Introduction to the Internet

and Web
 Internet
• It is the largest network in the world that connects
hundreds of thousands of individual networks all o
ver the world.
• The popular term for the Internet is the “informati
on highway”.
• Rather than moving through geographical space, it
moves your ideas and information through cybersp
ace – the space of electronic movement of ideas an
d 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 sta
ndards based on the TCP/IP (Transmission Contro
l Protocol/Internet Protocol) .
 The uses of the Internet

• Send e-mail messages.

• Send (upload) or receive (down load) files b
etween computers.
• Participate in discussion groups, such as ma
iling 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 an
d images that lead to related information.
• A collection of linked Web pages that has a common t
heme or focus is called a Web site.
• The main page that all of the pages on a particular We
b site are organized around and link back to is called t
he site’s home page.
 How to access the Internet?
• Many schools and businesses have direct ac
cess to the Internet using special high-speed
communication lines and equipment.
• Students and employees can access through
the organization’s local area networks (LA
N) or through their own personal computers
.
• Another way to access the Internet is throug
h 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 sta
ndards based on the TCP/IP (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol) reference model.
• Each organization pays for its own networks and it
s 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 te
lephone call.
 Internet Service Provider (ISP)

• A commercial organization with permanent

connection to the Internet that sells tempora
ry connections to subscribers.
• Examples:
• Prodigy, America Online, Microsoft networ
k, AT&T Networks.
 How to access the Web?
• Once you have your Internet connection, then
you need special software called a browser to a
ccess the Web.
• Web browsers are used to connect you to remo
te computers, open and transfer files, display te
xt and images.
• Web browsers are specialized programs.
• Examples of Web browser: Netscape Navigato
r (Navigator) and Internet Explorer.
 Client/Server Structure of the Web
• Web is a collection of files that reside on computers, c
alled 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 par
t 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.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTM
L)
• The public files on the web servers are ordinary
text files, much like the files used by word-proc
essing software.
• To allow Web browser software to read them, th
e text must be formatted according to a generall
y accepted standard.
• The standard used on the web is Hypertext mark
up language (HTML).
 Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

• HTML uses codes, or tags, to tell the Web browser softwar

e 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 displa
y the entire line of text in bold and the <I> and </I> tags as
instructions to display the text enclosed by those tags in ita
lics.
 Addresses on the Web:IP Addressing
• Each computer on the internet does have a uniq
ue identification number, called an IP (Internet
Protocol) address.
• The IP addressing system currently in use on th
e Internet uses a four-part number.
• Each part of the address is a number ranging fro
m 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 pr
ovides 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 wor
king to develop an alternate addressing system t
hat will accommodate the projected growth.
• However, all of their working solutions require
extensive hardware and software changes throu
ghout 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 sp
ecific 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 do
main name server.
 Domain Name Addressing
• Domain names can include any number of parts separated by per
iods, however most domain names currently in use have only thr
ee or four parts.
• Domain names follow hierarchical model that you can follow fro
m 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 (gs
b), which is an academic unit of the University of Chicago (uchi
cago), 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 c
omputer on the Internet.
• However, they do not indicate where a Web page’s HTML docu
ment 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 brows
er:
 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 whi
ch the file resides
 The name of the file
Structure of a Uniform Resource Locators

pathname
protocol

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 co

mputers use to move files from one computer to a
nother on the Internet.
• The most common transfer protocol used on the In
ternet is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
• Two other protocols that you can use on the Intern
et are the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and the Tel
net Protocol
 How to find information on the Web?
• A number of search tools have been developed and av
ailable 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.