Chapter 3

Introduction to computer network and Internet

What is a Network?
In the computer world, the term network describes two or more connected computers
that can share resources such as data, a printer, an Internet connection, applications, or
a combination of these.
The computers on a network may be linked through cables, telephone lines, radio
waves, satellites, or infrared light beams.

Basic components of a Computer Network

Every computer network environment consists of the following five basic and
indispensable components:
1. Shared data: refers to the data (software) that are shared among the computers on
the network. E.g.: files, programs like Ms Word, Access…
2. Shared peripheral: refers to the peripheral devices (hardware) shared among the
computers. E.g.: printer, modem…
3. Media: refers to the cables (wires) used to connect the computers and hence enable
them to communicate.
4. Client: refers to the computers which take (get) resources needed from other
computers (servers).
5. Server: refers to the computers which provide the resources needed to other
computers (clients) on the network.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Networking

Advantages of Networking
a) Sharing of peripheral devices:
 Laser Printers, Hard disk drives and Scanners are examples of peripheral
devices. All these devices cannot be connected to each and every computer as
they are very expensive. Hence, these devices can be shared by many users
through a network.
b) Sharing of Programs and data:
 In many organizations, people use almost the same software and access the
same data. If these software and data were made available for individual users
separately, then it is wastage of memory. Hence, by sharing the software and
data the usage of memory can be minimized, thereby minimizing the expense.
c) Better Communication:
 In the digital world, information can be transferred within fraction of a second
over long distances. And one of the greatest features of networks is Electronic
Mail (E-Mail) system. Thus, a company can eliminate the delays encountered
with standard postal services or with telephone tag, by using E-Mail services.
d) Security of information:
 Before networks became a common place, an individual employee was storing
information in his or her desktop computer which was not secured. But today,
such data or information could be backed-up or duplicated on a network storage
device, shared by others.

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Disadvantages of Networking
a. Computer viruses can easily be shared affecting badly the network performance
and the performance of the computers.
b. Difficult to secure information. Confidential documents (files) can be accessed
without the knowledge and permission of the owner.

Types of Networks
 Based on the size, the Networks are classified into three types:
(a) Local Area Networks (LAN)
(b) Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)
(c) Wide Area Network (WAN)
a) Local Area Network
 LAN and is a privately owned network that serves users within a single building
as an office, or a group of buildings close together as a college campus. It is
small in size.
b) Metropolitan Area Network
 MAN is a communication network covering a large geographic area when
compared to LAN, like a city or suburb. A MAN can support both data and
voice, and might even be related to the local cable television network. Cellular
phone systems are also those systems that come under this type of Network. A
MAN is basically bigger version of a LAN covering a group of nearby
corporate offices in a city and might be either private or public.
c) Wide Area Network
 WAN is communication Network spanning a huge geographical area like a
state, country or a continent. It contains a collection of machines intended for
running user (i.e., application) programs. The Internet links together hundreds
of computer WANs.
WANS differ from LANS in the following ways:
 WANs cover greater distance.
 WAN speeds are slower.
 WANs can be connected on demand or be permanently connected. LANs
have permanent connections between stations.
 WANs can use public or private network transports. LANs typically use
private transports.
 WANs can use either full- or half-duplex communications. LANs typically
use half-duplex communications.
Transmission Modes
In a network, there is always a sender and a receiver for communication to occur.
Depending on the direction and simultaneity of data transmission between the sender
and the receiver, we have three types of transmission, namely: Simplex, half-duplex,
and full-duplex.
 Simplex: in simplex transmission mode, data is transmitted only in one
direction, i.e., from source to destination. E.g., Television transmission
 Half-duplex: data can be transmitted in both direction but not simultaneously,
i.e., either from sender to receiver or from the reverse at a time. E.g., wacky
talkie

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  Full-duplex: data can be transmitted in both directions simultaneously. E.g.,
telephone

Internet

What is Internet?

 The term InterNet has been coined from two terms, Interconnection and Network.
 Several networks have been joined together across the globe to form what is called
as the Internet.
 There is no single, generally agreed-upon answer to the question because the
Internet is different for each of us:
 It is a set of computers talking over fiber optics, phone lines, satellite links, and
other media.
 It is a place where you can talk to your friends and family around the world.
 It is a place to get cool game demos.
 It is an ocean of resources waiting to be mined.
 It is a place to do research for your thesis or a business presentation.
 It is unlimited commercial opportunity.
 It is a worldwide support group for any problem or need.
 It is a gold mine of professionals in all fields sharing information about their
work.
 It is hundreds of libraries and archives that are open to your fingertips.
 It is the ultimate time-waster.
 It is the technology of the future that will help make our lives, and those of our
children, brighter.
Basic Terminologies
 Learning about the Internet can be a bit confusing at first, but it becomes a lot
simpler if you can become familiar with some of the terminologies used when
talking about the Internet. Here is a list of common words and phrases that you
might hear.

