Before the Internet Was Easy
How NNTP, Gopher, IRC, and Other Protocols Built the Online World
Introduction
I remember in college, getting early access to a free dial-up number for internet access. It felt like a secret handshake. That access opened a small, flickering portal to something much bigger. Around that time, you could pick up a local computing magazine at a grocery store or even at the checkout counter of a gas station. In the back pages, tucked between ads for VGA cards and RAM upgrades, were the BBS listings. Each phone number led to a different world, often hosted by hobbyists or teenagers with a second phone line and a love of ASCII (ANSI) art.
Dial-up Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were starting to become popular, but they didn’t all offer the same experience. These were often local providers offering banks of local dial up numbers to mitigate phone calls. (Some Baby Bells were still metering usage, even for local calls at the time). It wasn’t always cheap. Services like AOL were everywhere, handing out free trial disks by the dozen. However, in the beginning, AOL didn’t give you true internet access. You were locked into their ecosystem with their chatrooms, forums, and curated news. It wasn’t until later that full access to the wider internet was possible. If you had a basic dial-up ISP instead, you had more freedom but also more responsibility. Getting online meant configuring your system and, sometimes, tracking down missing files like winsock.dll just to make a connection.
Once you got past those hurdles, the next step was finding the right tools. If you didn’t have Windows 95 Plus, you probably didn’t even have Internet Explorer installed. Some ISPs handed out customized versions of Netscape Navigator, but many people ended up visiting tucows.com to download the software they needed. Tucows was a central hub for freeware and shareware utilities. If you were a user of Tucows back then, it may shock you to learn, that despite mergers and acquisitions, Tucows is still around today.
What did this software actually do? That question opens a window into a very different version of the internet. If you joined the web during the broadband years, your experience probably began and ended in the browser. But earlier internet users depended on a whole ecosystem of applications. Web browsing of the day covered only static documents for the most part. CGI programming was limited, and many sites offered little interactivity. To chat, download, or explore, you needed separate programs that used other protocols entirely. These tools gave the internet its richness in those early days.
It’s also worth reflecting on the state of security back then. Compared to what we expect today, it was almost non-existent.
NNTP
NNTP, or Network News Transfer Protocol, powered what many consider the original public discussion space on the internet: Usenet. This was before the web became mainstream, and long before modern forum sites or social platforms. Usenet offered a massive, decentralized network of conversations. You didn’t scroll through feeds or tap to like anything. Instead, you subscribed to newsgroups, each one focused on a specific topic, and used a newsreader to download and post messages. It was a little chaotic, often unfiltered, and surprisingly personal.
NNTP used TCP port 119. If you wanted a secure connection, the encrypted version, known as NNTPS, typically ran on port 563. The protocol was defined in RFC 977, published in 1986 by Brian Kantor and Phil Lapsley. That document outlined how clients and servers should communicate, including how messages were posted and how servers synchronized articles with each other. Later revisions such as RFC 3977 added new features, but RFC 977 formed the foundation. In a lot of ways, Usenet functioned like an early version of Reddit, with threaded discussions, passionate communities, and a mix of brilliance and nonsense depending on where you clicked.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Usenet was its subject hierarchy. The entire system was organized like a tree, with broad categories that branched into increasingly specific topics. If you were into computers, you might end up in comp.os.linux.misc. Movie buffs could gather in rec.arts.movies.current-films. But the music lovers had their own slice of the network too, and it went deep. There were groups for genres, instruments, fandom, and even individual artists. You didn't just follow music trends, you followed alt.music.<artistname>. For example…
alt.music.beatles
alt.music.björk
alt.music.depeche-mode
alt.music.michael-jackson
alt.music.nirvana
alt.music.pink-floyd
alt.music.prince
alt.music.rush
alt.music.tmbg
alt.music.u2One thing that set Usenet apart from modern platforms was how posts were distributed. When you submitted a message, it didn’t instantly appear everywhere. It was sent to your local server first, then passed along to other servers through a process called propagation. Depending on how fast and well-connected the servers were, it might take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours for your post to show up on distant systems. So while it felt immediate on your end, the global spread of your message relied on a chain of servers doing their jobs in the background. In a way, that delay acted like a built-in cooling-off period. It was hard to get into a proper flame war when your angry reply wouldn’t land for half a day.
Gopher
Gopher was one of the earliest systems designed to help people find and retrieve documents across the internet. It came out of the University of Minnesota in 1991. The name came from the school's mascot, the Golden Gopher. Compared to the web, which was still in its infancy, Gopher was simpler but surprisingly powerful. It organized information in a series of nested menus, giving it the feel of a trip to the library. You would start with a main menu, then drill down into folders, and eventually land on a document, file, or even a searchable database.
