Information Technology Fourth Form November 2022

LESSON 1
The Internet
The internet has been described as ‘a network of networks’, since it connects over 50 million computers
worldwide. The Internet was started in 1969 in the USA to link up centres in the event of nuclear attack.
Gradually, more networks joined and the focus changed, connecting thousands of microcomputers, minicom-
puters, mainframes and supercomputers linked in commercial, government and educational networks.

Gaining Access to the Internet

The average person can gain access to the internet through:

✓ Internet Service Provider (ISP) – This is a company with direct connection to the internet that grants
subscribers access to various internet services.
Subscribers can connect using one of the following two methods:
✓ Dial-up connection – This is where the user’s modem dials the ISP. The user is required to enter
his/her username and password before access is granted to the internet.
✓ Broad-band cable or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connection – This is where the user is perma-
nently connected to the internet (that is, he/she does not have to dial).

Uses of the Internet

The internet can be used for a variety of purposes such as:
✓ Checking e-mail
✓ Chatting
✓ Downloading files
✓ Searching for information
✓ Listening to music
✓ Viewing video clips
✓ Making business transactions
Today businesses set up websites on the Internet so that:

✓ They can advertise what they do and what they sell.

✓ People can send e-mail (electronic mail) to them with enquiries, orders and requests.
✓ They can reach an international audience.

Advantages and disadvantages of the Internet

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The main services provided by the Internet

Electronic mail (E-mail) – means messages that can be sent from one computer to another anywhere in the
world, via networks such as LANs and WANs. To send email message you need to have an email address of
your own and know the email address of each intended recipient. An advantage of using email is that files
such as pictures, sound, video and text can be attached to the email, and sent with one message. Once the
email has been sent, the recipient does not need to be online. The message is stored in an email list for the re-
cipient to read. One email can be sent to an individual or a group of people simultaneously.

Examples of email addresses include [email protected], [email protected], customerserv-

[email protected] or [email protected]. You will notice that @ separates the email address. The
username is typed before @ and the domain or the company hosting the site is typed after @. The bb in the
hostname company.org.bb represents the country that the website is linked to. For example, employees in
Trinidad would have email addresses ending with company.org.tt.

Advantages of email

Ordinary mail takes several days, but email can be sent immediately and replies received as soon as recipients
check their email.
Emails do not have to be as formal and structure\read as typical letters.
There is no need to get stamps, envelopes, or paper, or to go to a post box or the post room in a company.

Disadvantages of email

Not everyone has access to a computer or the software application to use the email facility.
Emails are not as private as personal letters.
Replies are dependent on the recipient accessing the email and reading the message.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) – allows users to go online at the same time and exchange text or audio messages
in real time e.g. MSN Messenger, Facebook chat, Skype etc.

Newsgroups -are online discussion groups where users with common interests, anywhere in the world, can
share their views. Imagine a topic and there is usually a newsgroup on it! Usenet servers are similar to bulle-
tin board systems but allow subscribers to exchange ideas related to topics of interest. When subscribed, a user
is allowed to join a newsgroup or forum and post messages in response to topics raised by others or raise new
related topics. Most web browsers include newsgroups software for downloading and posting messages. The
software for accessing newsgroups is usually included in your computer’s Internet browser such as Microsoft
Internet Explorer (Fig 4.16).

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Telnet
Telnet is a remote login service provided by dedicated computer networks on the Internet. You can search for
and identify data in these computer systems. The service is provided by companies and universities for home
users to gain access to services.
Blogs and podcasts
Some Internet users post frequent messages of commentary, descriptions of events, graphics, video or audio
(podcasting) to a personal website. This is also called ‘blogging’, where the list of entries, called ‘blogs’, start
with the most recent post. Blogs can be posted on any subject, and readers can reply to the blog. Personal
blogs are similar to journals or diaries.

A podcast is an audio or video digital file that can be downloaded from the Internet to a personal computer or
a portable media device such as an iPod. Users can subscribe to a podcast, so that when new content is added
it can be downloaded easily.
LESSON 2
The World Wide Web (www) – popularly known as the Web - is the main way of accessing information on
the Internet. The Web is based on pages of information which are linked and viewed by a web browser, such
as Internet Explorer. By clicking with the mouse on a hypertext link (links are usually underlined words dis-
played in different colours), you can jump to another web page or to another website. Millions of web pages
are available on virtually every topic imaginable.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) – is the name given to the transfer of files across the Internet. FTP is the Inter-
net equivalent of a file server, with files made available on thousands of the net’s computers for downloading
onto individual computers. Millions of users use FTP to download updates to popular software, such as Mi-
crosoft Word and Excel, although it can also be used to upload (send) files to websites.
Voice over Internet Protocol
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is an Internet Protocol used to convert the sound of voice into digital form
and transmit it over the Internet. Software applications such as Skype enable users to use the Internet to make
telephone calls to others with or without another Internet connection. A major advantage of VoIP is that some
users avoid paying international call charges compared with using an ordinary telephone service. The Black-
berry (Fig 4.14) is an example of a wireless device that uses VoIP to access email and instant messaging and
browse the Internet or intranet. Recent models also have telephone capabilities.

