Introduction to the Internet and 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) .
Internet Growth Trends
Internet Growth Trends
 1977: 111 hosts on Internet
 1981: 213 hosts
 1983: 562 hosts
 1984: 1,000 hosts
 1986: 5,000 hosts
 1987: 10,000 hosts
 1989: 100,000 hosts
 1992: 1,000,000 hosts
 2001: 150 – 175 million hosts
 2002: over 200 million hosts
 By 2010, about 80% of the planet will be on the Internet
 The Creation of the Internet

 The creation of the Internet solved the following

challenges:
◦ Basically inventing digital networking as we know it
◦ Survivability of an infrastructure to send / receive high-
speed electronic messages
◦ Reliability of computer messaging
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.
 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 Internet?
 Many schools and businesses have direct
access to the Internet using special high-
speed communication lines and
equipment.
 Students and employees can access
through the organization’s local area
networks (LAN) or through their own
personal computers.
 Another way to access the Internet is
through Internet Service Provider (ISP).
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 Protocols

 Transmission control protocol (TCP) – A

standard that defines how one computer can
communicate and exchange data with
another computer on the Internet.
 Internet protocol (IP) – Defines the Internet’s

addressing scheme.
 IP address – Each computer connected to the

Internet is given an address composed of

numbers and periods. Example:
209.234.456.8
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.

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: Netscape

Navigator (Navigator) and 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 Internet and Web: What’s the
Difference?
 The Internet is the physical connection of
millions of networks.
 The Web uses the Internet for its existence.
 The Web consists of hypertext embedded on

Web pages that are hosted on Web sites.

The Web Site
 A Web site is a
collection of related
Web documents that are
made available to the
public.
 The index page, or

home page, is the first

page of a Web site.
 Web pages are

individual Web
documents.
The Hypertext Concept
 Hypertext is a way of presenting information so
that the order in which it’s read is left up to the
reader.
 Hyperlinks are underlined or highlighted words that
can be used to view another document or Web
page.
 Hypermedia refers to a link to multimedia, such as
music and movies.
 The Web is a distributed hypermedia system or a
system where the responsibility for creating content
is distributed among many people.
Web Browsers and Servers

 Web browsers display a Web document and

enable users to link to other Web pages.
◦ The first browsers were text-only.
◦ Mosaic was the first graphical browser.
 Web servers respond to the requests of
browsers. They find and send requested
resources back to the browser.
Web Addresses (URLs)
 Web addresses are an addressing system that
identifies where a Web resource is located.
 The uniform resource locator (URL) is the
standard used to identify Web resources.
 The URL consists of:
Protocol Server contains Path Resource
identifies the domain identifies the specifies the
the means name of the location of the filename of the
of access Web server document resource

URL http:// www.yahoo.com/ help/ shop/ shop-01.html

E-Mail: Staying in Touch

 E-mail is short for electronic mail.

 It’s the most popular of the Internet services.
 Messages are sent and received in a few
seconds.
 Attachments such as photos, music files, and
any document may be sent with the message.
Instant Messaging: E-Mailing
Made Faster

 Instant messaging systems let a user know when

a friend or business associate is online.
 It provides a means of communicating through
real-time, text-based conversations.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
Your Computer FTP Server

DOWNLOAD

UPLOAD

 FTP is a part of the Internet that enables client

computers to transfer files.
 Transferring files from an FTP site to the client is
known as downloading.
 Transferring files from the client to an FTP site is
known as uploading.
 Clients may store files on an FTP site’s server.
 Finding Information on the Web
 Ways to find information
on the Web:
◦ Browse or surf the Web –
This involves linking from
one Web page to another,
and so forth.
◦ Search the Web – This
method involves using
search engines to locate Web
pages with the information
you’re looking for.
◦ Subject guides – Web pages
are grouped under headings.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
 The public files on the web servers are
ordinary text files, much like the files used by
word-processing software.
 To allow Web browser software to read them,
the text must be formatted according to a
generally accepted standard.
 The standard used on the web is Hypertext
markup language (HTML).
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

 HTML uses codes, or tags, to tell the Web

browser software how to display the text
contained in the document.
 For example, a Web browser reading the
following line of text:
<B> A Review of the Book<I>Wind Instruments
of the 18th Century</I></B>
 recognizes the <B> and </B> tags as
instructions to display the entire line of text in
bold and the <I> and </I> tags as instructions
to display the text enclosed by those tags in
italics.
 Addresses on the Web:IP Addressing
 Each computer on the internet does have a
unique identification number, called an IP
(Internet Protocol) address.
 The IP addressing system currently in use on

the Internet uses a four-part number.

 Each part of the address is a number ranging

from 0 to 255, and each part is separated

from the previous part by period,
 For example, 106.29.242.17
 IP Addressing
 The combination of the four IP address parts
provides 4.2 billion possible addresses (256 x
256 x 256 x 256).
 This number seemed adequate until 1998.
 Members of various Internet task forces are
working to develop an alternate addressing
system that will accommodate the projected
growth.
 However, all of their working solutions require
extensive hardware and software changes
throughout the Internet.
 Domain Name Addressing
 Most web browsers do not use the IP address
t locate Web sites and individual pages.
 They use domain name addressing.
 A domain name is a unique name associated
with a specific IP address by a program that
runs on an Internet host computer.
 This program, which coordinates the IP
addresses and domain names for all
computers attached to it, is called DNS
(Domain Name System ) software.
 The host computer that runs this software is
called a domain name server.
 Domain Name Addressing

 Domain names can include any number of parts

separated by periods, however most domain names
currently in use have only three or four parts.
 Domain names follow hierarchical model that you can
follow from top to bottom if you read the name from
the right to the left.
 For example, the domain name gsb.uchicago.edu is
the computer connected to the Internet at the
Graduate School of Business (gsb), which is an
academic unit of the University of Chicago (uchicago),
which is an educational institution (edu).
 No other computer on the Internet has the same
domain name.
 Uniform Resource Locators
 The IP address and the domain name each identify a
particular computer on the Internet.
 However, they do not indicate where a Web page’s
HTML document resides on that computer.
 To identify a Web pages exact location, Web browsers
rely on Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
 URL is a four-part addressing scheme that tells the
Web browser:
 What transfer protocol to use for transporting the file
 The domain name of the computer on which the file
resides
 The pathname of the folder or directory on the
computer on which the file resides
 The name of the file
Structure of a Uniform Resource Locators

protocol pathname

http://www.chicagosymphony.org/civicconcerts/index.htm

Domain name filename

http => Hypertext Transfer Protocol

HTTP
 The transfer protocol is the set of rules that
the computers use to move files from one
computer to another on the Internet.
 The most common transfer protocol used

on the Internet is the Hypertext Transfer

Protocol (HTTP).
 Two other protocols that you can use on the

Internet are the File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

and the Telnet Protocol
How to find information on the Web?
 A number of search tools have been
developed and available to you on certain
Web sites that provide search services to
help you find information.
 Examples:

 Yahoo  www.yahoo.com
 Excite  www.excite.com
 Lycos  www.lycos.com
 AltaVista  www/alta-vista.com
 MSN WebSearch  www.search.msn.com
How to find information on the Web?
 You can find information by two basic
means.
 Search by Topic and Search by keywords.
 Some search services offer both methods,
others only one.
 Yahoo offers both.
 Search by Topic

You can navigate through topic lists

 Search by keywords

You can navigate by entering a keyword or

phase into a search text box.