Practical # 20 Date: _____________
Introduction to Internet and Email
INTRODUCTION TO INTERNET:
What is the Internet?
The internet is the largest computer network in the world, connecting millions of computers. A
network is a group of two or more computer systems linked together.
There are two main types of computer networks:
Local Area Network (LAN): A LAN is two or more connected computers sharing certain
resources in a relatively small geographic location, often in the same building. Examples include
home networks and office Networks.
Wide Area Network (WAN): A wide area network (WAN) is a geographically distributed
private telecommunications network that interconnects multiple local area networks (LANs). In
an enterprise, a WAN may consist of connections to a company's headquarters, branch
offices, colocation facilities, cloud services and other facilities. Typically, a router or other
multifunction device is used to connect a LAN to a WAN.
The World Wide Web (WWW)
When most people think of the internet, the first thing they think about is the World Wide Web.
Nowadays, the terms "internet" and "World Wide Web" are often used interchangeably—but
they're actually not the same thing.
The internet is the physical network of computers all over the world.
The World Wide Web is a virtual network of web sites connected by hyperlinks (or
"links"). Web sites are stored on servers on the internet, so the World Wide Web is a
part of the internet.
HTML
The backbone of the World Wide Web is made of HTML files, which are specially-formatted
documents that can contain links, as well as images and other media. All web browsers can read
HTML files. In addition to HTML, it's also very common for websites to use technologies like
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript to do more advanced things.
URL
To get to a web page, you can type the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in a browser. The
URL, also known as the web address, tells the browser exactly where to find the page. However,
most of the time, people get to a web page by following a link from a different page or by
searching for the page with a search engine.
An example of a URL
The World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee, a software engineer. Before
then, computers could communicate over the internet, but there were no web pages.
INTRODUCTION TO EMAIL:
Electronic mail (also known as email or e-mail) is one of the most commonly used services on
the Internet, allowing people to send messages to one or more recipients. Email was invented by
Ray Tomlinson in 1972
Why use email?
The operating principle behind email is relatively simple, which has quickly made it the most
popular service used on the Internet.
As with a traditional postal service, for your message to reach your recipient, all you need to
know is their address. Its two main advantages over "paper mail" are the speed at which the
email is sent (practically instantaneous) and the lower cost (included with the cost of an Internet
connection).
What's more, email can be used to instantaneously send a message to several people at once.
Email addresses
Email addresses (both for senders and recipients) are two strings separated by the character "@"
(the "at sign"):
user@domain
The right-hand part describes the domain name involved, and the left-hand part refers to the user
who belongs to that domain. One or more mail servers (MX records in the Domain Name
System) correspond to each domain.
An email address can be up to 255 characters long and can include the following characters:
Lowercase letters from a to z;
Digits
The characters ".","_" and "-" (full stop, underscore, and hyphen)
In practice, an email address often looks something like this:
RAbuzar76@gmail.com
