Getting your Community on to the Internet

The information on this web page has been adapted from a factsheet provided by Dave Eagle at CIRA (Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit).

Many individuals and communities are considering getting onto the Internet. For many this is simply the result of being carried along by the crowd - 'if they're doing it then maybe we should'.

There are often good reasons why a community should consider having access to the Internet and a presence on the Internet. Unfortunately, for many people the endless hype and technobabble surrounding the Internet causes confusion and prevents understanding.

This information sheet is designed to help you to understand enough to make an informed choice. Should you choose to join the Internet community, this sheet can also provide you with the information that you need to make it happen.

Before we go any further, we need to be clear what it is that we're actually talking about.

What is the Internet?

The Internet - often described as the 'network of networks' and the 'Information Superhighway' - is a vast, global computer network built upon a set of communication protocols known as TCP/IP. Don't give up now. This is the last time we're going to mention this. For most users this technical detail is not important.

Rule 1 : It's the applications that are important - you can completely ignore the underlying technology.

A Better Definition

The Internet is a community.
You can consider it as something like a town. There are places to buy and sell, places to get information about health issues, travel, finance, etc. You can meet people and join groups of people with specific interests. The Internet 'town' is vast and most of it is available twenty four hours of every day. Geography and time zones are irrelevant. It's a multicultural, multilingual community. Like most other communities there are some parts of it where you would not want to send your children alone.

The Internet community is accessed using software applications - other towns are accessed by bus or car. When you use a bus or car you don't need to understand how it works, and the same applies to software applications. What you need to worry about is how to get the application to carry out particular tasks - this is known as driving the application, and it's usually very easy to do.

The most common interface to Internet applications - the set of controls that you use to drive it - operates with a mouse and keyboard on an everyday desktop personal computer (PC). People in some areas of the UK will be able to access the Internet via their TV sets, using a device similar to an ordinary TV remote control.

Internet Applications

So, what are these Internet applications? Most Internet application have been superseded by the World Wide Web. In fact, for many Internet users the Web is the Internet.

The Web is a huge collection of information 'objects' (which are combinations of text, pictures, sounds, videos, animations, and smells) connected together by areas of the screen known as 'hyperlinks'. I'm kidding about the smells, but who knows how long it will be? These objects are often described as 'files'.

Users move from object to object simply by pointing the cursor at a hyperlink and clicking the mouse button. The cursor is the shape on the screen, which represents the position of the mouse pointer. As you move the mouse the cursor follows your movements on the screen. These Web objects are called Web pages, and there are a huge number of them 'out there' - around 50 million is a reasonable guess, but it could be double that by the time you read this. Hyperlinks are what makes the Web into a web - Web pages have links to other Web pages, which are chosen by the page author. When you click on the link you are taken to the new Web page. The idea of seemingly random links between 50 million or more pages is what creates the concept of a Web. The user interface to the Web is a web browser such as Netscape, Mosaic, or Internet Explorer. Web browsing is sometimes called 'surfing the Internet', although many Internet snobs would never use this expression. Web browser applications can also provide access to the other common Internet applications mentioned below.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) gives users the ability to transfer files (the various kinds of multimedia objects) from machine to machine, across the Internet. Normally, to use FTP to access files you are required to be an authorised user of the computer which holds the files. Many computers on the Internet (information sources known as servers) allow users to access files anonymously (a process known as anonymous FTP). This just means that anyone can access those files. You usually need to use FTP when you create and manage your own personal Web pages. The pages are built on your own PC and then transferred to the relevant server, using FTP.

Gopher allows users to select information objects from 'gopher servers' using a text based menu interface. Veronica allows users to search for information that may exist on one or more gopher servers (amusingly known as 'gopherspace'). Gopherspace was the forerunner to the Web. It operates in a similar way, but it's text only. You will probably never use Gopher, but it can sometimes be useful for accessing older, archived information which is not yet available on the Web (and may never be). You can normally access gopherspace using your Web browser, although some Internet Service Providers (ISPs - see later) will provide separate Gopher software.

Usenet News is a system for the maintenance of interest groups (called 'newsgroups'). Members of a group post messages to the system, which echoes them out to all of the other members of the group. There are over forty thousand newsgroups covering every imaginable subject, and a lot more besides. Not every News server will provide access to every newsgroup. Most News services prevent access to the overtly illegal groups. However, News is an application where you are likely to come across the most bizarre aspects of Internet culture. The News system can be accessed using your e-mail software.

Voice and video telephony applications are beginning to appear on the Internet. With the right software it is possible to make international telephone calls and hold low quality videoconferences across the Internet for the cost of a local phone call. The Internet was not designed for such demanding applications and, at the moment, it is unlikely to be able to support much of this type of usage at acceptable levels of quality. As technology and the networks improve these may well become the next 'killer applications' (this is technobabble for an application which is so useful that it justifies the purchase of the hardware, software etc all on its own).

