Gopher
Sign in to saveAlso known as Internet Gopher, the Internet Gopher, Gofer, Internet Gofer, the Internet Gofer, Gopher (protocol)
TCP/IP application layer protocol
~19 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Gopher (/ˈɡoʊfər/ ) is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to the World Wide Web in its early stages, but ultimately fell into disfavor, yielding to Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The Gopher ecosystem is often regarded as the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web.
Usage
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Gopher” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.