Here are some of the popular services on the Internet:
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) FTP is an Internet service that transfers files from one computer to another. Some FTP servers require that you obtain an account before you have permission to copy files from the server. Other FTP servers have a special account, called “anonymous,” through which unregistered users can access files on the servers.
electronic mail (e-mail) Electronic mail is the postal system of the Internet. It lets you send text messages to any recipient that has an e-mail address. Modern e-mail services allow the embedding of sound, video, and image files in e-mail messages.
bulletin boards Bulletin boards, also called newsgroups or discussion groups, work similarly to electronic mail. However, instead of writing messages to individual users, participants in a bulletin board post their messages to a news server. On the news server, messages called articles are stored, often in hierarchical directories. Users participate in bulletin board services by reading messages and posting responses to them. Client software that can view a bulletin board service is called a newsreader.
Gopher Gopher is an Internet browsing service organized as a series of menus. Gopher menu items can be files on the current server or they can point to menus on other Gopher servers. By navigating a series of Gopher menus, you travel around the Internet until you locate the information that you want.
World Wide Web The World Wide Web is the most popular and fastest growing Internet service. It uses hypertext links called hyperlinks to locate and retrieve pages from World Wide Web servers. World Wide Web pages combine sound, graphics, animation, text, and software programs into dynamic documents. Users view the World Wide Web from Web browsers, client programs that can display the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) in which pages are written.