 WWW:
 This stands for the World-Wide-Web. Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist in
Switzerland, invented the World Wide Web in 1992 as a way to organize and
access information on the Internet.
 It is also commonly known as ‘The Web’. The WWW is hypertext based
information retrieval tool.

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  One can easily surf the Web by jumping from one document to another using
the links in those documents. These documents can be in many formats, such as
text, graphics, animation, sound and latest is video. They may also be a
combination of all these.

 Its introduction caused the popularity of the Internet to explode nearly

overnight. Instead of only being able to download simple linear text, with the
introduction of the World Wide Web users could download Web pages that
contain text, graphics, and even animations, video, and sound.
Web browser:
 A Web browser is a program that runs on users' computers and allows them to
view and interact with the Web pages on the World Wide Web.
 Browsers can create the illusion of traveling to an actual location in virtual
space (hyperspace) where the document being viewed exists. This virtual
location in hyperspace is referred to as a Web site. The process of virtual travel
between Web sites is called navigating.
 The most common Web Browsers are called Internet Explorer and Netscape.
 Hypertext:
 Hypertext is a collection of documents that contain cross-references called
hyperlinks, which allow the user to jump easily from one document to another.
 Hypertext allows a user to move from one Web page to another by using a
mouse to click on special hypertext links. For example, a user viewing Web
pages that describe airplanes might encounter a link to jet engines from one of
those pages. By clicking on that link, the user automatically jumps to a page
that describes jet engines. Users "surf the Web" when they jump from one page
to another in search of information.
 Web site
 Many commercial companies maintain Web sites, or sets of Web pages, that
their customers can view. The companies can engage in e-commerce, or
electronic commerce, by describing their products on their Web sites.
Customers who view the Web pages can read the descriptions and then
purchase products directly from the companies by sending orders back over the
Internet. Buying and selling stocks and other investments is another popular
Web activity.

 Many organizations and educational institutions also have Web sites. They use
their sites to promote themselves and their causes, to disseminate information,
and to solicit funds and new members. Even many private individuals now have
their own Web sites. They can fill their pages with photographs and personal
information for viewing by friends and associates.
 URL:
 This stands for a Uniform Resource Locator.

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  Is an address that points to a particular document or other resource on the
Internet
 To visit a Web site, users type the URL, which is the site's address, into the
Web browser. An example of a URL is www.yahoo.com

 Email
 One of the most popular uses of the Internet is email, or electronic mail. Using
email, people can send messages and even sounds and pictures to each other
in a matter of seconds. There are a number of Web Sites that offer a free email
service, so anybody with access to the World Wide Web can send and receive
email.
 Search engine
 The Internet contains a massive amount of information about a huge range of
subjects. If you don’t know where to look for the information you want, it can
be a very daunting and confusing place to be. Luckily, there are Web Sites
that contain special programs that help you to find information on the Web.
These Web Sites are called Search Engines. There are a number of different
search engines available on the World Wide Web. A few of the most common
are called Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), Google (www.google.com), and All The
Web (www.alltheweb.com).
 On-line
 You may sometimes hear people talk about “being on-line”. This is just
another way of saying that they are using the Internet.
Applications and Uses of the Internet
a) Accessing and obtaining Information.
 The faster growing part of the Internet is the World Wide Web (WWW). The
World Wide Web or simply the Web consists of an interconnected system of
sites called Websites.
 To access a website, web browser software like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer
or Netscape Navigator has to be used. It is very difficult to conceive how
much information is available on the web.
 Any information can be obtained from the web, say for example, about travel
agent, financial investment groups, restaurant guides, mail-order shopping
sites,……… etc. Online versions of newspapers and magazines are also
available. How to search and find such information?
 By using Web search engines information of interest can be obtained. Search
engines are nothing but tools to search and find information from the web.
These search engines are software called “Spiders” to crawl around the Web
for searching information. Examples of some popular search engines are
 Altavista
 Infoseek

