Basics of Internet

History of the Internet

Coined from 2 words Interconnections and Networks Born in 1969 out of efforts to connect together a US Defence Department network called the ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and various other radio and satellite networks. Purpose: share information

Basics of the Internet

DEF: The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible, network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP).

It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Internet Vs. Web

The Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiberoptic cables, wireless connections, etc. The Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs.

The Web is a service (a system for accessing documents) that is supported by the Internet (a gigantic network).

Web

World Wide Web is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet.

Tim Berners-Lee is known as the father of the World Wide Web Web and Internet are related and interdependent

ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet protocol addresses, and protocol port. WHY ?

So that there is one and only one holder of each name

How the Web works

Web documents are linked Hypertext provides an easy way to manage large collections of data, which can include text files, pictures, sounds, movies, and more. HTTP and hypertext links are the foundations of the World Wide Web A collection of related Web pages is called a Website. Web sites are housed on Web servers, Internet host computers that often store thousands of individual pages.

How to access the Internet

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 a business or university will usually have a network interface card (NIC) that directly connects it to a local area network (LAN) inside the business. The business can then connect its LAN to an ISP using a high-speed phone line like a T1 line.

ISPs then connect to larger ISPs Backbone: fiber-optic lines, undersea cables or satellite links

IP Addresses

Each machine on the Internet is assigned a unique address called an IP address.

These addresses are 32-bit numbers, normally expressed as four "octets" in a "dotted decimal number Ex: 216.27.61.137 Octets can have values between 0 and 255

A server has a static IP address that does not change very often A home machine has the IP assigned by ISP and is constant for a session. It may change during next time.

Web browsers

A Web browser (or browser) is a software application designed to find hypertext documents on the Web and then open the documents on the users computer. The most popular graphical Web browsers are Microsofts Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) Ex: http://www.yahoo.com/index.html

http:- Protocol to follow www:- service yahoo.com:- server (domain) name index.html :- A file (resource) on the server

Web Server

Behind the scene - Web Server

You typed http://www.howstuffworks.com/web-server.htm (URL) into your web-browser The browser breaks the URL into three parts: 1. The protocol ("http") 2. The server name ("www.howstuffworks.com") 3. The file name ("web-server.htm")

The browser communicates with a name server to translate the server name into an IP Address

The browser then establishes a connection with the server at that IP address on port 80 Following the HTTP protocol, the browser sends a GET request to the server, asking for the file The server then sends the HTML text for the Web page to the browser The browser reads the HTML tags and formats the page onto your screen

DNS
Domain Names
Because most people have trouble remembering the strings of numbers that make up IP addresses, and because IP addresses sometimes need to change, all servers on the Internet also have human-readable names, called domain names. For example: www.yahoo.com is easy to remember than 209.116.69.66

The name www.wikipedia.org. actually has four parts: The host name ("www") The domain name (wikipedia") The top-level domain name ("org") The root domain (.)

 Domain

name describes

Organizational or geographic realities The country the network connection belongs The owner organization

Every

domain name has a suffix that indicates which top level domain it belongs to. There are only a limited number of such domains.

gov - Government agencies edu - Educational institutions org - Organizations (nonprofit) mil - Military com - Commercial business net - Network organizations ca - Canada th - Thailand in - India

Name Servers
A set of servers called domain name servers (DNS) maps the human-readable names to the IP addresses.
These servers are simple databases that map names to IP addresses, and they are distributed all over the Internet.

Ports

Any server machine makes its services available to the Internet using numbered ports, one for each service that is available on the server For example: If a server machine is running a Web server and an FTP server, Web server: port 80 FTP server: port 21 Note: There is nothing that forces a Web server to be on port 80