Internet in a Box was one of the first commercially available Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 connection software packages available for sale to the public. Spry, Inc. produced the package, as well as starting up a commercial Internet service provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

 (ISP) called InterServ.

The IBox software included the Winsock

Winsock

In computing, the Windows Sockets API , which was later shortened to Winsock, is a technical specification that defines how Windows network software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application and the underlying...

 and TCP/IP stack that were needed to connect a computer running Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 to the Internet in 1994. The IBox package also included a licensed copy of the NCSA

National Center for Supercomputing Applications

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but it provides high-performance...

 Mosaic

Mosaic (web browser)

Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...

 web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

 called AIR Mosaic, AIR Mail (an email client), AIR News (an NNTP news client), AIR Telnet

TELNET

Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...

, AIR Gopher, and an FTP Network File Manager.

Combined with InterServ's dial-up access, Internet in a Box provided a complete solution for members of the general public to access the Internet, a network previously available almost exclusively to government and collegiate users, or to the public only indirectly through e-mail gateways provided by hosted systems such as CompuServe

CompuServe

CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...

. The inclusion of a web browser further gave access to the nascent World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

.

Two pioneering Internet books; Ed Krol's 'Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog

Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog

The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog, by Ed Krol, was published in September 1992 by O'Reilly. The Los Angeles Times notes that the Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog was the "first popular book about the medium" and "was later selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most...

' (US-1993) and a special edition of Sue Schofield's 'UK Internet Book' (UK 1994) were included in the US and European editions of the product.

Spry, Inc.

Spry, Inc. was a small software company headed up by David Pool in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

. Spry was the first company licensing the Mosaic's

Mosaic (web browser)

Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...

 source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

. In 1995 CompuServe

CompuServe

CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...

 bought Spry, Inc. for $100 million in cash and stock of H&R Block

H&R Block

H&R Block is a tax preparation company in the United States, claiming more than 22 million customers worldwide, with offices in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. The Kansas City-based company also offers banking, personal finance and business consulting services.Founded in 1955 by brothers...

(the parent company of CompuServe).

External links

• Information Week article about the purchase of Spry, Inc.
• Internet writer Sue Schofield's Web page.