INTERNET AND WORLD WIDE WEB

INTERNET: 

Alternatively referred to as the net or web, the Internet was initially developed to aid in the progress of computing technology by linking all the best academic computer centers. The Internet as we know it today first started being developed in the late 1960's and transmitted its first message on Friday, October 29, 1969. In 1993, the Internet experienced one of its largest growths to date and today is accessible by people all over the world.

 

The Internet contains billions of web pages created by people and companies from around the world, making it a limitless place to locate information and entertainment. The Internet also has thousands of services that help make life more convenient. For example, many financial institutions offer online banking that enables a user to manage and view their account online. The picture is a representation and map of the Internet done by The Opte Project.

HISTORY OF INTERNET:

The Internet had its roots during the 1960's as a project of the United States Government’s Department of Defense, to create a non-centralized network. This project was called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), created by the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency established in 1969 to provide a secure and survivable communications network for organizations engaged in defense-related research. In order to make the network more global a new sophisticated and standard protocol was needed. They developed IP (Internet Protocol) technology which defined how electronic messages were packaged, addressed, and sent over the

network. The standard protocol was invented in 1977 and was called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). TCP/IP allowed users to link various branches of other complex networks directly to the ARPANET, which soon came to be called the Internet. Researchers and academics in other fields began to make use of the network, and eventually the National Science Foundation (NSF), which had created a similar and parallel network, called NSFNet, took over much of the TCP/IP technology from ARPANET and established a distributed network of networks capable of handling far greater traffic. In 1985, NSF began a program to establish Internet access across the United States. They created a backbone called the NSFNET and opened their doors to all educational facilities, academic researchers, government

agencies, and international research organizations. By the 1990's the Internet experienced explosive growth. It is estimated that the number of computers connected to the Internet was doubling every year. Businesses rapidly realized that, by making effective use of the Internet they could tune their operations and offer new and better services to their customers, so they started spending vast amounts of money to develop and enhance the Internet. This generated violent competition among the communications carriers and hardware and software suppliers to meet this demand. The result is that bandwidth (i.e., the information carrying capacity of communications lines) on the Internet has increased tremendously and costs have dropped. It is widely believed that the Internet has played a significant role in the economic success.

INTRANET

 

Unlike the Internet where a page can be accessed globally, an intranet or internal website is a private network for a corporation or organization that only those with permission can access. A computer residing on an intranet will almost always be using IP addresses in the reserved address space and cannot be accessed outside of the local network unless given permission through the internet.

EXTRANET

 

Similar to a corporate Intranet, an Extranet is a local network accessible to specific outside users or businesses, but still inaccessible to the general public. Although a user may have access to an extranet, the extranet may only display information that he or she is privileged to see or only allow access to specific sections of the extranet.

WORLD WIDE WEB:

Short for World Wide Web, WWW, W3, or Web is a graphical interface for the Internet that was first introduced to the public on August 6, 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee. A few days later on August 23, 1991 it was available to everyone.

HISTORY OF WORLD WIDE WEB:

The World Wide Web (WWW) allows computer users to position and view multimedia-based documents (i.e., documents with text, graphics, animations, audios and/or videos) on almost any subject. Even though the Internet was developed more than three decades ago, the introduction of the WWW was a relatively recent event. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) developed the World Wide Web and several communication protocols that form the backbone of the WWW. The Internet and the World Wide Web will surely be listed among the most significant and profound creations of humankind. In the past, most computer applications ran on standalone computers. (i.e., computers that were not connected to one another) Today’s applications can be written to communicate among the world’s hundreds of millions of computers. The Internet makes our work easier by mixing computing and communications technologies. It makes information immediately and conveniently accessible worldwide. It makes it possible for individuals and small businesses to get worldwide contact. In the last decade, the Internet and World Wide Web have altered the way people communicate, conduct business and manage their daily lives. They are changing the nature of the way business is done.

WHAT SOFTWARE ALLOWS YOU TO ACCESS THE WWW?

The world wide web consists of billions of pages linked to each other that contain text, graphics, multimedia files, and other interactive software that are accessed using a browser. This browser can either be an Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome or other.

INTERNET SERVICES:

EMAILS:

Short for electronic mail, e-mail or email is information stored on a computer that is exchanged between two users over telecommunications. More plainly, e-mail is a message that may contain text, files, images, or other attachments sent through a network to a specified individual or group of individuals. The first e-mail was sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971. By 1996, more electronic mail was being sent than postal mail.

E-MAIL ADDRESS BREAKDOWN

• The first portion all e-mail addresses, the part before the @ symbol, contains the alias, user, group, or department of a company. In our above example support is the Technical Support department at Computer Hope.
• Next, the @ (at sign) is used as a divider in the e-mail address; it is required for all SMTP e-mail addresses since the first message was sent by Ray Tomlinson.
• Finally, computerhope.com is the domain name to which the user belongs.

HOW TO SEND AND RECEIVE E-MAIL

E-MAIL PROGRAM

To send and receive e-mail messages, you can use an e-mail program, also known as an e-mail client, such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. When using an e-mail client, you must have a server that stores and delivers your messages, which is provided by your ISP or in some cases, another company. An e-mail client needs to connect to a server to download new e-mail, whereas email stored online (see next section) updates automatically when you visit the site.