Streamed audio and streamed video are the equivalent of radio and TV broadcasts over the Internet. Many 'local' radio stations are now available internationally in this way, and special events (such as the UK Budget speech and major sporting events) are broadcast as audio and video to the world. These are very effective applications if you can afford to stay online long enough to enjoy the content. These applications are normally accessed using your Web browser software, often using a thing called a 'plug-in'. Plug-ins are available for a large number of more specialised applications such as electronic music and animation. They are software programs that extend the capabilities of your Web browser and allow it to view a wider range of multimedia objects. Plug-ins are usually free.

By far the most useful of the other Internet applications is electronic mail. E-mail is fast and cheap. An e-mail message sent from your desktop computer to anywhere in the world will almost certainly arrive at its destination within a few minutes. You can send a document around the world for less than the price of an international fax. E-mail allows multiple addressing, where one message is sent simultaneously to two or more addresses. It is possible to send an identical message (for example a party invitation or Christmas greeting) to one hundred different people all over the world for less than five pence. Some e-mail systems offer service guarantees such as confirmation of delivery (although the plain Internet e-mail service does not). E-mail is held in a user's mailbox, which can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet. This location independence makes e-mail particularly useful for business travellers.

A more recent development is web-based e-mail - where the user accesses his/her mailbox using a web page. There are dozens of places on the Internet where you can get free, web based e-mail services.

The Downside - It should be called the Unternet

It's easy to see the upside - just have a short play on the Web and you will see the potential. There is a downside, and for completeness it's worth mentioning a few of the issues. For serious users (such as business users) some of these issues may be significant. The Unternet is unstructured, uncensored, uncontrolled, and unreliable.

Unstructured: no white pages; no yellow pages; no logical / predictable structure. There is no directory of all Internet resources and users. With the telephone system (the geeks call it POTS - Plain Old Telephone System) it is normally quite easy to find a person's network address (telephone number). It is particularly easy to find the address of a business (these rarely go ex-directory). The Internet has lots of directories of businesses and home users, but none of them are anywhere close to being complete. Worse than this, there's no standard structure to the addresses of Internet resources, so users can't expect to guess addresses with any degree of certainty. This is why it is extremely important for businesses and other organisations to register and use an easily identifiable domain name. More on this later.

Uncensored: anything goes. There are no rules or standards relating to information content, other than the law of the land. But which land, and how can the Internet be policed?

Uncontrolled: no formal content regulation; no formal content validation; no access restrictions. Any member of the Internet community can provide any information and/or any service to other members of the community. Services and information can be withdrawn without notice. Information content can be of low quality, and in some cases entirely false.

The law and judicial systems aren't even close to catching up with this community. It's not even easy to see which laws apply as the Internet community does not lie within any obvious existing jurisdiction. However, contrary to the often-quoted view of the Internet as a truly anarchic place, there exists a very strict set of unofficial rules known as 'netiquette'. Transgress and you could find that other members of this community are very unforgiving.

Unreliable: The Internet offers no guaranteed levels of service. Performance can vary greatly at different times of day and on different days of the week. Information content can be nomadic - moving around the net as the owner wishes, but leaving other users lost. The Internet is owned and managed by thousands and thousands of individual information providers, each doing their own thing.

Getting onto the Internet

There are two types of Internet user - the information sink and the information source.
Information sinks are users who browse the Web and take information off for their own purposes. Information sources are those users who create and manage the Web content for other users to take off.

The users who make the most of the Internet are both sources and sinks.

One of the most exciting aspects of the Internet is that every user has the opportunity to contribute content. You can have your say. I would encourage all groups and individuals to have a go.

So how do you go about becoming an Internet user?

Equipment

You can access the Internet with fairly basic computer equipment, or from your TV fitted with the right set top box (depending on where you live and when you read this).
The most flexible way of accessing the Internet (the way that gives you most control over your activities and access to more applications) is via a personal computer. Internet TV and Interactive TV are mainly for information sinks.

It is possible to use almost any home or office computer but the vast majority of people use PCs - that is IBM PC compatible personal computers. At the time of writing, a brand name all-singing all-dancing Internet-ready PC can be had for �999 including VAT. Equivalent machines without the brand name are cheaper.

Capable machines (that is, a machine which is capable of being used for accessing the Internet, but which is not the latest super-PC) are much cheaper, available second hand, and you may already have one.

If PC equipment jargon is of no interest to you then I suggest that you skip this section.

