INTERNET AND E-MAIL USE

Lesson Objectives:

1. To determine the importance of Internet and e-mail

2. To be familiar on safe internet habits.
3. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of using e-mail.

Internet, a system architecture that has revolutionized communications and

methods of commerce by allowing various computer networks around the world to
interconnect. Sometimes referred to as a “network of networks,” the Internet emerged in
the United States in the 1970s but did not become visible to the general public until the
early 1990s. By 2020, approximately 4.5 billion people, or more than half of the world’s
population, were estimated to have access to the Internet.

The Internet provides a capability so powerful and general that it can be used for
almost any purpose that depends on information, and it is accessible by every individual
who connects to one of its constituent networks. It supports human communication via
social media, electronic mail (e-mail), “chat rooms,” newsgroups, and audio and video
transmission and allows people to work collaboratively at many different locations. It
supports access to digital information by many applications, including the World Wide
Web. The Internet has proved to be a spawning ground for a large and growing number
of “e-businesses” (including subsidiaries of traditional “brick-and-mortar” companies)
that carry out most of their sales and services over the Internet.

Origin and Development

Early networks

The first computer networks were dedicated special-purpose systems such as

SABRE (an airline reservation system) and AUTODIN I (a defense command-and
control system), both designed and implemented in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By
the early 1960s computer manufacturers had begun to use semiconductor technology in
commercial products, and both conventional batch-processing and time-sharing
systems were in place in many large, technologically advanced companies. Time-
sharing systems allowed a computer’s resources to be shared in rapid succession with
multiple users, cycling through the queue of users so quickly that the computer
appeared dedicated to each user’s tasks despite the existence of many others
accessing the system “simultaneously.” This led to the notion of sharing computer
resources (called host computers or simply hosts) over an entire network. Host-to-host
interactions were envisioned, along with access to specialized resources (such as
supercomputers and mass storage systems) and interactive access by remote users to
the computational powers of time-sharing systems located elsewhere. These ideas

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were first realized in ARPANET, which established the first host-to-host network
connection on October 29, 1969. It was created by the Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. ARPANET was one of the first
general-purpose computer networks. It connected time-sharing computers at
government-supported research sites, principally universities in the United States, and it
soon became a critical piece of infrastructure for the computer science research
community in the United States. Tools and applications - such as the simple mail
transfer protocol (SMTP, commonly referred to as e-mail), for sending short messages,
and the file transfer protocol (FTP), for longer transmissions - quickly emerged. In order
to achieve cost-effective interactive communications between computers, which typically
communicate in short bursts of data, ARPANET employed the new technology of packet
switching. Packet switching takes large messages (or chunks of computer data) and
breaks them into smaller, manageable pieces (known as packets) that can travel
independently over any available circuit to the target destination, where the pieces are
reassembled. Thus, unlike traditional voice communications, packet switching does not
require a single dedicated circuit between each pair of users.

Commercial packet networks were introduced in the 1970s, but these were
designed principally to provide efficient access to remote computers by dedicated
terminals. Briefly, they replaced long-distance modem connections by less-expensive
“virtual” circuits over packet networks. In the United States, Telenet and Tymnet were
two such packet networks. Neither supported host-to-host communications; in the
1970s this was still the province of the research networks, and it would remain so for
many years.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; formerly ARPA) supported

initiatives for ground-based and satellite-based packet networks. The ground-based
packet radio system provided mobile access to computing resources, while the packet
satellite network connected the United States with several European countries and
enabled connections with widely dispersed and remote regions. With the introduction of
packet radio, connecting a mobile terminal to a computer network became feasible.
However, time-sharing systems were then still too large, unwieldy, and costly to be
mobile or even to exist outside a climate-controlled computing environment. A strong
motivation thus existed to connect the packet radio network to ARPANET in order to
allow mobile users with simple terminals to access the time-sharing systems for which
they had authorization. Similarly, the packet satellite network was used by DARPA to
link the United States with satellite terminals serving the United Kingdom, Norway,
Germany, and Italy. These terminals, however, had to be connected to other networks in
European countries in order to reach the end users. Thus arose the need to connect the
packet satellite net, as well as the packet radio net, with other networks.

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Foundation of the Internet

The Internet resulted from the effort to connect various research networks in the
United States and Europe. First, DARPA established a program to investigate the
interconnection of “heterogeneous networks.” This program, called Internetting, was
based on the newly introduced concept of open architecture networking, in which
networks with defined standard interfaces would be interconnected by “gateways.” A
working demonstration of the concept was planned. In order for the concept to work, a
new protocol had to be designed and developed; indeed, a system architecture was
also required.

