INTERNET

1. Introduction
The Internet is one of the most important changes that has happened to the way we live
and work in the last twenty years.
It began life about 40 years ago, in an American military research agency called DARPA.
Its inventors could never have forseen how it would develop over time.
The Internet now spans the world, connecting billions of people in their everyday lives.
The next few pages will explain what it is in more detail

2. What is the Internet?

The internet is made up of millions upon millions of small computer networks all brought
together to form the vast "Inter-Network". That word never caught on, so it was shortened
to the much easier-to-say "Internet".
A large part of the Internet is the 'World Wide Web" (WWW).
This is made up of web sites that have one or more web pages. This is the part of the
Internet that you probably use most of the time.
But the Internet isn't just web pages.
It also includes other services such as:

Instant messaging
Chat rooms
Email
File transfers
News groups
Peer to peer networks
Forums
Note that no-one 'owns' the Internet. This is because each part of it is made up of
individual networks that someone has put together and then linked to the Internet.
However, each network has to obey Internet standards in order to connect. For example
IANA is an international group responsible for organising web addresses - every web
address has to be unique.

3. The World Wide Web (WWW)

It is important to understand that the Internet is not the same as the World Wide Web.
The Internet is to the World
Wide Web as Europe is to
France. One is the container, the
other is an item within the
container.
The world wide web (WWW or
just 'the web') is part of the
Internet but is much younger.
The Internet is about 40 years
old whilst the WWW is merely
20 years old.
It was developed at CERN, the
world famous underground
physics laboratory in
Switzerland, by Tim Berners-Lee
around 1990.
The complete web is organised
as millions of 'web sites'. Each
web site is made up of one or
more 'web pages'. Each page is
made up of text, images or
multimedia such as video and
sound.
So the World Wide Web is actually made up of millions upon millions of individual web
pages.

4. Web sites, pages and browsers

Web sites are hosted on dedicated
computers known as 'web servers'.
These machines will send a web page
to your browser when you request it.
There are many different browsers
available, such as Firefox, Internet
Explorer, Opera, Safari and so on. But
they all do the same job - namely to
display a web page delivered from a
web server.
Each web page has an address (URL)
that starts with http:
This is very important, as it is what
binds the World Wide Web together.
The http is a 'protocol', which is a
fancy word for a communication standard. If two computers share the same 'protocol', then
they can share information. The http protocol is the one used for the world wide web.

The internet is more than just the World Wide Web, and those other parts use different
protocols. For example for exchanging files between internet computers use the 'ftp'
protocol.

5. Uses of the Internet

Research and homework

The internet is a fantastic place to research information for a project or piece of homework.
It doesn't matter what topic you have been set, you can guarantee that you will find
something on the subject.

Communication

The internet opens up many different possible ways to communicate with others. Here are
some:

Email
Blogs
Social networking sites e.g. Facebook, Myspace, Bebo
Chatrooms
Forums
Voip - internet telephone

Shopping

Whatever you want to buy, you can pretty much guarantee that you can find it for sale
somewhere on the internet.
Find out more about ecommerce by reading the ecommerce theory section

Leisure and Entertainment

There are many different ways that you can choose to spend your time online and amuse
yourself. Here are a few:

Playing online games

Listening to music (mp3 download or live streaming)
Reading online books and e-books
Watching online videos e.g. YouTube
Looking for holidays or concert tickets
Reading about your hobbies
Keeping up-to-date with the news and sporting events
Watching 'catch up' television from the main channels

Exploring the world

The internet has many services that help you explore the world.

Satellite and mapping applications e.g. Google Earth

Travel sites providing details of other places
Live web cams showing other parts of the world
Almanacs and encyclopedias
There are always new things turning up on the internet as entrepreneurs think of the next
great service that everyone wants.

6. Benefits of the Internet

Always available

The Internet is aways available for you to use, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a
year. You don't have to wait for it to open or wait for someone to make it available. It is just
there, when you need it and for whatever you need.
Of course that does not mean every web site is always open. For instance it is common for
bank web sites to shut down at midnight and open again at 7am. Overnight, they are
updating and checking all the money transactions that have taken place over the last day.

Vast range of information

Think of any search term and type it into a search engine. We can pretty much guarantee
that you will find web sites with information on that term.
It doesn't matter what you want to know about, you will find something on the Internet that
can provide the information you need.