E-MAIL ONLINE

An alternative way of sending and receiving e-mail (and the more popular solution for most people) is an online e-mail service or webmail. Examples include Hotmail (now Outlook.com), Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Many of the online e-mail services, including the ones we just mentioned, are free or have a free account option.

WHAT MAKES A VALID E-MAIL ADDRESS?

There are several rules that an e-mail address must follow to be valid:

• As mentioned earlier, an e-mail must have a username followed by an @ (at sign) which is followed by the domain name with a domain suffix.
• The username cannot be longer than 64 characters long and the domain name cannot be longer than 254 characters.
• There should be only one @ sign in an e-mail address.
• The space and special characters: ( ) , : ; < > \ [ ] are allowed. Occasionally, a space, backslash, and quotation mark work but must be preceded with a forward slash. Although valid, some e-mail providers do not allow these characters.
• The username and e-mail addresses as a whole cannot begin or end with a period.
• The e-mail must not have two or more consecutive periods.

CHAT

 

Chat is a text-based communication that is live or in real-time. For example, when talking to someone in chat any typed text is received by other participants immediately. This is different from other text-based communications such as e-mail where it could be a couple of hours, days, or weeks to receive a response.

There are also several million users chatting through other networks such as IRC. A good example of a chat on IRC is the Computer Hope chat.

CHAT ETIQUETTE

Below is a short list of chat etiquette that should be followed when chatting with others online.

1. Behave the same way you would when talking to someone in real-life.
2. Avoid chat slang.
3. Try your best to spell all words correctly and use proper punctuation.
4. Remember no one is perfect, spelling errors and other mistakes are common in chat.
5. Do not WRITE IN ALL CAPS as it makes you appear as you're yelling.
6. Do not send other chat users private messages without asking them first.
7. Abide by the rules created by those running the chat.

SOCIAL NETWORK

 

Alternatively referred to as a virtual community or profile site, a social network is a website that brings people together to talk, share ideas and interests, or make new friends. This type of collaboration and sharing is known as social media. Unlike traditional media that is typically created by no more than ten people, social media sites contain content created by hundreds or even millions of different people. Below is a small list of some of the biggest social networks used today.

EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

• Bebo ( http://www.bebo.com/ ) - A popular social networking site where users can share photo's, stories, their journal, and more with friends and family privately or publicly on the Internet.
• Classmates ( http://www.classmates.com/ ) - One of the largest and most used websites for connecting people who graduated from a high school and allows you to keep in touch with them and any future reunions.
• Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/ ) - The most popular social networking websites on the Internet. Facebook is a popular destination for users to set up personal space and connect with friends, share pictures, share movies, talk about what you're doing, etc.
• Friendster ( http://www.friendster.com/ ) - A popular social network that brings together friends, family, and allows you to meet new people who share similar interests to you from all over the world.
• Google+ (http://plus.google.com/) - The latest social networking service from Google.
• Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/ ) - A mobile photo sharing service and application available for the iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone platforms.
• LinkedIn ( http://www.linkedin.com/ ) - One of the best if not the best locations to connect with current and past co-workers and potentially future employers.
• MySpace ( http://www.myspace.com/ ) - Once one of the most popular social networks and viewed website on the Internet. See the MySpace definition for further information about this service.
• Orkut ( http://www.orkut.com/ ) - A popular service from Google that provides you a location to socialize with your friends and family, and meet new acquaintances from all around the world.
• Path ( http://path.com/ ) - A mobile-only social network that allows you to keep in contact with your closest friends and family.
• Reddit ( http://www.reddit.com/ ) - Community of registered users (redditors) submits content that is upvoted by the community. Reddit has a subreddit (board) for almost every category.
• Tumblr ( https://www.tumblr.com/ ) - A microblogging platform with social networking capabilities.
• Twitter ( http://www.twitter.com/ ) - Another fantastic service that allows users to post 140 character long posts from their phones and on the Internet. A fantastic way to get the pulse of what's going on around the world.

SURFING THE INTERNET

Alternatively referred to as web surfing, surfing describes the act of browsing the Internet by going from one web page to another web page using hyperlinks in an Internet browser. The term "surfing" was first used by Mark McCahill.

WHAT ARE THE REQUIREMENTS FOR SURFING THE WEB?

To surf the Internet, you must have a computer with an Internet browser that has an active Internet connection.

SEARCH ENGINE

Search engines are programs that search documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. A search engine is really a general class of programs, however, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web.

HOW A SEARCH ENGINE WORKS

Because large search engines contain millions and sometimes billions of pages, many search engines not only just search the pages but also display the results depending upon their importance. This importance is commonly determined by using various algorithms.

As illustrated in the image on the right, the source of all search engine data is a spider or crawler, which automatically visits pages and indexes their contents.

Once a page has been crawled, the data contained within the page is processed and indexed. Often, this can involve the steps below.

• Strip out stop words.
• Record the remaining words in the page and the frequency they occur.
• Record links to other pages.
• Record information about images or other embedded media.

The data collected above is used to rank the page and is the primary method a search engine uses to determine if a page should be shown and in what order.

Finally, once the data is processed it is broken up into one or more files, moved to different computers, or loaded into memory where it can be accessed when a search is performed.