In 1974 Vinton Cerf, then at Stanford University in California, and this author, then
at DARPA, collaborated on a paper that first described such a protocol and system
architecture—namely, the transmission control protocol (TCP), which enabled different
types of machines on networks all over the world to route and assemble data packets.
TCP, which originally included the Internet protocol (IP), a global addressing mechanism
that allowed routers to get data packets to their ultimate destination, formed the TCP/IP
standard, which was adopted by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1980. By the early
1980s the “open architecture” of the TCP/IP approach was adopted and endorsed by
many other researchers and eventually by technologists and businessmen around the
world.

By the 1980s other U.S. governmental bodies were heavily involved with
networking, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of
Energy, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). While DARPA
had played a seminal role in creating a small-scale version of the Internet among its
researchers, NSF worked with DARPA to expand access to the entire scientific and
academic community and to make TCP/IP the standard in all federally supported
research networks. In 1985–86 NSF funded the first five supercomputing centres—at
Princeton University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California, San
Diego, the University of Illinois, and Cornell University. In the 1980s NSF also funded
the development and operation of the NSFNET, a national “backbone” network to
connect these centres. By the late 1980s the network was operating at millions of bits
per second. NSF also funded various nonprofit local and regional networks to connect
other users to the NSFNET. A few commercial networks also began in the late 1980s;
these were soon joined by others, and the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) was
formed to allow transit traffic between commercial networks that otherwise would not
have been allowed on the NSFNET backbone. In 1995, after extensive review of the
situation, NSF decided that support of the NSFNET infrastructure was no longer
required, since many commercial providers were now willing and able to meet the
needs of the research community, and its support was withdrawn. Meanwhile, NSF had
fostered a competitive collection of commercial Internet backbones connected to one
another through so-called network access points (NAPs).

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 From the Internet’s origin in the early 1970s, control of it steadily devolved from
government stewardship to private-sector participation and finally to private custody with
government oversight and forbearance. Today a loosely structured group of several
thousand interested individuals known as the Internet Engineering Task Force
participates in a grassroots development process for Internet standards. Internet
standards are maintained by the nonprofit Internet Society, an international body with
headquarters in Reston, Virginia. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN), another nonprofit, private organization, oversees various aspects of
policy regarding Internet domain names and numbers.

Commercial Expansion

The rise of commercial Internet services and applications helped to fuel a rapid
commercialization of the Internet. This phenomenon was the result of several other
factors as well. One important factor was the introduction of the personal computer and
the workstation in the early 1980s—a development that in turn was fueled by
unprecedented progress in integrated circuit technology and an attendant rapid decline
in computer prices. Another factor, which took on increasing importance, was the
emergence of Ethernet and other “local area networks” to link personal computers. But
other forces were at work too. Following the restructuring of AT&T in 1984, NSF took
advantage of various new options for national-level digital backbone services for the
NSFNET. In 1988 the Corporation for National Research Initiatives received approval to
conduct an experiment linking a commercial e-mail service (MCI Mail) to the Internet.
This application was the first Internet connection to a commercial provider that was not
also part of the research community. Approval quickly followed to allow other e-mail
providers access, and the Internet began its first explosion in traffic.

In 1993 federal legislation allowed NSF to open the NSFNET backbone to

commercial users. Prior to that time, use of the backbone was subject to an “acceptable
use” policy, established and administered by NSF, under which commercial use was
limited to those applications that served the research community. NSF recognized that
commercially supplied network services, now that they were available, would ultimately
be far less expensive than continued funding of special-purpose network services.

Also in 1993 the University of Illinois made widely available Mosaic, a new type of
computer program, known as a browser, that ran on most types of computers and,
through its “point-and-click” interface, simplified access, retrieval, and display of files
through the Internet. Mosaic incorporated a set of access protocols and display
standards originally developed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research
(CERN) by Tim Berners-Lee for a new Internet application called the World Wide Web
(WWW). In 1994 Netscape Communications Corporation (originally called Mosaic
Communications Corporation) was formed to further develop the Mosaic browser and
server software for commercial use. Shortly thereafter, the software giant Microsoft
Corporation became interested in supporting Internet applications on personal
computers (PCs) and developed its Internet Explorer Web browser (based initially on

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Mosaic) and other programs. These new commercial capabilities accelerated the growth
of the Internet, which as early as 1988 had already been growing at the rate of 100
percent per year.

