LECTURE 5
ICT-Basic Essential Skills
6 February 2018
The Internet &
the World Wide Web
INTERNET
• It is the largest network in the world that connects
hundreds of thousands of individual networks all over
the world.
• The popular term for the Internet is the “information
highway”.
• Rather than moving through geographical space, it
moves your ideas and information through
cyberspace – the space of electronic movement of
ideas and information.
INTERNET
• No one owns it
• It has no formal management organization.
• As it was originally developed by the Department of
defense, this lack of centralization made it less
vulnerable to wartime or terrorist attacks.
• To access the Internet, an existing network need to
pay a small registration fee and agree to certain
standards based on the TCP/IP (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol) .
The uses of the Internet
• Send e-mail messages.
• Send (upload) or receive (down load) files
between computers.
• Participate in discussion groups, such as
mailing lists and newsgroups.
• Surfing the web.
Exploring the Cyberspace
• How does one become a participant in the network of networks?
• To connect to the internet, you need 3 things
• access device - computer with a modem, cable modem, etc.
• means of connection - telephone line, cable hookup, or
wireless capabilities
• Internet access provider - a commercial online service
provider, or wireless internet service provider
Connecting to the Internet
• Bandwidth or channel capacity - how much data -
text, voice, video & so on - can be sent through a
communications channel in a given amount of time
• Broadband - high speed connections - include
various kinds of high speed wired connections
• coaxial & fiber optic, DSL, cable, satellite & others
Connecting to the Internet
• The Physical connection
• Wired
• Wireless
• Data Transmission speeds
• download - from a website to your own PC
• upload - from your PC to a website
Narrowband (Dial-Up
Modem)
• Low speed but inexpensive
• dial-up connections - use of telephone modems to
connect computers to the internet
• maximum speed of 56 kbps - to download a 16MB
movie via a 56 kbps dial-up connection is about
31min & 45sec
High-Speed Phone Lines
• T1 Line a fiber-optic or copper line separate from the
phone line
• transmission rate of 1.5 to 6 Mbps
• leased by corporate, government & academic sites
• T3 Line
Problem for Telephone
Internet Connections
• The Last Mile. The medium that connects homes
and business to the central switching office, the local
loop
• the passing back and forth of data between you and
the telephone switching station
• ex 130 million phone lines that use 65 million kms of
copper wire
Cable modem: Close
competitor to DSL
• Cable modem connects a PC to a cable-TV system
that offers an Internet connection
• Cable connections can be faster than DSL and more
popular in advanced countries
• DSL can download video 6min video in 11mins; Cable
can do it 2mins
• outgoing transmission rate 1.4 Mbps; incoming up to
30 Mbps
Satellite Wireless
Connections
• Satellite connections provide internet access without
telephone lines or cables but involves connection
delay
• Receives & sends data from a communications
satellite, a space station that transmits radio waves
called microwaves from earth based stations.
Other Wireless
Connections: Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G
• Wireless networks which uses radio waves to transmit
data
• Newer mobile wireless connections are becoming the
most popular type of connectivity
Wi-Fi
• Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity). is the name given to any of
several standards - 802.11 - set by the IEEE (Institute
of Electric & Electronic Engineers) for wireless
transmission
• access point - a station that sends and receives
data to and from Wi-Fi network
• hotspots - public access to Wi-Fi networks
3G/4G Wireless
• 3G stands for “third generation” defined as high-
speed wireless technology that does not need access
points because it uses the existing cellphone system
• 4G stands for “fourth generation” successor to 3G
and 2G, with the aim to provide a wide range of data
rates up to ultra-broadband (gigabit-speed) Internet
access to mobile as well as stationery users
Internet Access Providers
(ISPs): 3 Kinds
• Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a local, regional, or
national organization that provides access to the
internet for a fee.
• Commercial Online Services is a members-only
company that provides not only Internet access but
other specialised content
• Wireless Internet Service Providers enables users
with computers containing wireless modems - laptops,
smartphones, etc
Who Runs the Internet?
