Gopher

A few ISPs offer Gopher space in addition to Web space. Gopher is an old protocol that predates the World Wide Web, and until recently there was a strong trend of Gopher sites being replaced by equivalent Web sites. Just as it looked like Gopher was going to disappear forever, more ISP providers have started to list Gopher as an available ISP service again. The advantage is that accessing Gopher sites is fast, faster than accessing Web sites, and it works transparently with most modern browsers. The disadvantage is that Gopher sites are much less visually appealing.