Chapter 2:

Technology Infrastructure: The

Internet and the World Wide
Web

By: Umair Ali

MSc.IT (PU), MBA (PU), MPhil (PU Gold Medalist)

Department of Commerce
University of the Punjab Gujranwala Campus
 Objectives
In this chapter, you will learn about:
 Network and Types of Networks
 The differences among Internets, Intranets, Extranets
and Virtual Private Network (VPN)
 The origin, growth, and current structure of the
Internet
 How packet-switched networks are combined to form
the Internet
 How Internet protocols and Internet addressing work

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 Objectives (continued)
 Options for connecting to the Internet, including cost
and bandwidth factors
 World Wide Web
 The history and use of markup languages on the
Web, including SGML, HTML, and XML
 How HTML tags and links work on the World Wide
Web

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 Computer Network & Internet
 Computer Network
 When two or more than two electronic devices are connected
to each other through transmission media and communication
devices for the purpose of sharing then its called network.
 Elements of the Definition
 Electronic Devices
 Transmission Medium
 Communication Devices
 Sharing is the Purpose

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 Computer Network & Internet
 Electronic Devices
 Not only computer and laptops several devices can be
connected with the computer network including home
appliances, IP Cameras, IP Telephones, Smart Phones,
Smart LEDs etc.

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 Computer Network & Internet
 Transmission Medium
 The link, media or channel is required to transmit message from
source/sender to destination/receiver. This is the path on
which your message travels. There are two types of
transmission media:
 Wire
 Twisted Pair Cable (Usually used in Local Area Networks – LAN)
 Coaxial Cable (Usually used in Cable TV)
 Fiber Optic Cable (The most Fastest Transmission Media)
 Wireless (Radio Wave, Micro Wave)

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 Computer Network & Internet
 Communication Devices
 Network or Communication devices are required to encode the
message at source, transmit message on the transmission
media, route the message towards the destination and decode
the message at destination. Following are the communication
devices:
 Modem
 LAN Card
 WLAN Card
 Access Points
 Switches
 Routers etc.

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 Computer Network & Internet
 Sharing is the Purpose
 The basic purpose of the network is sharing. The sharing may
be hardware, software as well as data.
 Hardware e.g. Printer, Storage etc.
 Software
 Data (Text, Image, Audio and Video)
 The physical things cannot be moved over the
computer network. So to move the physical things
there are several logistics companies e.g. DHL, TCS etc.

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 Computer Network & Internet
 Depending upon the scope (access) there are
following types of network:
 Intranet (Private Network)

 Extranet (Private Network)

 Internet (Public Network)

 VirtualPrivate Network (Private Network over Public

Network)

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 Types of Network
 Intranet
 An intranet is a private network between the
organizational departments only. The access is
limited to the organization.
 Extranet (Extension of the Intranet)
 Intranet extended to include entities outside the
boundaries of an organization
 Connects companies with suppliers, business
partners, or other authorized users

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 Types of Network
 Internet (Internetwork)
 Internet is a public network having world wide collection
of networks. So, internet is a global network of networks.
 All the businesses, individuals, companies can join
internet, so the term is public network.

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 Virtual Private Network (VPN)
 VPN
 An extranet that uses public networks
and their protocols
 IP tunneling
 Effectively creates a private
passageway through the public
Internet
 Encapsulation
 Process used by VPN software
 VPN software
 Must be installed on the computers
at both ends of the transmission

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 Public and Private Networks
 Public network
 Any computer network or telecommunications
network available to the public
 Private network
 A private, leased-line connection between two
companies that physically connects their intranets
 Leased line
 Permanent telephone connection between two points

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 Origins of the Internet
 Early 1960s
 U.S. Department of Defense funded research to
explore creating a worldwide network
 In 1969
 Defense Department researchers connected four
computers into a network called ARPANET
 Throughout the 1970s and 1980s
 Academic researchers connected to ARPANET and
contributed to its technological developments

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 New Uses for the Internet
 1972
 E-mail was born

 Mailing list
 E-mail address that forwards any message received to
any user who has subscribed to the list
 Usenet
 Started by a group of students and programmers at
Duke University and the University of North Carolina

