The internet is a huge collection of millions of computers all connected on a computer network. Hence why it is called the World Wide Web (WWW) which also starts one’s domain name, which I will get to a little later on.
This allows computer to communicate with one another. There are multiple connections that must be in place for a computer to connect to the internet. One of the first steps is using either a phone-line modem, a DSL, or cable modem which will allow your computer to talk to an internet service provider (ISP)
We can go even further and discuss how business and universities will use a Network Interface Card (NIC) to connect to a local area network (LAN) so that all of their computers can be interconnected like a computer server. Which allows more bits per second, which is needed to allow multiple business or university computers to all connect to the internet.
WWW and Domain Names,
And IP or Internet Protocol Address is uniquely given to every computer, and will sometimes change per internet session depending on the way a computer taps in to the internet. Every web page on the internet also has a unique 32-bit, four octet number. For example 209.116.69.66. could be an IP Address.
While this is an efficient way for the internet to work in connecting everyone to other computers, clients (receiving services- the usual home computer) or servers (provide services), it is not an efficient way for the average person to remember the website they want to go to. It would be nearly impossible to remember the IP Address to every website you would want or need to access.
So in order to make this easy for the average person Domain Names were born. A domain name is what we type in to access a website. For instance to access Moodle and our Online class I type in http://www.moodle.ramapo.edu
While we do not think about these domain names very often, they are actually broken down into 3 parts that so our internet browsers know where to access the information we want. First the WWW is the host name. It is the company hosting the site. While most are WWW, it does not have to be. This host name can be omitted when typing in the domain name. The actual domain name is the middle part moodle.ramapo, this is usually the “website” so yahoo, msn, google, howstuffworks, those are all the domain name. And lastly, the .edu, or .com/.gov/.org is the top-level domain name. So this is the basics of how the internet actually works.
WWW stands for the World Wide Web and is basically a “collection of hypertext documents” and the way they are accessed over the internet- credit wikipedia
The internet has really been in development since the 1950’s whether it was know than or not. Like I said above, the internet at it’s core is the ability to connect computers. It started out as simply building different protocols to develop internetoworking between computers. In 1982 Internet Protocol Suite was standardized and ISP started to emerge. And commercial use of the “internet” was born. (Credit Wikipedia)
The internet is incredibility powerful, and the use and possibilities for it are honestly endless. Without the internet, I have not doubt that computer would not be as popular as they are today. The ability for all of our to connect our computers and access different sites for information is what makes the internet such a beautiful thing. While trade-offs could be an invasion of privacy, and the ability for “hackers” to access not only personal documents, but sensitive data and information from business and government servers. With each passing day more complex protection against hackers and people who try using the internet in a negative way are developed.
I think the pros far out way the cons. The ability for all of us to take this class right now are because of the internet. Human communication not only for personal use, but for university business and government (even military use) depend on the internet.
stephendepaul 