Gopher used TCP port 70, and its behavior was officially outlined in RFC 1436, published in March 1993 by Farhad Anklesaria and other contributors from the University of Minnesota. Unlike the web, which focused on jumping between documents using hyperlinks, Gopher was built around a clean, hierarchical structure. Each menu item pointed to a specific type of resource, such as a plain text file, an image, or another Gopher server.
To access Gopher, you needed a client program. Popular choices included TurboGopher (developed by the same university), PC Gopher, and GopherVR, which briefly experimented with a 3D interface. There were also early text-based clients like Lynx that supported both Gopher and the web. Using Gopher felt less like surfing and more like navigating a digital card catalog. It was quiet, organized, and a little formal. In some ways, it felt like stepping into the research wing of the internet.
Believe it or not, you can still explore Gopher today, although it has become a niche corner of the internet. The easiest way to access it is by using a modern text-based browser like Lynx, which still supports the Gopher protocol. If you're on macOS or Linux, you can usually install it with a simple package manager command. Once installed, you can point it to a working Gopher server, such as gopher://gopher.floodgap.com, and start browsing.
Another option is to use Bombadillo, a lightweight terminal browser designed for both Gopher and the Gemini protocol. It offers a clean, focused interface for navigating these older spaces. For Windows users, older programs like Gopherus are still available, although they may require some workarounds to run properly on modern systems.
If you'd rather not install anything, there are Gopher-to-web gateways that let you browse Gopher content using a regular browser. One of the most well-known is the Floodgap Gopher proxy. It translates Gopher menus into web pages, making it easy to explore without any special setup.
Some active Gopher servers you can visit include Floodgap's own server at gopher.floodgap.com, which hosts directories, FAQs, and Gopher news. There's also gopher.quux.org, which preserves historical texts and documents, and gopher.baud.baby, which leans into retro computing and digital zine culture. Visiting these sites feels like stepping into an older, quieter version of the internet. No ads, no scripts, just text, menus, and a sense of digital calm.
IRC
IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, was the go-to solution for real-time communication long before modern chat apps existed. If you were online in the 1990s and wanted to talk to someone instantly, you didn’t load a webpage. You opened an IRC client. Web browsers at the time had no built-in support for live communication. There were no persistent connections, no background updates, and no way to chat interactively. IRC filled that gap with speed and simplicity.
The protocol was introduced in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen and typically used TCP port 6667, although other ports were sometimes used to avoid restrictions. The system was based on a client-server model. Users connected to an IRC server, which could be linked with other servers to form a larger network. Within those networks, users joined channels identified by a #, such as #linux or #music. You could also send private messages, run automated bots, and create invite-only chat rooms. The communication was all plain text, which made it fast even on dial-up.
At the time, IRC filled roles that are now split between several modern services. If you wanted quick, topic-based discussion with strangers, it worked much like the real-time side of X or Bluesky. For multi-channel communities with different permissions, it resembled Discord. And for small private group chats, it offered a function similar to Telegram. It may have lacked graphics and polish, but it created strong communities and long-running conversations.
Major networks like EFnet, Undernet, DALnet, and Freenode (now known as Libera Chat) hosted thousands of channels. These spaces covered everything from software development and gaming to philosophy and obscure trivia. Many open-source projects lived on IRC, with real-time collaboration taking place in public view. While IRC is not as visible today, it is still active and continues to serve communities that value open, decentralized communication.
Telnet
Telnet was one of the earliest ways people connected to remote systems across the internet. It allowed users to open a command-line session on another computer, often for accessing academic servers, university databases, MUDs, or early online bulletin boards. Before graphical interfaces were widespread, Telnet provided a direct way to interact with remote systems. You typed commands, read plain-text responses, and navigated entirely through the keyboard. For many users, it was their first experience with logging into a computer they did not physically control.
Telnet used TCP port 23 and was defined in RFC 854, published in 1983. The protocol was intentionally simple and lightweight. However, it had a serious vulnerability: it transmitted all data in plaintext. That included your username, password, commands, and any output from the server. Anyone capable of capturing packets as they passed through the network could easily read your session. There was no encryption, no protection against spoofed servers, and no confidentiality. As the internet moved beyond trusted academic circles and into public spaces, this became a major concern. Telnet was eventually replaced by SSH, which provides similar functionality with encrypted connections and stronger authentication. Even so, Telnet remains a memorable piece of early internet history and a reminder of how open and exposed early communication protocols really were.
FTP
FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, was one of the most common ways to download software, patches, and drivers during the early days of the internet. Long before app stores and cloud sync became standard, users would connect to an FTP server and browse directories as if they were navigating a local hard drive. Major companies, including Microsoft, maintained public FTP servers that were well organized and easy to use. These servers often contained a wealth of useful content, including service packs, driver updates, and demo versions of games and utilities. For many people, this was their first opportunity to try software before deciding to purchase it.