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 Growth of the Internet
 In 1991, the NSF:
 Eased restrictions on commercial Internet activity
 Began implementing plans to privatize the Internet
 Network access points (NAPs)
 Basis of the new structure of the Internet
 Network access providers
 Sell Internet access rights directly to larger customers
and indirectly to smaller firms and individuals through
ISPs

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 Emergence of the World Wide
Web
 The Web
 Software that runs on computers connected to the
Internet
 Vannevar Bush speculated that engineers
would eventually build a memory extension
device (the Memex)
 In the 1960s, Ted Nelson described a similar
system called hypertext

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 Emergence of the World Wide
Web (continued)
 Tim Berners-Lee developed code for a hypertext
server program
 Hypertext server:
 Stores files written in the hypertext markup language
 Lets other computers connect to it and read files

 Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

 Includes a set of codes (or tags) attached to text

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 Packet-Switched Networks
 Local area network (LAN)
 Network of computers located close together

 Wide area networks (WANs)

 Networks of computers connected over greater distances

 Circuit
 Combination of telephone lines and closed switches that
connect them to each other

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 Packet-Switched Networks
(continued)
 Circuit switching
 Centrally controlled, single-connection model

 Packets
 Files and e-mail messages on a packet-switched
network are broken down into small pieces, called
packets
 Travel from computer to computer along the
interconnected networks until they reach their
destinations

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 Routing Packets
 Routing computers
 Computers that decide how best to forward packets

 Routing algorithms
 Rules contained in programs on router computers that
determine the best path on which to send packets
 Programs apply their routing algorithms to information
they have stored in routing tables

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 Internet Protocols
 Protocol
 Collection of rules for formatting, ordering, and
error-checking data sent across a network
 Rules for message handling include:
 Independent networks should not require any
internal changes to be connected to the network
 Packets that do not arrive at their destinations must
be retransmitted from their source network
 Router computers act as receive-and-forward devices
 No global control exists over the network

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 TCP/IP
 TCP
 Controls disassembly of a message or a file into
packets before transmission over the Internet
 Controls reassembly of packets into their original
formats when they reach their destinations

 IP
 Specifies addressing details for each packet

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 IP Addressing
 Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4)
 Uses a 32-bit number to identify computers connected
to the Internet
 Base 2 (binary) number system
 Used by computers to perform internal calculations

 Subnetting
 Use of reserved private IP addresses within LANs and
WANs to provide additional address space

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 IP Addressing (continued)
 Private IP addresses (Local Addresses)
 Series of IP numbers not permitted on packets that travel
on the Internet
 Network Address Translation (NAT) device
 Used in subnetting to convert private IP addresses into
normal IP addresses (Live/Global IP Address)
 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
 Protocol that will replace IPv4
 Uses a 128-bit number for addresses

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 Domain Names
 A domain name is a set of words assigned to a
specific IP address
 Top-level domain (or TLD)
 Rightmost part of a domain name

 Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and

Numbers (ICANN)
 Responsible for managing domain names and coordinating
them with IP address registrars

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Web Page Request and Delivery
Protocols
 Web client computers
 Run software called Web client software or Web
browser software
 Web server computers
 Run software called Web server software

 Client/server architecture
 Combination of client computers running Web client
software and server computers running Web server
software

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Web Page Request and Delivery
Protocols (continued)
 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
 Set of rules for delivering Web page files over the
Internet
 Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
 Combination of the protocol name and domain name

 Allows a user to locate a resource (the Web page) on

another computer (the Web server)

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 Electronic Mail Protocols
 Electronic mail (e-mail)
 Must be formatted according to a common set of rules

 E-mail server
 Computer devoted to handling e-mail

 E-mail client software

 Used to read and send e-mail
 Examples include Microsoft Outlook and Netscape
Messenger

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 Electronic Mail Protocols
(continued)
 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
 Specifies the format of a mail message

 Post Office Protocol (POP)

 POP messages can tell the e-mail server to:
 Send mail to a user’s computer and delete it from the e-mail
server
 Send mail to a user’s computer and not delete it
 Simply ask whether new mail has arrived
 POP provides support for Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME)

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Markup Languages and the Web

 Text markup language

 Specifies a set of tags that are inserted into text
 Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)
 Older and more complex text markup language than
HTML
 A meta language
 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
 Not-for-profit group that maintains standards for the
Web