My basic minimum specification for an Internet capable PC would be:

486 - 66MHz processor (but Pentium preferred)
8 MB memory (16 MB preferred)
500 MB hard disk drive (but the bigger the better)
256 colour graphics
Modem
Windows 3.1 (but Windows 95 or later preferred)

You can access the Internet with a less powerful PC, and you can get web-browsing software which has no graphics and runs on MSDOS. However, a sad fact of life in the personal computer world is that if you want the latest features in your software then you need a fairly up to date PC to run it on - so Windows 95 or 98, a Pentium, and more memory are definitely an advantage. Some of the 'free' Internet access services that are available today can not be used at all on Windows 3.1 based PCs, but there are one or two that can.

The Internet access software is generally free and will be provided by your chosen Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Internet Service Providers

There are several hundred companies who will provide you with access to the Internet. Some of them charge (typically around �10 per month) and some of them don't. At least not directly - they get their cut from what you pay for the telephone calls.
Before you can even contemplate having an ISP you need to have a suitable computer, a telephone line, and a modem (which is the device which connects the computer to the telephone line).

The ISP provides you with a number to dial, which allows your computer to access the Internet and all the applications mentioned above. Most ISPs will also provide you with some 'free' web space (storage space on one of their servers where you can create your own Web content).

What you will need from your ISP depends very much on what you want out of the Internet and how large your organisation is.

The key questions relating to ISPs are :

What support do they provide? It's obvious, but if you're only going to be using the Internet after 6.00 p.m. and at weekends then it's no good choosing an ISP whose telephone support is only during office hours, five days per week. Also, even the 'free' ISPs charge for telephone support - so if you are likely to need a lot of support then it might be cheaper to pay for an ISP rather than go for a 'free' one.

How many e-mail mailboxes do they provide? If you want ten mailboxes for your ten staff then many ISPs will charge extra for this. An ISP will typically provide between two and five mailboxes for the basic monthly charge (which may be 'free').

How much 'free' web space is provided is usually not an important factor. For most individuals and organisations a reasonable web site will fit in less than 1MB, so an ISP offering 50MB is no better than one offering 10MB. ISPs rely on this. If every customer used up their entire quota of web space then the ISP would need to buy a lot more disk space.

Web Hosting

The provision of space where you or your organisation can put your own web pages is called web hosting. ISPs will normally also be web hosts. There are also other companies who are web hosts but do not provide other ISP services (such as dial-up access accounts).

Why bother with a separate web host? Well, web hosts can often provide additional (very technical) services, which make your web site more functional. Examples of these additional services would be support for electronic commerce with a 'shopping trolley', and support for interactive forms on your web pages. Electronic commerce is called e-commerce. There are a lot of e-words about these days.

Branding and Domain Names

If you really want your presence on the Internet to get noticed then you need a predictable web site address, and a predictable e-mail address. My name is Dave Eagle, but my e-mail address could well be [email protected]. It isn't, but hopefully you can see my point.

It is possible to register company, organisation, and personal names as Internet domains. Domain names must be unique - if someone else has already registered your preferred name then you've probably lost it. For an organisation called Quick Clean a web site at www.quickclean.co.uk and e-mail addresses like [email protected] are definitely more user friendly. Domain names cost money - typically �80 for the first two years and �40 per year after this - but they are good value and allow you to create an identifiable Internet brand. The cost of domain name registration is likely to fall.

ISPs and web hosts can all register domain names for you.

The domain name structure is centrally controlled. In the example above the co.uk part of the domain name indicates that the organisation is commercial, and in the UK. Some of the other options are org.uk (for not-for-profit organisations) and ac.uk (for academic institutions). Web site addresses are often referred to as URLs. It doesn't matter what it stands for (Uniform Resource Locator). You often see URLs mentioned in advertising on TV, and in magazines and newspapers.

Building Your Own Web Pages

If you decide to take the plunge and put your organisation onto the Internet; and if you decide to be a full Internet user, not just an information sink, then you will need to build a web page. This can be a daunting task for most people (although some of the more recent software tools are incredibly easy to use). Training is available at most colleges and Universities. If you don't see a suitable course then ask for one.
There are many companies out there who will gladly build a website for you - for money. There are also many volunteers, students and schoolchildren, who will do a pretty decent job for free.

The key point is to make sure that your website conveys the correct message. If you are a business and you want your website to help in the marketing of your products then it needs to be designed to do just that. If you are a community organisation then the website objectives will be completely different. Get the message right - don't worry about having the best graphics and the most up to date technology on your site.

I stated earlier that one of the most exciting aspects of the Internet is that every user has the opportunity to contribute content. The Internet is a place where you can have your say, and quality of presentation doesn't count. An individual artist can publish sketches or poetry or music to the world, and it doesn't matter if nobody likes it. Individuals and organisations can comment on any issue, and at any time. Build a web page for yourself, and for your organisation. Build several different ones if you want to.