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  Yahoo
 Google

b) Communication-
 Internet provides communication support for users in the same geographical area or
different geographical areas. It will allow the users to communicate through text,
voice.
i. Text communication: - internet provides e-mail (electronic mail) and IR (internet
relay chatting) services for communication using text. E-mail is an off-line
communication where as IRC is on-line communication.
ii. Voice communication: - internet provides net phone service with which two
users can communicate in voice.
 The World Wide Web is getting all the headlines, but for many people the main
attraction of Internet is the Electronic Main or E-Mail – the fastest way of sending
messages from one user to another. It hardly takes few fractions of a second to
transfer a message. There are several websites offering this service. For example,
 yahoo.com
 hotmail.com
 rediffmail.com
 freemail.com
 ethionet.et
c) Marketing and Business on the Web (Electronic Business)
 Many people are now putting their business online. To do this, one needs to
develop a website with online order forms. This concept is developing very
fast day by day. Of course, it costs money to make more money.
 Peoples can place the advertisements on the internet.
 Several business organizations provide on-line shopping with which we can
order the things without physically going to their shop.
 There are several banks which will allow their customers to do their
transactions through internet.
d) Resource Sharing:-
 Internet will make all programs, data and equipment available to among on
the network without regard to the physical location of the resource and the
user. A user who is working on the one system can easily access the resources
of another system.
e) Entertainment: -
 Internet provides a lot of entertainment to its users. It will allow the users to
play games, watch movies, etc.
f) Videoconferencing:
 Videoconferencing is a utility provided by the internet with which the users in
different geographical areas can hold a meeting or conferencing as if the
meeting is being conducted in a single room.

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  Here each person involved in the meeting will sit in front of his computer
with a microphone and web camera. They communicate with the other
members in voice and video.
g) News: -
 Many news agencies across the globe will place the latest news on the internet
and make it available to all the users of the internet.

h) Education: -
 Many educational institutions are coming to provide online education to the
students through internet .the entire course material is made available on the
internet so that the students can go through them. They conduct on-line
classes and even they conduct on-line examination.

Services of Internet

 But what does one do with the Internet? Basically:

 mail,
 discussion groups,
 long-distance computing, and
 file transfers.
 Internet mail is (e-mail or electronic mail), much faster as compared to normal
postal mail. One can also send software and certain forms of compressed digital
image as an attachment.
 News groups or discussion groups facilitate Internet user to join for various kinds
of debate, discussion and new sharing.
 Long-distance computing was an original inspiration for development of
ARPANET and does still provide a very useful service on Internet. Programmers
can maintain accounts on distant, powerful computers, execute programs.
 File transfers service allows Internet users to access remote machines and retrieve
programs, data or text.

E-Mail (Electronic Mail)

 E-mail or Electronic mail is a paperless method of sending messages, notes or

letters from one person to another or even many people at the same time via the
Internet.
 E-mail is very fast compared to the normal post. E-mail messages usually take only
few seconds to arrive at their destination. One can send messages anytime of the
day or night and it will get delivered immediately. You need not to wait for the post
office to open and you don’t have to get worried about holidays.

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 It works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What’s more, the copy of the message
you have sent will be available whenever you want to look at it - even in the middle
of the night.
 You have the privilege of sending something extra even such as a file, graphics,
images etc. along with your e-mail.
 The biggest advantage to using e-mail is that it is cheap, especially when sending
messages to other states or countries and at the same time it can be delivered to a
number of people around the world.
 Although e-mail is faster and cheaper, it has many of the components of regular
mail. It allows you to compose note, get the address of the recipient and send it.
Once the mail is received and read, it can be forwarded, replied. One can even store
it for later use, or delete. In e-mail even the sender can request for delivery receipt
and read receipt from the recipient.

(i) Features of E-mail:

 One-to-one or one-to-many communications
 Instant communications
 Physical presence of recipient is not required
 Most inexpensive mail service, 24-hours a day and seven days a week

(ii) Components of an E-mail Address:

 As in the case of normal mail system, e-mail is also based upon the concept of a
recipient address. The email address provides all of the information required to get
a message to the recipient from anywhere in the world. For example, consider the
following e-mail ID.

abebe@yahoo.com

In the example above:

 "abebe" is the local part, which is the name of a mailbox on the destination
computer, where finally the mail will be delivered.
 yahoo is the mail server where the mailbox "abebe" exists,

 .com is the type of organization on net, which is hosting the mail server.

There are six main categories top level domain names:

 .com Commercial institutions or organization

 .edu Educational institutions

 .gov Government site

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  .mil Military site

 .net Gateways and administrative hosts

 .org Private organizations

 Examples of web sites that provide Email service include:

o www.yahoo.com,

o www.google.com,

o www.ethionet.et,

o www.eudora.com

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