Connecting to the Internet

Computers can be connected to the Internet in different ways. Traditionally, to access the Internet, you needed
a modem which was connected to a telephone line, software (web browser and email package) and an Inter-
net Service Provider (ISP). On many personal computers, you can still hear the modem dialing up and con-
necting to the ISP. This form of connection is known as dial up networking. When users are connected to the
Internet, they are still said to be online.
Telephone companies have been keen to increase the speed of Internet connections. This has led to two major
developments: ISBN and ADSL. ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) is a high-speed digital alter-
native to using the existing telephone network. ISDN can send and receive data at 128 kbps (or faster when
parallel lines are installed). ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) transforms the existing telephone
wires into high-speed digital data lines. With ADSL, data can be sent and received much faster than with tradi-
tional modems or IDSN, with speeds up to 8 Mbps. ADSL does not require a dial-up connection, as users are
permanently connected to the Internet.
Many cable television customers can connect to the Internet using a cable modem which sends and receives
digital data through a connection to a fibre-optic cable television system. Cable television such as DirectTV is
a broadband service-a single cable can carry several channels at once-which results in data being sent and re-
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ceived at high speeds (1.5 to 3 Mbps). Other recent developments by digital television companies include ac-
cessing the Internet at home on a television set rather than a computer.
Internet Protocol
With so many different computer networks linked together on the Internet, there has to be a standard way in
which different networks are linked together. The set of rules, sometimes known as a protocol, for sending and
receiving data over the Internet is known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).
TCP/IP breaks down the data into little chunks, or packets, which are sent to other computers on the Internet.
TCP/IP then ensures that the data is reassembled into its original form.
Getting data sent to the right computer on the Internet is very important, particularly when there are so many.
When you address a letter to be sent through the post, you have to be specific about where you want it to go,
giving house number and post code or P.O. boxes. The same principles have to be applied when using the In-
ternet.
A host (server) computer on the Internet is one that provides services such as email, news or data to other
computers. Each host computer has its own unique address to identify it. This address is known as an IP ad-
dress (Internet Protocol address). The IP address is usually four numbers separated by full stops: for exam-
ple, 194.238.196.100. The first two or three numbers identify the computer network, with the rest identifying
the individual computer.
It is much easier to type in and remember a domain name, such as www.cxc.org, than having to remember the
IP address. But as far as the computer is concerned, the IP address is crucial. Every time you send an email or
browse a web page, your IP address is sent behind the scenes. This way your Internet usage can be tracked!
Services on the Internet
The World Wide Web (www) is based on millions of pages of information linked together and viewed by In-
ternet browsers. An Internet browser is a software application that allows you to go to resources and websites
on the Internet. Popular browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. In order to ac-
cess the services on the Internet, you need to know what to do.
Internet address
Every site on the Internet has an address known as URL (Uniform Resource Locator). To access a site, you
enter its address (URL) into the Internet browser. There is a space at the top of the screen (labeled Address)
for you to enter the URL. For example, typing www.nationnews.com would give you access to the Nation
Newspaper for up-to-date news and links to other Caribbean newspapers.
You will see address that start http://. The http tells you that it is a website. To save you time, most browsers
today do not require you to type the http://. You just type www followed by the rest of the address. Sometimes
you may also see an address that starts ftp. FTP sites are not websites, but sites that allow you to transfer files
across the Internet.

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The name of the web server is next in the URL. A web server is a computer which uses special software to
transmit web pages over the Internet. Many Web server names are prefixed by www, for example
www.caribsurf.com, www.sunbeah.net. If you enter the Web server name into the web browser, you will see
the home page for the site. This is like the title page in a book from which other related pages may be ac-
cessed. You will get a message if there is no home page available.

After the server name comes the folder where the file is located then the name of the file being retrieved. Typ-
ical file name extensions on web pages are ht mot html.

The Web is an information retrieval system which enables users to connect from one website to another via
hypertext links on the page. That is, when you click on a link, you are taken from one website to another,
which may be on the same computer or a different computer at a remote location.

For example, http://www.caribbeannews.com is the home page for various online Caribbean newspapers (Fig
4.15) whereas clicking on any one of the links for a newspaper will take you directly to that particular website.

If you do not know the URL of the site you want, you can use a search engine. A search engine is a software
application that finds websites using keywords. Search engines have their own websites, such as
www.google.com.

Whenever you find a site that you think you would like to visit again, you can ‘bookmark’ it, by adding it to
your list of favourite sites. By opening your list of favourite sites, you can go straight to any site you have
bookmarked without typing the URL or using a search engine.

