Internet Essentials
What is Internet?
• A worldwide collection of networks, gateways,
servers, and computers using a common set of
telecommunication protocols to link them
together
• A gigantic collection of millions of computers, all
link together on a computer network
Historical Background: Important Milestones
1964 RAND Corporation, America’s foremost cold
war think tank, issued a paper: “On
Distributed Communication Networks” which
proposes a decentralized data-switching
network that could withstand partial outages
(like bomb attacks) and still functions.
Historical Background: Important Milestones
1969 The US Department of Defense
commissioned ARPA to establish
connections of computers at different
universities and defense contractors that
could survive a nuclear attack (called
ARPANET)
ARPA (Advance Research Project Agency)
Historical Background: Important Milestones
1980 National Science Foundation (NSF)
established supercomputer centers intended
for academic research purposes via
ARPANET to obtain the access. ARPANET
eventually became overloaded, in response it
created a new higher-capacity network, called
NSFNET, to complement the older and by
then overloaded ARPANET
The link between ARPANET,
NSFNET and other networks was
called the Internet
How Internet Works
Clients and Servers
Servers Machines (computers) that provide services
to other machines. A server machine may
provide one or more services on the
Internet
Clients Computers that are used to connect and
avail the services provided by servers
through web browser
Graphical Diagram
(Client-Server Transaction)
Communication PROTOCOL
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
The set of commands and timing specifications used by the
Internet. The wide area network protocol that provides
communications across diverse interconnected networks
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
The standard protocol for transferring hypertext pages.
Browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer) and servers use the HTTP to
communicate.
What you need to know about Internet addresses?
An Internet or Web address (sometimes called a URL, or Uniform
Resource Locator) typically is composed of four parts:
Ex: http://www.maap.edu/courses.htm
A suffix that identifies the
kind of organization
The name given to the org.
that maintains the site
Server Name
(Location of the Site)
Protocol
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
For example, the address http://www.yale.edu/ provides the
following information:
http: This Web server uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
www This site is on the World Wide Web.
Internet Domains
yale The Web server is at Yale University.
.com commercial
.edu This is an educational institution. .edu educational
.gov government
.mil military
.net gateway/host
.org other org
IP Addresses
Each computer on the Internet is assigned a unique address
called an IP address.
IP stands for Internet Protocol.
IP address has four-part numeric address which contains routing
information that identifies computer location (e.g. 209.116.69.66)
The four numbers in an IP address are called octets because
they have values between 0 and 255, which is 28 possibilities per
octet (32-bit numbers)
Domain Names
Because most people have trouble remembering the strings of
numbers that make up IP addresses, all servers / sites on the
Internet also have human-readable names, called domain name.
For example: www.nationalbookstore.com is the human-
readable name for the web site of National Bookstore. It is
easier to remember that its IP address 203.167.28.47.
Domain Name Servers (DNS)
A set of servers that
maps domain names to
IP addresses.
DNS Mapping
Domain Name
For instance: If you type the URL
http://www.sony.com/main.htm into a browser, the
browser extracts the name www.sony.com,
passes it to a DNS, and the DNS returns the
correct IP address for www.sony.com
IP
address
Summary:
Steps that Occur in Internetworking
1. The browser brakes the URL into three parts:
(1) The protocol (i.e. HTTP)
(2) The server name (domain name, e.g. www.maap.com)
(3) The file name (web page e.g. “course.htm”)
2. The browser communicates with a DNS to map/translate the domain
name into an IP Address, which it use to connect to the server machine
3. The browser then forms a connection to the server at the IP address on
a specific port
4. Following the HTTP protocol, the browser sends a GET request to the
server, asking for the file “www.maap.com”
5. The server then sends the HTML text for the web page to the browser
6. The browser read the HTML tags and formats the page onto your screen
Major Tools and Services on the Internet
• World Wide Web (WWW)
• Electronic Mail (E-Mail)
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
• USEr NETwork (USENET/News)
• Telnet
• Gopher
• Online Services and BBSs
The World Wide Web
Method for incorporating documents, figures, links
and cross references into online hypertext
documents in which a reader (web browser) can
simply click a word/object in a web page and
immediately jump to another location within the
same document or to another file.
Yahoo! A Search Engine Site
Yahoo! Search Engine Directory
E-Mail
Internet service that is similar to electronic postal
service. It permits user with an e-mail address
account to send messages electronically to other
users of the internet and to many networks
connected to the internet.
It uses e-mail software which also permits user to
attached data files and program files to messages
MSN Hotmail, an Email Service
Inbox, Email Messages List
Composing an Email Message
Viewing an Email Message
Pornography in the NET
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
Internet tools used to copy files from one computer to
another. It defines system procedures of connecting
to a remote computer in order to transfer files back to
requesting client (user computer)
Downloads Directory
File Download Transaction
File Download Activity
News/USENET
A public access network on the Internet that
provides electronic Public Bulletin Boards intended
for online discussion of various topics
Chat, a USENET Service
Telnet
Internet tool for using one computer to control
another computer via Telnet program which can
send commands that run programs and open data
files.
It handles the remote login to another Internet host.
Gopher
Internet tools to organize directories of documents,
images, programs, computer host and other
resources into logical menus.
It provides a distributed delivery system around
which a wide area information system can readily
be constructed.
The Connection
• A home computer may be linked to the internet using a phone-
line modem, DSL or cable modem that talks to an Internet
service provider (ISP)
• A computer in an institution usually connects through the use of
network interface card (NIC) that directly connects it to a local
area network (LAN)
• The LAN is connected to an ISP (local ISP) using a high-speed
phone line
• The local ISPs then connect to larger ISPs (regional ISPs) then
connect to the world ISP through fiber-optic lines, undersea
cables or satellite
Graphical Diagram