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 Standard Generalized Markup
Language
 Offers a system of marking up documents that is
independent of any software application

 Nonproprietary and platform independent

 Offers user-defined tags

 Costly to set up and maintain

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 Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML)
 Prevalent markup language used to create
documents on the Web today
 HTML tags are interpreted by a Web browser and
are used by it to format the display of the text
 HTML links can be structured as:
 Linear hyperlink structures

 Hierarchical hyperlink structures

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 Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML) (continued)
 The most common scripting languages include
JavaScript, JScript, Perl, and VBScript
 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are sets of
instructions that give Web developers more
control over the format of displayed pages
 Style sheet is:
 Usually stored in a separate file
 Referenced using the HTML style tag

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 Extensible Markup Language
(XML)
 XML uses paired start and stop tags
 It includes data management capabilities that
HTML cannot provide
 Differences between XML and HTML:
 XML is not a markup language with defined tags

 XML tags do not specify how text appears on a Web

page

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 Internet Connection Options
 Bandwidth
 Amount of data that can travel through a
communication line per unit of time
 Net bandwidth
 Actual speed that information travels

 Symmetric connections
 Provide the same bandwidth in both directions

 Asymmetric connections
 Provide different bandwidths for each direction

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 Voice-Grade Telephone
Connections
 POTS, or plain old telephone service
 Uses existing telephone lines and an analog
modem
 Provides bandwidth between 28 and 56 Kbps

 Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)

 Connection methods that do not use a modem

 Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)

 Bandwidths between 128 Kbps and 256 Kbps

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 Broadband Connections
 Broadband connections operate at speeds of greater
than 200 Kbps
 Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL)
 Transmission bandwidth is from 100 to 640 Kbps upstream
and from 1.5 to 9 Mbps downstream
 Cable modems
 Provide transmission speeds between 300 Kbps and 1
Mbps
 DSL
 Private line with no competing traffic

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 Leased-Line Connections
 DS0 (digital signal zero)
 Telephone line designed to carry one digital signal

 T1 line (also called a DS1)

 Carries 24 DS0 lines and operates at 1.544 Mbps

 Fractional T1
 Provides service speeds of 128 Kbps and upward in 128-
Kbps increments
 T3 service (also called DS3)
 Offers 44.736 Mbps

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 Wireless Connections
 Bluetooth
 Designed for personal use over short distances
 Low-bandwidth technology, with speeds of up
to 722 Kbps
 Networks are called personal area networks
(PANs) or piconets
 Consumes very little power
 Devices can discover each other and exchange
information automatically

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 Wireless Ethernet (Wi-Fi)

 Wireless Ethernet (Wi-Fi or 802.11b) is the most

common wireless connection technology for use
on LANs
 Wireless access point (WAP)
 Device that transmits network packets between Wi-Fi-
equipped computers and other devices
 Has a potential bandwidth of 11 Mbps and a
range of about 300 feet
 Devices are capable of roaming
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 Wireless Ethernet (Wi-Fi)
(continued)
 802.11a protocol
 Capable of transmitting data at speeds up to 54
Mbps
 802.11g protocol
 Has 54 Mbps speed of 802.11a
 Compatible with 802.11b devices

 802.11n
 Expected to offer speeds up to 320 Mbps

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 Fixed-Point Wireless
 One version of fixed-point wireless uses a system of
repeaters to forward a radio signal from an ISP to
customers
 Repeaters
 Transmitter-receiver devices (transceivers)

 Mesh routing
 Directly transmits Wi-Fi packets through hundreds, or even
thousands, of short-range transceivers

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 Cellular Telephone Networks

 Third & Fourth-generation (3G/4G) cell phones

 Combine the latest technologies available today

 Short message service (SMS)

 Protocol used to send and receive short text messages

 Mobile commerce (m-commerce)

 Describes the kinds of resources people might want to
access using wireless devices

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 Summary
 TCP/IP
 Protocol suite used to create and transport information
packets across the Internet
 POP, SMTP, and IMAP
 Protocols that help manage e-mail

 Languages derived from SGML

 Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
 Extensible Markup Language (XML)

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 Summary (continued)
 Intranets
 Private internal networks

 Extranet
 Used when companies want to collaborate with suppliers,
partners, or customers
 Internet2
 Experimental network built by a consortium of research
universities and businesses

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