on a regular basis. Sources include such varied titles as Air/Water Pollution Report, Asian Economic News, BOC Week , Communications Daily, Defense Daily, Inside R&D, NTT Topics, and The Private Placement Letter.
For a fee, you can read individual newsletter issues, and search back issues of individual newsletters or publications within an industry classification.

NIFTY-Serve

had 2 million subscribers by September 1996, and is Japan's largest online service. To use it, your communications system must be able to display Japanese characters. Offers Newsbytes in Japanese.
Nifty-Serve is jointly operated by Fujitsu and Nissho Iwai Trading in a licensing agreement with CompuServe.

OCLC

Online Computer Library Center, Inc. is a nonprofit computer library service and research organization whose computer network and products link more than 21,000 libraries in 63 countries and territories (1996). It serves all types of libraries, including public, academic, special, corporate, law, and medical libraries.

Questel-Orbit

Specialized in patent and trademark information.

RelayNet

Also called PcRelay-Net. An international network for exchange of email and conferences between more than 8,500 bulletin boards. The Relaynet International Message Exchange (RIME) consists of some 1,000 systems (1992).

Relcom

means 'Russian Electronic Communications.' This company provides email, other network services, a gateway to Internet, and access to Usenet. In early 1992, RELCOM had regional nodes in 25 cities of the xUSSR connecting over 1,000 organizations or 30,000 users. RELCOM had a gateway to IASNET.

Reuters Information Systems

Financial online service.

SprintMail

Commercial vendor of email services. In 1991, they had local nodes serving customers in 108 countries through its SprintNet network.

STN International

The Scientific & Technical Information Network is operated cooperatively by Fachinformationszentrum (FIZ) in Germany, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) of the American Chemical Society (ACS), and the Japan Information Center of Science and Technology (JICST). Databases in Science, Technology, Patents, and Business.

TWICS BeeLINE

English-language Japanese online service with PARTIcipate, Caucus and Usenet netnews.

UMI/Data Courier

Unison

North American conferencing service using PARTIcipate software.

UUCP

UUCP (UNIX to UNIX Copy) is a protocol, a set of files and a set of commands to copy files from one UNIX computer to another. This copying procedure is the core of the UUCP network, a loose association of systems all communicating with the UUCP protocol.
UNIX computers can participate in the UUCP network (using leased line or dial-up) through any other UNIX host. The network now also has many MS-DOS and other hosts, and consisted of 18,800 hosts in October 1994 (source: UUCP map) serving more than 564,000 users (source: Matrix News).
The UUCP network is based on two systems connecting to each other at specific intervals, and executing any work scheduled for either of them. For example, the system Oregano calls the system Basil once every two hours. If there's mail waiting for Oregano, Basil will send it at that time. Likewise, Oregano will at that time send any mail waiting for Basil.
There are databases with connectivity information (UUCP maps), and programs (pathalias) that will help you decide the correct routing of messages. However, many UUCP hosts are not registered in the UUCP map.
EUNET is a UUCP based network in Europe. JUNET is an equivalent network in Japan. There are many gateway machines that exchange mail between UUCP and the Internet. Among these, UUNET.UU.NET is among the most frequently used (http://www.uu.net).

Usenet (User Network)

Usenet, Netnews, or just "News" are common terms for a large many-to-many conferencing (only) system distributed through UUCP, Internet, FidoNet, and BITNET. The European portion of Usenet is called EUNET (European Unix NET).
This grassroots driven "network" has grown out of the global university and research domains. It is a service rather than a real network. It is not an organization, and has no central authority.
In 1993, Usenet's newsgroups were carried by over 69,000 host computers (sites) in five continents, and had over 1,991,000 users (source: Brian Reid). In January 1995, Reid estimated 16.5 million users. In February, the number of sites were estimated at 260,000 (source: The Internet Index). Many of these sites also have access to the Internet.
The local administrator of each node in the network decides what newsgroups to receive and make available to its users. Few systems offer access to all of them.
NetNews is organized in groups of 'conferences'. Each classification is organized into groups and subgroups according to topic. As of June 1, 1993, there were 4500 newsgroups and 2500 regional newsgroups. Several sites are carrying over 2600 topics. In July 1995, there were over 15,000 newsgroups. In December 1996, PC/Computing estimated the number of newsgroups at over 28,000.
On a typical day in December 1993, 43,000 Usenet articles were posted. In November 1996, 754 megabytes of information were posted daily to Usenet.
The groups distributed worldwide are divided into seven broad classifications:

"comp"   Topics of interest to both computer professionals and hobbyists, including topics in computer science, software source, and information on hardware and software systems. 
"sci" Discussions marked by special and usually practical knowledge, about research in or application of the established sciences.
"misc" Groups addressing themes not easily classified under any of the other headings or which incorporate themes from multiple categories.
"soc" Groups primarily addressing social issues and socializing.
"talk" Groups largely debate-oriented and tending to feature long discussions without resolution and without much useful information.
"news" Groups concerned with the news network and software themselves.
"rec" Groups oriented toward hobbies and recreational activities.
Also available are many "alternative" hierarchies, like:
"alt" True anarchy; anything and everything can and does appear. Subjects include sex, and privacy.
"biz" Business-related groups
"clari" Newsgroups gatewayed from commercial news services and other 'official' sources.

Most Netnews hosts offer both global and local conferences. These include Australian and Australasian (aus), and Jewish (shamash) newsgroups; groups coming from BITNET (bit), /CL-Netz (cl), Z-Netz (z-netz), and Fidonet (fido) ; German (de), Japanese (fj), French (fr), Norwegian (no), Cyrillic (relcom), and Finnish (sfnet) language groups; United Kingdom (uk) groups, Taiwan (tw), Microsoft (microsoft) and more.
Many newsgroups can be read through bulletin boards, commercial online services, or through gateways from connected hosts (like from some BITNET hosts).
A full list of available groups and conferences is normally available from hosts offering Netnews, and on NETNEWS servers. There is a Master List of Newsgroup Hierarchies (not the names of the newsgroups themselves). Each hierarchy is accompanied by a brief explanation of its affiliation, purpose or topic areas. You can also locate newsgroups at http://www.liszt.com/news/.
The FAQ "What is Usenet?" is regularly posted to news.admin.misc, and news.answers. Also, make sure you check out the Usenet Info Center Launch Pad.
An online book titled "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet" is at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/. At Planetweb Galactic , you can search the contents of Web FAQ texts.

The Well

The Whole Earth Lectronic Link is a commercial online service (U.S.A.). It has its own conferencing culture, and is an interesting starting point to "study" what makes the Silicon Valley area so dynamic.

| Next | Back |  Top of page | Index | Expanded index | Register |

Search:

The Online World resources handbook's text on paper, disk and in any other electronic form is © copyrighted 2001 by Odd de Presno.
Updated at January 16, 2001.
Feedback please.