R. Craig Collins > Web Page Design > What is the Internet

What is the Internet © R. Craig Collins, 2005/6

What the Internet is not

The Internet is not an overnight sensation. (You may click on underlined words… these are links that will draw information about a related topic to your computer. When you are finished viewing the related information, click on the [Back] button of your browser to return to your starting point.)

Started in 1969 as a small communications tool for the scientific and military communities, the number of users practically doubled yearly until it reached today's staggering figures, and continues... because it works. It allows information to flow, and fuels our information age.

Granted, it is still in its infancy, subject to growing pangs and fears, but it will not be a temporary fad. Once people see the work (and fun) that can be done on-line (and the recent trendy aura wears off allowing mature growth sets in), the Internet will become as indispensable as newspapers, books, televisions and shopping centers; not because it will replace them… but because it can enhance and expand their effect.

The Internet is not run by the US. While originally operated by the Department of Defense, currently the Internet is a free standing network that receives influence (or perhaps direction is a better word) from the Internet Society. But the Internet Society has no real control aside from suggesting standards… the Internet as a whole today is an unregulated entity that basically transcends any nation's control. While limits may be attempted on a local area by a government, as a whole it is unfettered and working pretty well on its on.

Finally, the Internet is not unchanging. The beast is dynamic. Computer time is like dog years, multiplied by a factor of 10, or more. Information sources come and go at incredible rates, but new tools are introduced every few months to better access and locate those bits of gold among the ruble that is today's Internet. Many businesses and individuals are developing truly engaging Internet sites, and keeping them up for the long run.
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What is included in the Internet?

While most people today equate the Internet with the World Wide Web (described shortly), it is much more than that. It is email, remote access (such as telnet and ftp), and information and storage areas (such as the now nearly dead gopher, and www, the world wide web.) After a brief intro to each topic, some terms for use are also given, such as URL and browsing.

e-mail

If you participate on most any computer network, you are identified to the network with an electronic address. This way software can not only flow from your computer, but be drawn to it. One of the first tools on the Internet was e-mail, which allowed not only software to flow across the network, but messages for a particular user, as well.

• e-mail addresses
  Much as a conventional street address is composed of many parts, so is the electron mail address. Addresses can be read from right to left, from the general to the specific. Street addresses go from a region, to a city, to a street, to a particular place, to a particular individual. E-mail addresses go to a particular region (top level, discussed below), to a particular institution (domain), to a particular computer (host), where it is held for a particular individual (user). The sections are divided by periods, and the user portion is set off by the @ (at) sign. Some e-mail addresses have more sections to further point within a domain. Below are the parts of both a street and an e-mail address.

Remote Computer Access Tools

In the beginning, using the Internet meant using someone else's computer, from 500 miles away. This is called remote access, and the prime tools were Telnet and FTP.

Telnet is a method of 'driving' a computer that could be in a different state from the operator. Programs could be executed, files created or changed, what ever you could do if you were sitting at the actual machine. While still in use today for running certain networks, it is not what most people deal with or think of when you mention the Internet.

Information Storage Areas

Today when you think of the Internet, you don't think of accessing someone else's computer or copying files, you probably think of browsing. The modern, easy way to look at data: window shopping, and not necessarily keeping everything you look at. The files placed on this part of the Internet come in quite a few flavors, such as Wide Area Index Search and Gopher, but almost everyone of them has fallen by the wayside since the introduction of the World Wide Web in the early 90's.

WWW, The World Wide Web
What is the web? The World Wide Web, or just Web, is a method of not only making information available, but linking it to related information as well. These links are more appropriately called hyper text links, and the development of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) enabled documents sent across the globe to look more like magazine layouts than typewriter produced term papers. Taking the it one step further was the inclusion of images and sound in a document in 1993, and hyper media Internet was born!

Browsing One of the reasons the Internet has come into the mainstream and grown so quickly is the fact that there is now very good, user-friendly software products available for home computers. These 'browsers' allow users to access and navigate through the millions of sites now on the web. After starting the browser, your computer retrieves information from an Internet site that has been set as its 'home', normally a site maintained by the company that created your browser. From here, normally you have three options:
going to sites that are recorded in the equivalent of a speed dialer, one is to use a 'search engine' (discussed below), and one is to follow links from the site you are currently visiting. All of these methods involve URL's.

URL

URL's, as with e-mail, are divided up into routing sections. The standard form begins with a command to your browser to expect a hyper text page, followed by the host, the domain, and the top level domain.

Below is a comparison of e-mail and web site addresses.

Most sites have an automatic starting point that is shown when you visit a site, while others require you to specify a particular file, or page, before anything is revealed. These non-default pages are files that usually end with .htm or .html, again representing hypertext information.

This file information goes to the right, separated by a '/', such as http://www.templejc.edu/dept/cis/CCollins/Collins.htm

• top level domains
  The top level domains are the first routing sign, and point to one of seven regions the Internet is divided into. The 'regions' are used not only for the World Wide Web, but on e-mail, too:
• .com, for commercial; the largest region as far as sheer numbers
• .edu, for educational, the largest segment until 1996
• .org, for organization, usually non-profit
• .net, for network, which usually are to support the Internet, and the holdovers from the early US involvement
• .gov, for government, as in the President's e-mail
• .mil, for military, and finally the little used
• .int, for International.
• Recently several new top level domains were added, such as .info
• For sites outside of the US, there is a two letter country code at the very end, such as
• .uk for the United Kingdom or
• .jp for Japan or
• .tv for Tuvalu.