Search engines, such as Google, index the words on tens of millions of web pages. This indexing is undertak-
en by software robots (also known as spiders) that continually search the Web for new sites or updated web
pages. Indexing web pages in this way allows you to search using keywords.
Internet cache

When using the Internet, your web browser stores pages and files on your hard disk as you view them. These
pages and files are stored in a Temporary Internet Files folder. This is known as a cache.

The caching of ‘temporary’ pages and files is important, as it speeds up the display of pages of sites that you
have already been to. This is because a computer can access files more quickly from hard disk than from the
Web.

Creating web pages

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a text-based language used to create web pages for display by a
web browser. It is a formatting language, since it consists of codes which instruct the browser how to create,
format and display the information on the web page. The data to be displayed on the pages is written as plain
text and the formatting codes are written amongst the data (appearing to ‘mark up’ the data) in the document.
The marks are shown as tags, recognised by the <> brackets around each formatting code.

The first tag seen in an HTML document is the <HTML> tag. This defines the start of the HTML document.
A closing tag is sometimes used to show the end of a formatting instruction. Closing tags appear as </>.
The final tag in an HTML document is </HTML> tag.

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Intranets, extranets and e-commerce

The success of the Internet has led businesses and other organizations to use the same standards of the Internet
(TCP/IP, HTML), along with Internet web-server software, to set up an intranet. Many schools now have
their own intranet.

Intranet
An intranet is a private network based on Internet standards but only available within a business or organiza-
tion is allowed access to the intranet. A company can set up an intranet and allow its workers to send messages
to each other and use a browser to access company information saved as web pages. It can also be used for
staff training. An intranet is not directly connected to the Internet, but some intranets do allow access, via so-
called gateway computers, to the Internet. For users of an intranet, it looks and functions just like a website.

Intranets may, depending on how they are set up, consist of local area networks (LANs) and wide area net-
works (WANs). A firewall is used to stop computers on other networks, including the Internet, accessing an
intranet. Instead, all communication through a proxy server that is outside the network. The proxy server acts
as a gatekeeper, filtering Internet sites and deciding what files or messages should come in to, or go out form,
a computer network.
Intranets are used by many businesses and other organizations to:
✓ distribute documents
✓ share information
✓ distribute software
✓ access databases
✓ help with staff training
✓ facilitate group work
✓ enable teleconferencing

Intranets are becoming increasingly popular, as they are less expensive to build and manage than other types
of private network. Also, users of intranets are familiar with how to use them because they look and behave
like websites on the Internet. This saves time and money on staff training.

More and more schools are setting up their own intranets. Internal school information, such as examination
timetables, room changes, sports teams and results, can be readily shared with staff and students. Each de-
partment in the school can have its own intranet page(s) along with relevant information for students, such as
revision guides and homework tasks. Students also have the opportunity to share their work with others.

Extranet
Once intranets were developed, it became clear that businesses and other organizations sometimes wanted to
allow others, such as suppliers and customers, to have limited access to their intranet. This would lead to a
closer relationship with customers, a better exchange of information and improved efficiency. Therefore, ex-
tranets were developed. Extranets allow authorised outsiders limited access to an extranet. Only authorised
users are allowed. They must have valid usernames and passwords and identity establishes which part of the
extranet they can access.

Extranets enable businesses to work closely together. A car manufacturer, for example, might develop an ex-
tranet to allow all of its various suppliers (of tyres, lights, windscreens, seats and so on) and car showrooms to
keep in very close contact regarding orders and deliveries. An extranet could be used to share information not
available to the public, as well as to exchange data and to develop joint training programmes. Data can be ex-
changed using electronic data interchange (EDI). Electronic data interchange is a special way to transfer
business documents, such as orders and invoices, between computers.

The aim of EDI is to speed up communication between businesses and other organisations, and eventually to
do away with paper transactions. EDI often involves putting the data into special computer code to stop other
people looking at the data.

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Information Technology Fourth Form November 2022

Electronic commerce
EDI is one aspect of electronic commerce, known as e-commerce. Ecommerce is the term used for the buying
and selling of goods and services on the Internet and, in particular, the World Wide Web. Ecommerce is worth
tens of millions of pounds as companies such as Amazon and the computer Dell, sell their goods directly to
people via the Web. Many observe and entrepreneurs see ecommerce as bringing about a revolution in busi-
ness and commercial practices (Fig 4.18).

Questions
1. What hardware device connects a computer to the Internet using the telephone?
2. List three services provided on the Internet.
3. In a URL, what does the term http refer to?
4. Give three uses made of intranets by organizations.
5. Explain what is meant by the following terms: firewall, proxy server.
6. Give two advantages of using email.
7. Give three disadvantages of using the Internet.
8. Find and list two websites that contain:
✓ podcasts
✓ blogs
9. State the username and hostname in the email address [email protected]