░█░░░▀█▀░█▀█░█░█░█▀▀ ░█░░░░█░░█░█░█▀▄░▀▀█ ░▀▀▀░▀▀▀░▀░▀░▀░▀░▀▀▀
Gopher is one of the oldest protocols in the surfing world. Originally created at the University of Michigan, Gopher provides a text only environment that's light on bandwidth and high on information. Many links here may point back to Floodgap, who maintains one of the largest and most visited Gopherholes on the web. Most consider it the frontpage of Gopher these days.
Quxx.org, an Archive of old computer stuff.
If you want to find something quickly, you can always do a search.
Before ssh, there was telnet and rsh. The latter was superseded by ssh and the former is used for fun services today, like...
Getting a lame excuse as to why the internet is down
You can access all of these with a telnet application. Windows does not come with one out of the box, but you can install it through the "Add or Remove Windows Features" dialogue. Additionally, there are a variety of programs that can be found on the list from Telnet.org
Gemini is a relatively new protocol that aims to be part gopher, part web. It's not designed to replace the web, but rather be a fun experiment in making small sites that have rich content, yet are as small and practical as Gopher, with a modern map syntax like Markdown.
Once thought an unsecure protocol on the net, Finger is starting to find itself as a part of the smallnet in recent years. A finger response can produce a bit of information about a user, depending on the possible files the server is configured to spit out. One can view this system at work via ...
The web viewable version (Thanks to Mozz)
Another lightweight protocol made by the folks behind Nightfall City, a promenent small web scape.
A protocol developed to address the need for an unsecure Gemini with baked in uploads and more features.
FTP is the oldest protocol used to download files from around the internet. Today, it's generally used in development to get files to a server. However, some sites still offer FTP services.