The Internet (the World Wide Web respectively) provides access to a multitude of data. The present report gives some initial assistance in using forestry-related sources in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. The providers of forestry-related information are mostly governmental institutions such as universities, research institutes, and libraries. The global network allows quick and easy exchange of data over long distances. Most of these providers offer data on publications, projects and staff. Some also offer software, databases, calendars of event, electronic newsletters or search tools. However, the majority of the things available on the net are textdocuments that increasingly include graphic elements. The advantages of quick and relatively cheap information retrieval and the great amount of data available are countered by disadvantages such as unsatisfactory data security, danger of data manipulation, unclear copyrights, instability of Internet-addresses and confusing amounts of data. The development of the Internet (or WWW) continues, especially in the fields of security and multilingual support. But new friendly conferencing systems, filtering and sorting tools are also developed as well as multimedia and joint-editing facilities.