• Several global and US organisations establish standards
• ISOC Intl Board of Trustees to provide leadership in
addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet,
infrastructure standards
• June 1998 - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) established to regular human-friendly
internet domain names - address ending with .com, .org.,
.net, etc.
• fraud prevention, privacy & intellectual-property protection
How to access the Internet?
• To access the Internet, an existing network need to
pay a small registration fee and agree to certain
standards based on the TCP/IP (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol) reference model.
• Each organization pays for its own networks and its
own telephone bills, but those costs usually exist
independent of the internet.
• The regional Internet companies route and forward all
traffic, and the cost is still only that of a local
telephone call.
Internet Service Provider (ISP)
• A commercial organization with permanent
connection to the Internet that sells temporary
connections to subscribers.
• Examples:
• Prodigy, America Online, Microsoft network,
AT&T Networks.
The World Wide Web
• World Wide Web brought multimedia to the Internet
• The part of the internet that enables you to access
more than just text, but also art, audio, video, and
animation and engage in interactive games
What is Web?
• The Web (World Wide Web) consists of information
organized into Web pages containing text and graphic
images.
• It contains hypertext links, or highlighted keywords and
images that lead to related information.
• A collection of linked Web pages that has a common
theme or focus is called a Web site.
• The main page that all of the pages on a particular Web
site are organized around and link back to is called the
site’s home page.
How to access the Web?
• Once you have your Internet connection, then
you need special software called a browser to
access the Web.
• Web browsers are used to connect you to remote
computers, open and transfer files, display text
and images.
• Web browsers are specialized programs.
• Examples of Web browser: Google Chrome,
Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer.
Client/Server Structure of the Web
• Web is a collection of files that reside on computers,
called Web servers, that are located all over the world
and are connected to each other through the Internet.
• When you use your Internet connection to become part of
the Web, your computer becomes a Web client in a
worldwide client/server network.
• A Web browser is the software that you run on your
computer to make it work as a web client.
The Face of the Web: Browsers,
Websites, & Web Pages
• Browsers. Software for surfing the web
• A software that enables you to find and access the
various parts of the web
• allows you to move around the web and to access,
and post information including multimedia
• Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer,
Safari, etc.
The Face of the Web: Browsers,
Websites, & Web Pages
• Website. is a location on a particular computer on
the web that has a unique address (called URL -
Uniform Resource Locator)
• the location of a computer or group of computers
somewhere on the InternetThe Face of the Web:
Browsers, Websites, & Web Pages
The Face of the Web: Browsers,
Websites, & Web Pages
• Webpages. is a document on the World Wide Web
that can include text, pictures, sound and video
• Website is composed of web page or collection of
related web pages
• Home page the starting point, the main page, of a
website that contains links to other pages at the site
How the browser finds
things: URLs
• URLs - (Uniform Resource Locators) or web
addresses
• the string of characters that points to a specific piece
of information anywhere on the web
• URL consists of (1) web protocol, (2) domain name or
web server name, (3) directory name (or folder) on
that server, (4) the file
• [Link]
• The protocol: http:// is a set of communication rules
for exchanging information.
• HTTP developed by Tim Berners-Lee stands for
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the
communications rules that allow browsers to
connect with web servers
• The domain name (web server name):
[Link] is simply a location on the internet, the
particular web server
• tells the location and the type of address
• The directory name: yose/ is the name on the
server for the directory or folder, from which your
browser needs to pull the file
• The file name and extension: [Link] the
particular page or document that you are seeking
Web Portals: Starting Points
for Finding Information
• Web Portals can act as organisers for web activities,
a type of gateway website that function as an “anchor
site”, a major starting point, for users when
connecting to the internet
• Yahoo, Google, Bing (MSN before), Lycos, AOL,
others
Web Search Techniques
• Choose your search terms well, and watch your spelling
• Type words in lowercase
• Use phrases with quotation marks rather than separate words
• Put unique words first in a phrase
• Use Boolean operators - AND, OR, and NOT
• Use inclusion and exclusion operators ( +, -)
• Use wildcards - asterisk (*), question mark (?)
• Read the Help or Search Tip section
• Try an alternate general search site or a specific search site
