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) .

The uses of the Internet

Send e-mail messages. Send (upload) or receive (download) files between computers. Participate in discussion groups, such as mailing lists and newsgroups. Surfing the web. Many more.

How the Internet Works

The World Wide Web is the most popular part of the Internet by far. The Web allows rich and diverse communication by displaying text, graphics, animation, photos, sound and video. The Web physically consists of your personal computer, web browser software, a connection to an Internet Service Provider, computers called servers that host digital data, and routers and switches to direct the flow of information.

Components of the Internet

The Internet is comprised of many components such a Email, FTP and Usenet News. The World Wide Web is simply one of these components. World Wide Web (World Wide Web is like an Internet Library with millions of books) FTP E-mail & E-mail Discussion Groups Telnet Usenet News HTTP Chat & Instant Messaging

What is the World Wide Web? One simple definition of the WWW is:

The WWW is a Hypertext Information System Hypertext browsing:

Non-Linear structure (not a book)

You read what you want next Click on Hypertext links to navigate the WWW

Features of the WWW are:

Graphical Easy to use Cross Platform Distributed Dynamic Interactive (forms, Java)

The Internet: Then and Now

The Internet was created by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and the U.S. Department of Defense for scientific and military communications. The Internet is a network of interconnected networks. Even if part of its infrastructure was destroyed, data could flow through the remaining networks. The Internet uses high-speed data lines, called backbones, to carry data. Smaller networks connect to the backbone, enabling any user on any network to exchange data with any other user. ARPANET, NSFnet, Internet Internetworking: the process of connecting separate networks

How the Internet Works

TCP/IP Routing Traffic Across the Internet Addressing Schemes Domains and Subdomains

How the Internet Works - TCP/IP

Every computer and network on the Internet uses the same protocols (rules and procedures) to control timing and data format. The protocol used by the Internet is the Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP. Transmission Control

No matter what type of computer system you connect to the Internet, if it uses TCP/IP, it can exchange data with any other type of computer.

Protocol
A protocol is a system of rules that define how something is to be done. In computer terminology, a protocol is usually an agreed-upon or standardized method for transmitting data and/or establishing communications between different devices.

Protocol
Just as two humans need to have a common language between them before they can begin to share ideas and information, so must computers have a common way of sending information between them. The Internet is a successful protocols-based system

Protocol
HTTP :The protocol commonly known as HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP was originally used as a way to display text FTP:The primary protocol used to transfer large amounts of data from place to place across the Internet is known as FTP. FTP is an acronym that appropriately stands for File Transfer Protocol.

Protocol
TCP/IP:The network protocol suite that is primarily responsible for the transfer of raw data across the Internet is known as TCP/IP. The acronym stands for a combination of Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol. Others protocols are: SMTP, SSL,POP3,Telnet

How the Internet Works Routing Traffic Across the Internet

Most computers don't connect directly to the Internet. Instead, they connect to a smaller network that is connected to the Internet backbone. The Internet includes thousands of host computers (servers), which provide data and services as requested by client systems. When you use the Internet, your PC (a client) requests data from a host system. The request and data are broken into packets and travel across multiple networks before being reassembled at their destination.

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 organizations local area networks (LAN) or through their own personal computers. Another way to access the Internet is through Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Internet Service Provider (ISP)

A commercial organization with permanent connection to the Internet that sells temporary connections to subscribers. Examples: Tata, Reliance, MTNL, BSNL, .

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.

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 sites home page.

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.

Internet Addressing Scheme

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 to 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.

N/S: Name Server TLD: Top Level Domain ISP: Internet Service Provider

1 Your computer makes a connection to your ISP's DNS Server, and asks for the IP address for the domain name, helpbytes.co.uk in this example. It then waits for it's response. 2 Your ISP's DNS server gets information about the TLD from the domain name. In this case, it's the .uk. It then asks one of the 13 root servers for the address of the nameserver that handles .uk queries. It receives it's response from the server. If the server cannot handle the query, your ISP's DNS server tries the next.

3 Your ISP's DNS server makes a connection to this address, and asks it where it can find information regarding helpbytes.co.uk. It's unlikely at this stage the actual IP will be given. Your ISP's DNS server will now take receipt of the nameserver that contains the actual data for helpbytes.co.uk 4 Your ISP's DNS server makes a connection to this new address, and asks it where it can find information regarding helpbytes.co.uk. At this stage, it's most likely going to receive the actual IP address of helpbytes.co.uk 217.204.37.10. 5 Your ISP sends you the IP address. Your computer can now connect to this IP address and do its intended job!

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 pages 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