By the late 1990s there were approximately 10,000 Internet service providers
(ISPs) around the world, more than half located in the United States. However, most of
these ISPs provided only local service and relied on access to regional and national
ISPs for wider connectivity. Consolidation began at the end of the decade, with many
small to medium-size providers merging or being acquired by larger ISPs. Among these
larger providers were groups such as America Online, Inc. (AOL), which started as a
dial-up information service with no Internet connectivity but made a transition in the late
1990s to become the leading provider of Internet services in the world—with more than
25 million subscribers by 2000 and with branches in Australia, Europe, South America,
and Asia. Widely used Internet “portals” such as AOL, Yahoo!, Excite, and others were
able to command advertising fees owing to the number of “eyeballs” that visited their
sites. Indeed, during the late 1990s advertising revenue became the main quest of
many Internet sites, some of which began to speculate by offering free or low-cost
services of various kinds that were visually augmented with advertisements. By 2001
this speculative bubble had burst.

The 21st century and future directions

After the collapse of the Internet bubble came the emergence of what was called
“Web 2.0,” an Internet with emphasis on social networking and content generated by
users, and cloud computing. Social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram became some of the most popular Internet sites through allowing users to
share their own content with their friends and the wider world. Mobile phones became
able to access the Web, and, with the introduction of smartphones like Apple’s iPhone
(introduced in 2007), the number of Internet users worldwide exploded from about one
sixth of the world population in 2005 to more than half in 2020.

The increased availability of wireless access enabled applications that were

previously uneconomical. For example, global positioning systems (GPS) combined
with wireless Internet access help mobile users to locate alternate routes, generate
precise accident reports and initiate recovery services, and improve traffic management
and congestion control. In addition to smartphones, wireless laptop computers, and
personal digital assistants (PDAs), wearable devices with voice input and special
display glasses were developed.

While the precise structure of the future Internet is not yet clear, many directions of
growth seem apparent. One is toward higher backbone and network access speeds.
Backbone data rates of 100 billion bits (100 gigabits) per second are readily available
today, but data rates of 1 trillion bits (1 terabit) per second or higher will eventually
become commercially feasible. If the development of computer hardware, software,
applications, and local access keeps pace, it may be possible for users to access

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networks at speeds of 100 gigabits per second. At such data rates, high-resolution vide
—indeed, multiple video streams—would occupy only a small fraction of available
bandwidth. Remaining bandwidth could be used to transmit auxiliary information about
the data being sent, which in turn would enable rapid customization of displays and
prompt resolution of certain local queries. Much research, both public and private, has
gone into integrated broadband systems that can simultaneously carry multiple signals
—data, voice, and video. In particular, the U.S. government has funded research to
create new high-speed network capabilities dedicated to the scientific-research
community.

It is clear that communications connectivity will be an important function of a future

Internet as more machines and devices are interconnected. In 1998, after four years of
study, the Internet Engineering Task Force published a new 128-bit IP address standard
intended to replace the conventional 32-bit standard. By allowing a vast increase in the
number of available addresses (2128, as opposed to 232), this standard makes it possible
to assign unique addresses to almost every electronic device imaginable. Thus, through
the “Internet of things,” in which all machines and devices could be connected to the
Internet, the expressions “wired” office, home, and car may all take on new meanings,
even if the access is really wireless.

The dissemination of digitized text, pictures, and audio and video recordings over
the Internet, primarily available today through the World Wide Web, has resulted in an
information explosion. Clearly, powerful tools are needed to manage network-based
information. Information available on the Internet today may not be available tomorrow
without careful attention’s being paid to preservation and archiving techniques. The key
to making information persistently available is infrastructure and the management of
that infrastructure. Repositories of information, stored as digital objects, will soon
populate the Internet. At first these repositories may be dominated by digital objects
specifically created and formatted for the World Wide Web, but in time they will contain
objects of all kinds in formats that will be dynamically resolvable by users’ computers in
real time. Movement of digital objects from one repository to another will still leave them
available to users who are authorized to access them, while replicated instances of
objects in multiple repositories will provide alternatives to users who are better able to
interact with certain parts of the Internet than with others. Information will have its own
identity and, indeed, become a “first-class citizen” on the Internet.

Based on a recent survey of Internet traffic, the 10 most popular uses of the Internet in
descending order of use are:

1. Electronic Mail
At least 85% of the inhabitants of cyberspace send and receive e-mail. Some 20
million e-mail messages cross the Internet every week.

2. Research

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3. Downloading files

4. Discussion groups
These include public groups, such as those on Usenet, and the private mailing lists
that ListServ manages.

