You have an account on Hercules because we need a place from which you can serve files to the Internet. Recall the "client/server" approach that underlies the way you communicate with sites and services on the Internet. Netscape is a client application which obtains documents from a server machine. Every time you enter a site address, that is, the site's URL, when using Netscape, you are connecting to the site as a client. Software on the remote site serves files to you upon your request.
Server machines can be Windows based PCs, Macintoshes or Unix systems. The same PC you use to create HTML documents could also be a server on the Internet. The problem is that you want servers to be available every day, all day long. The cost of continuously maintaining a modem connection to an information service provider such as SaskNet, WBM or Unibase would be expensive. The alternative is to place your files on the service provider's equipment which is always conected to the Internet. This is exactly what you are doing when you place your files on your Hercules account. That is, your Hercules account becomes your server. You then become your own client by using Netscape on the PC to access the files. Of course, anyone else on the Internet can also access your files.
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