The World Wide Web has been all around and many of us believe this is how the internet has always been. However, the internet was much more and still is. The world wide web runs on the popular http(s) protocol. It’s why all the websites use the prefix, http:// and a www after that. Of late of course, the www part is irrelevant for us as users, but did you know the internet has in the past and still does, have other protocols that are active, but just not as popular? Have you heard of IRC, Gopher, Usenet and Newsgroups? They were almost as popular as WWW and enthusiasts still maintain servers running these protocols.
There might be an internet that lies vastly unexplored and never crawled by popular search engines. Let’s look at some of the popular protocols of the past. The internet of yesteryear was accessed not using graphical interfaces like the ones we use today. It’s true, Internet Explorer and Firefox (previously present in the form of Netscape Navigator) have been around for decades, but browsers before that era let you browse the internet using just text. One such popular web browser was called Lynx, and there are many other text-based browsers you can try out even today like w3m and Elinks. The internet was primarily just text. That’s right, no animations, no images or videos. The internet connections of the day were much slower, and image and video compression techniques were rudimentary. Other content was available, but it had first to be downloaded to your local computer before you could open them.
Most of the other older technologies we speak about were designed for text too, and they were core to delivering information and promoting discussion. Some might say, it was a purer, less chaotic internet than what we might see today. Fortunately, those protocols are still alive, and they can be accessed using clients. Back in the day, most web browsers supported some of those protocols out of the box but as popularity declined, the features were discarded.
Internet Relay Chat
IRC or Internet Relay Chat was used to interact with others with chat messages, before instant messengers came along. The first popular instant messenger was called ICQ. IRC is still one of the most popular way to interact with others. It’s not as easily accessible as say, Discord but there are lakhs of users scattered across different IRC networks. There are several IRC servers (also called IRC Networks) that you can connect to. Servers contain channels, and each of those channels is dedicated to a specific topic. You will need an IRC client to connect to an IRC server. Plenty of clients exist, for different platforms. For example, Hexchat is a free client for Windows. Similarly, there are clients such as AndroIRC for Android and Palaver for Apple devices. IRC servers can also be accessed over a web browser using services such as Mibbit, IRCCloud and Kiwi IRC. The idea is you first join a server with a nickname and then join a channel. IRC servers typically start with an irc. domain and channels within servers start with #. IRC is currently used for some casual conversation but heavily for development and technology related topics. Some servers require you to register a nickname and password, while most others allow anonymous logins.
Gopher
Gopher was a text-based content platform. Users used gopher clients to access them. In fact, there are many Gopher clients available today, and services as well. There are even Gopher browser extensions available on the browser exntesion stores, that let you browse Gopher sites using the comforts of your web browser. Clients for Android exist as well, with the most popular one called DiggieDog. Gopher sites are entirely text based but they usually contain large amounts of information, that’s void of any kinds of ads and popups, videos or distractions. Many developers even host their blogs on Gopher posting updates of their activities from time to time. Gopher services act like large directories that you navigate through, rather than using hyperlinks to jump between pages.
Network News Transfer Protocol
Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) was the protocol but it better known as Newsgroups and Usenet. They were discussion boards where users could connect and have discussions. Like most other early network protocols, NNTP too was used for file sharing. Developers would post updates and host discussions on features on such discussion boards. Other users could contribute and download from them. Usenet servers are still present in closed circles. Newsgroups are now replaced by web based discussion boards, you might see typically on large communities. Some newsgroups can be accessed using web interfaces too. Google Groups is one such example. Like most modern discussion boards, Newsgroups had original threads, and replies by other users, all neatly threaded.
FTP
FTP used to be the go-to protocol for file transfers. Some web hosting services still use them to allow users to upload content to their servers. Unlike http. there were plenty of FTP servers people could setup with permissions and rights for specific users and groups. It was popularly used all through the decades. FTP servers are like Windows folders. In addition, it allowed users to also upload files to your server. Most web browsers support FTP servers and there are also dedicated clients available, such as FileZilla. Most public FTP serves are used to distribute and share free software. On smartphones, you will likely need a FTP client to access the servers. FTP servers also supported multi-threaded downloads, so users would use download managers to download using multiple streams in order to improve transfer speeds.
Bulletin Board System (BBS)
Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) were interactive servers that could be used for conversations, as well as browsing local web sites, playing text based multiplayer games, even downloading files. They used to be accessible over phone lines but with the popularity of the internet, they have moved to the internet. They were colourful in comparison to other older technologies. There was no point and click, and users had to use their keyboard direction keys and shortcuts through navigate through various sections of the board. Users would use their modems to connect to a specific phone number. If all the lines were busy, you would keep retrying till you logged in. Today, users can ‘telnet’ into their favourite BBS and experience the same nostalgic experience as the 80s and 90s. Telnet is a tool that usually comes preinstalled on most operating systems, but you can use a third-party telnet client like Putty as well. BBS services can be connected to, using their IP addresses. Some modern ones might be available using the web browser as well.
These were just some of the technologies people would spend time on, developing and using before the internet was all too popular. They were also very popular in India through the 90. If you are curious to see what it was like, there are modern utilities that we mentioned that could give a try. We hope this was a peak into the past for you. For more interesting news of things, unusual and interesting, keep reading RelianceDigital.in
