CHAPTER 5 -- GOPHER

USING MENUS TO BURROW THROUGH THE INTERNET

5.1 Introduction

One of the first important Internet resources is gopher. Gopher is both versatile and easy to use. Using gopher, one can find Internet users' addresses and e-mail to them or find and download files. Most importantly, gopher can be used to access information from a vast collection of computers world-wide. Today most gopher servers have been converted to web servers. The few remaining gopher sites can be accessed through the World-wide web using Netscape or Internet Explorer.

5.1.1 History

The name "Gopher" is actually a triple pun. "Gopher" was developed as a distributed campus information service at the University of Minnesota. The mascot for the University of Minnesota is the "Golden Gopher." One of the primary functions of gopher is to "go fer" things. In addition, gopher can be used to burrow through large collections of information, looking for what the user wants, just like the gopher animal that burrows through the ground.

The University of Minnesota Computer Center designed gopher in 1991 so that each campus department could control and provide access to the data on their computers. Students and other university community members could then access this data by using a simple menu structure to find answers to their questions. Today there are thousands of gopher servers or providers and millions of gopher users worldwide.

5.2.2 How does Gopher work?

As you have seen in earlier chapters, there are many different ways to receive and send information through the Internet. Most of these programs involved direct connection between the servers and the clients (like telnet and ftp) or they require knowing exact addresses (like e-mail). Gopher is different from these other Internet services. Although you may need to know the address of a gopher server to start, once there, you can traverse the Internet by selecting sites from a menu.

Each gopher server provides access to information in a structured, hierarchical menu -- much like a table of contents (see Fig. 5.1). Each option in the menu will either direct you to information on this server or will contain a link to another server somewhere else in the world. By selecting that option from the menu, you will move to this other location. The accumulation of all these gopher servers is often referred to as GopherSpace.

Gopher is a Client/Server environment. Each of the information providers is classed as a gopher server. In order to access information from any of these servers, the user needs a gopher client software. The client software must be installed on a computer that is connected to the Internet.

There is free gopher client software available for most computers including UNIX and X-Windows, IBM/PC DOS and Windows, Macintosh, VAX/VMS, VM/CMS and many others. The source for most of this software can be found by anonymous FTPing to boombox.micro.umn.edu and accessing the appropriate files from /pub/gopher. You can also use archie (see Chapter 7) to locate other sources of the client software.

Internet Gopher Information Client 1.2VMS pl0

Root gopher server: gopher.micro.umn.edu

--> 1. Information About Gopher/

2. Computer Information/

3. Discussion Groups/

4. Fun & Games/

5. Internet file server (ftp) sites/

6. Libraries/

7. News/

8. Other Gopher and Information Servers/

9. Phone Books/

10. Search Gopher Titles at the University of Minnesota <?>

11. Search lots of places at the University of Minnesota <?>

12. University of Minnesota Campus Information/

Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/1

Fig. 5.1 The main gopher menu

If you want some of the latest information on gopher, you can subscribe to gopher-news list at gopher-news-request@boombox.micro.umn.edu.