The Internet and the World Wide Web: a general overview and applications for the biomedical community

The Internet is a vast network of computers across the world. It has facilitated communication and collaboration among biomedical scientists and physicians. This article describes some of the basic tools of the Internet, including electronic mail, Telnet, File Transfer Protocol, and the changes brought by the World Wide Web. Examples of these tools are graphically illustrated and a list of useful Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) is provided.