5. Interactive games
Who hasn’t tried to hunt down at least one game?

6. Education and self-improvement

On-line courses and workshops have found yet another outlet.

7. Friendship and dating

You may be surprised at the number of electronic “personals” that you can find on
the World Wide Web.

8. Electronic newspapers and magazines

This category includes late-breaking news, weather, and sports. We’re likely to see
this category leap to the top five in the next several years.

9. Job-hunting
Classified ads are in abundance, but most are for technical positions.

10. Shopping
It’s difficult to believe that this category even ranks. It appears that “cybermalls” are
more for curious than serious shoppers.

The survey shows that individuals, corporations, business people, and groups use
Internet primarily as a communications vehicle as these users reduce their use of fax
machines, telephones, and the postal service. E-mail should remain at the top of the list.
The Internet has continued and will continue to change how we view the world.

Electronic mail (email or e-mail)

It is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic

devices. Despite all the methods of communication email is still popular and has
become as necessary as a phone number or mailing address. Similar to calling
somebody, email has become a standard mode of communication with the expectation
being that everybody should have an email address. Email started out as a simple
communication tool but is now used for much more than that.

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In many ways, email has made our life easier. It allows us to:

• Contact people all over the world for free (or inexpensively)
• Communicate with more than one person at a time
• Document interactions (e.g. the highly prized CYA paper-trail)
• Leave messages any time of day without bothering people

It was only when people started using it in alternative ways that things started to
get messy, really messy. Instead of looking for a different model email kept evolving to
meet new demands and expectations such as:

• Working collaboratively
• Sending attachments
• Keeping a conversation together for multiple people (e.g. thread)
• Searching capabilities
• Automating actions with rules
• Integrating calendars and appointments, etc.

It was almost possible to live in your email. Some of these new demands were a
natural fit for this mode of communication, while others stretched the limitations and
made it seem really clunky. For example, sharing digital photos through email was never
a good solution. The attachments are large to send and can quickly clog up an inbox
making it problematic for both the sender and the recipient(s).

The Challenging “Problem Child”

Email has now become a “problem child” for information management

professionals. But in a lot of ways, email gets a bad rap. Email is not necessarily the
problem. It’s the way we use it and think about it that is the real issue. Since email is a
way to replace verbal communication, in some ways we want it to emulate qualities
associated with having a conversation such as being able to seamlessly transition
between topics, mixing personal and professional, and responding in the moment.
Although email is capable of doing these same things, it doesn’t do it as well and the
end result is a large volume of poorly created emails, which makes the information
management aspect challenging.

So what’s so different about email? Why is it so challenging for us to manage?

1. Email is used for more than just correspondence.

2. People have grown to rely on email for any number of uses.

Email is an important method of business communication that is fast, cheap, accessible

and easily replicated. Using email can greatly benefit businesses as it provides efficient
and effective ways to transmit all kinds of electronic data.

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Advantages of using email
Email can increase efficiency, productivity and your business readiness. Using
email in business is:
• cheap - sending an email costs the same regardless of distance and the number of
people you send it to
• fast - an email should reach its recipient in minutes, or at the most within a few hours
• convenient - your message will be stored until the recipient is ready to read it, and
you can easily send the same message to a large number of people
• permanent - you can keep a record of messages and replies, including details of
when a message was received

One of the main advantages of email is that you can quickly and easily send
electronic files such as text documents, photos and data sheets to several contacts
simultaneously by attaching the file to an email. Check with your internet service
provider if there is a limit to the size of email attachment you can send. Some
businesses may also limit the type and size of attachments that they are willing to
receive.

You can gain further advantages and increase your efficiency by setting up your email
software to:
• automatically create entries in your address book for every message you send or
receive
• respond to incoming emails automatically, eg to confirm receipt of an order, or to let
people know that you are on leave or out of the office

Disadvantages of using email

Despite the host of benefits, there are certain weaknesses of email that you should be
aware of, such as:

• Spam - unsolicited email can overwhelm your email system unless you install a
firewall and anti-spam software. Other internet and email security issues may arise,
especially if you're using the cloud or remote access.
• Viruses - easily spread through email attachments. See how to detect spam,
malware and viruses.
• Sending emails by mistake - at a click of a button, an email can go to the wrong
person accidentally potentially leaking confidential data and sensitive business
information. You should take care to minimize the likelihood of business data breach
and theft.
• Data storage - electronic storing space can become a problem, particularly where
emails with large attachments are widely distributed.

Less formal nature of email can lead to careless or even libelous remarks being
made which can damage your business. To minimize these risks, you should create and
implement an email and internet acceptable use policy for your business.

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