Spend some time as an information sink before you start. That way when you are designing your pages you can bear in mind all of the things that irritated you about other people's sites - and hopefully avoid doing them yourself.

Types of Internet Connection

So far in this factsheet I've talked about the connection to the Internet being over a 'telephone line'. There are a number of different options here, which are worth mentioning.

Normal telephone line - normal dial-up access

This uses a normal telephone line, just like the one that your normal telephone is plugged into. The connection to the computer goes via a box called a modem, which costs between �40 and �140. Buy as fast a modem as you can afford. At the time of writing the fastest around are 56kbps (56 thousand bits per second). This is the cheapest option.

Digital telephone line - ISDN dial-up access

ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network - as if you cared) is a digital dial-up service which is available to many of us in towns and cities. It is less likely to be available in rural areas - ask your telecoms provider. ISDN access is faster than normal telephone line access (at 64kbps) - the web pages appear on your screen more quickly. To use ISDN you need a black box (or internally fitted card) called a terminal adapter. This is equivalent to a modem. Telephone usage charges on ISDN are the same as those on normal lines, but the line rental is more expensive.

ISDN is a better option if you want to connect several computers to the Internet over a single telephone line.

The above options both have additional costs depending on exactly how much time you spend on-line. These are the normal telephone call charges. One hour of on-line time costs from 60p to �2.40 depending on the time of day and day of the week. You can take advantage of discount schemes (such as BT Friends & Family - my Internet connection is my 'best friend' - 20% discount). Call charges can soon mount up and a little discipline is needed to keep control of the budget. Most organisations can manage with a regularly scheduled one or two hours of Internet access per day, or even per week. It's just a matter of being organised.

Charities can often take advantage of special deals normally reserved for Schools. These are known as 'flat-top tariff' deals and involve you in paying a fixed (and therefore predictable) annual amount up-front, and getting 'free' calls between 8.00 a.m. and 6.00 p.m. on weekdays. This will typically cost you around �800 per year. Talk to BT, Cable & Wireless, and local cable TV companies for further details of their offerings.

Cable Modem access

Users who have the benefit of being on a cable TV network will soon have the option of connecting to the Internet using yet another black box, called a cable modem. These operate at up to 10 million bits per second (although guaranteeing only 500,000 bits per second). This does not mean that Internet access will be blisteringly fast though. The delays experienced by Internet users are often caused by congestion on the wider Internet and speeding up your 'slip-road' will have little effect. Cable modem users will benefit most from high speed access to locally held content. The charges for cable modem access look like being similar to those for ISDN access.

Leased Line access

This is for high usage users with many computers connected to the Internet at the same time. The line gives you a permanent connection to the Internet. Expensive (but no call charges).

Support

One of the biggest headaches for anyone contemplating putting themselves or their organisation on-line is support. Who will help you to set it up and who will you call if things go wrong?
This is not an easy question to answer. Many organisations have staff or volunteers who know a little bit about this technology. Unfortunately a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Currently the best solution is to buy an all inclusive package from your supplier: get your supplier to agree to support your hardware AND the connection to the Internet.

Our own preferred solution is peer support: form a group of similar organisations or individuals and use the Internet and the telephone to support each other, maybe even collectively buying in external support as required.

The provision of help-desk and other technical support services to a wide range of voluntary and community sector organisations could be an excellent community business idea. In fact we have been working on doing just that in the Tees Valley.

The support issue is not going to go away. If you are bidding for funds then budget at least 20% of the hardware/software costs extra for a good maintenance and support contract, per year of support. Extended warranty or support deals that you can take out up-front are often worth it - but check the detail. If the extended warranty just covers equipment failure and does not provide telephone help-line support then don't bother unless it's really cheap.

This type of support just keeps you running. An equally important support issue is simply having someone to discuss problems and share ideas with. Use the Internet to create peer support groups for this.

Further Information

There are many Internet-related magazines around these days. Any one of them will give you further insights into the community of the Internet - but beware the technobabble. More easily accessible material is being produced for TV and radio by the BBC. This is generally excellent, as is their WebWise awareness-raising material.
In County Durham you have at least two relevant organisations, namely County Durham On-line (0191 3835000) and the 'One Voice' Network (01429 823067).

Northern Informatics is a regional body, which presides over strategic issues relating to the Information Society. There is a Northern Informatics Voluntary and Community Sector Group which can be contacted through CIRA, on 01642 342710.

Your local Colleges and Universities can be a good source of impartial advice, but the best way to find out what really works and what doesn't work is to talk to existing Internet users.

There are, of course, some existing communities and voluntary sector organisations which have taken the plunge and got themselves on-line. Many more are in the process of doing so. Seek them out.

As a starting point try Trimdon Digital Village (c/o Trimdon Labour Club, Front Street, Trimdon Village, Co. Durham).


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