Popular FTP servers included ftp.microsoft.com, ftp.simtel.net, and ftp.cdrom.com. These sites were known for hosting large collections of shareware, trialware, and full software packages. One of the most important uses of FTP was distributing early versions of Linux. Before DVDs and graphical installers, users would download entire Linux distributions, such as Slackware or Debian, through FTP one file at a time. Many distributions still maintain FTP mirrors today, offering a stable and efficient way to download installation files and updates.
Compared to HTTP, FTP often provided faster download speeds, especially when connecting to a nearby mirror. The protocol handled large file transfers directly and with less overhead, which made it ideal for downloading operating systems or large software bundles. Many FTP clients included features like resume support and batch downloading, which were especially helpful for users on slower connections who needed to stop and continue downloads without starting over.
Today, FTP is still in use, especially in system administration and server management. It remains a practical choice for moving large files between machines, particularly in automated or legacy environments. However, just like Telnet, FTP was designed in an era when security was not a primary concern. The protocol transmits usernames, passwords, and data in plaintext, which creates serious risks on modern networks. To address this, secure options such as FTPS and SFTP were developed. These alternatives use encryption to protect the connection while preserving the reliability and utility of traditional FTP.
For those who still use FTP today, FileZilla (note “bundled software offers” in some downloads) has become one of the most popular and widely supported clients. It is free, open source, and available on multiple platforms. FileZilla supports both traditional FTP and secure variants like FTPS and SFTP, making it a reliable choice for administrators, developers, and anyone who needs to transfer files efficiently.
WAIS
WAIS, or Wide Area Information Servers, was an early attempt to bring powerful full-text search to distributed data across the internet. It was developed in the early 1990s by Thinking Machines Corporation, with backing from Apple, Dow Jones, and others. WAIS allowed users to search indexed documents on remote servers and retrieve relevant results, long before the rise of modern search engines. It was particularly popular in academic and government settings, where large datasets and public archives needed to be searchable from a distance.
WAIS used TCP port 210 and followed a client-server model. Users would connect to a WAIS server using a compatible client, enter a search query, and receive a ranked list of documents based on relevance. The system supported structured indexing, keyword weighting, and retrieval of documents in plain text or binary formats. Although it never saw widespread adoption outside research and education, WAIS was a major influence on how search functionality evolved. It introduced the idea that search should be about meaning and context, not just file names. Over time, it was eclipsed by the simplicity and speed of the web, but WAIS remains an important stepping stone in the history of internet information retrieval.
One of the biggest challenges with WAIS was its complexity. While powerful in theory, it was not particularly easy to set up or use without some technical background. Clients were often text-based and required manual configuration of server addresses and source files. The interface was not intuitive, especially compared to the emerging web browsers that soon followed. Users had to know where to search and how to phrase queries effectively, which limited its appeal to casual or non-technical users. As the web matured and introduced simple point-and-click interfaces, WAIS quickly fell out of favor. Its powerful search features could not compete with the ease and visual accessibility of web-based tools.
Finger
Finger was one of the earliest protocols designed for user lookup across networked systems. If you were on a Unix machine in the 1980s or early 1990s, you could run the finger command followed by a username or even an email-style address. This would show whether someone was logged in, when they last accessed the system, what terminal they were using, and sometimes even what project they were working on. If the user had created a .plan file in their home directory, you could read that too. These plan files often included personal notes, jokes, or status updates. Yes, at some point we thought this was a good idea.
The protocol ran over TCP port 79 and was originally defined in RFC 742, published in 1977. It was simple and helpful in closed environments like campus labs or academic networks, where users often needed to check in on each other's availability. As the internet expanded, however, the open nature of Finger became a liability. It revealed usernames and behavior patterns that could be used for social engineering or targeted attacks. Most administrators eventually disabled the service. Finger now stands as a curious reminder of an earlier, more transparent phase of the internet, when being reachable and visible was considered a feature, not a flaw.
Conclusion
The early internet was not a single experience but a patchwork of tools, each with its own purpose and culture. Protocols like NNTP, Gopher, IRC, and Telnet offered a kind of directness and transparency that is largely missing from today’s web. They required effort, curiosity, and sometimes a willingness to tinker. In return, they opened up a raw, unfiltered internet that was as much about community as it was about information. These tools formed the digital backbone for a generation of users who helped shape the web into what it eventually became.
While most of these protocols have faded from everyday use, they remain historically significant and, in some cases, still quietly functional. They offer a glimpse into a time when access itself felt empowering, and every command-line prompt or menu link carried the thrill of discovery. Exploring them now can serve as a nostalgic reminder of how far the internet has evolved, and what might have been lost along the way.