Easy to contact people

The Internet provides many ways to enable you to keep in contact with people at all hours
of the day and night. From email, forums, chatrooms, telephone calls and video
conferencing. You are almost spoilt for choice.
This ability has helped many companies grow from a small local company into a large,
multi-national organsiation.

7. Benefits of the Internet (cont)

Access to other cultures

The Internet enables you to look at sites about or written by people in other countries. You
can look at photographs of where they live and read about their way of life.
This enables you to get a unique insight into their culture, something that just wouldnt' be
possible without actually visiting them in person.

Up-to-date

One of the main advantages of the Internet is how fast things can be updated. When a
news story breaks, the BBC website can have that news on its pages within a couple of
minutes. They can keep adding more information as it becomes available.
If that were a newspaper, you would have to wait up to a day to read about the news. Even
news on the television takes longer to get to you than the Internet.

8. Issues with the Internet

Information overload

There is almost too much information on the Internet. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the
amount of information that is out there.
When you type a search term into a search engine, you won't just get a few results, you
will get millions!
Search engines do a good job at prioritising which are the most relevant sites for your
search term. However that one piece of information that you are after might be on page
345 of the results. There is very little chance that you are going to find it.

Information can be biased

No one owns the Internet and there is nothing to stop people posting their opinions and
points of view on web pages, forums, blogs.
Many people believe what they read on the Internet. You need to be careful and think
about what you are reading. An awful lot of material and web sites are biased and only
give you one point of view.

Information can be inaccurate

With a book or encyclopedia, you can be pretty confident that what you are reading has
been checked, cross referenced and is correct. But with the Internet, no one checks what
has been written. The website that looks like it has all of the answers to your history
homework might just be incorrect. You need to double check things out for yourself - don't
just believe what you read.

Offensive material - fraudulent sites

No matter how careful you are when using the Internet, there is always the possibility that
you will come across some sites that contain offensive or even illegal material. Use the
'safe search' option in your favourite search engine.
Be assured, even adults use the 'safe search' just to reduce the time-wasting,
inappropriate results of an innocent search term. The idea is to use the Internet as a tool to
get on with the job in hand, whatever that may be.

9. Issues with the Internet (cont)

Phishing sites

There are also web sites set up to steal information known as phishing sites.
For example, a fake web site is set up to look just like the real login page of an online
game. You receive an email pretending to be from the game service to 'update your
details' or maybe a 'your account will be deactivated' kind of threat - most phishing
schemes either tempt you with a reward or threaten you with a punishment - the idea is for
you to react - and it kindly provides a link! Isn't that nice of them.
Clicking on the link takes you to the fake login page and you innocently enter your login
details. Next thing you know, your account has been hacked. Beware of any links in an
email!.
Always use any original source of links you have, and if you haven't got the link then use a
search engine rather than a random link in an email.

Cyberbullying

With the growth of the Internet and new technology, bullying has been moving from the
traditional playground to emails, chatrooms, texts and social websites.
This type of bullying is every bit as harmful and hurtful as if done in person but it is much
harder to tackle and stop.

Addiction

There has been a worrying increase in the number of people who are becoming 'addicted'
to the internet. Every spare moment they have is spent online, some even go without
proper sleep so that they don't have to log off. There have been reports of families
breaking up and people losing their jobs because of this problem.

Spam

Email is a wonderful service, but the down side is endless spam. Spam is another word for
'unsolicited email' that fill up your inbox. The only way to tackle spam is to join a good
email service that tries to filter them out. They are usually placed into a spam box in your
email account. But the problem is that some of your good emails are also sent to the spam
box, so more time is wasted keeping an eye on the spam box in case you have missed an
important email!

10. Future of the Internet

The Internet is now about 40 years old and it has served us very well over those years. But
there are efforts going on to tackle some problems and make it even more useful.
1. Running out of web addresses

Every web page has to have an unique address. And 20 years ago a scheme was
developed that could provide that service (it is called IPv4). But it was never dreamt that

the web would be so successful. Now we are running out of addresses. As of November
2010, we are down to the last 3% of available addresses.
But a new scheme is underway called IPv6 that will take over from IPv4. This has enough
space to give an unique address to every grain of sand on Earth! But no doubt there will
be problems switching from the old system to the new system

2. The Web is too big

Did you know that search engines only index a small fraction of the internet? There is a
vast area called the 'Deep Web' that search engines have not found as yet. And it is
getting bigger. The Deep Web consists of many things: database driven web sites, social
network pages and so on.
Each search engine company is putting a lot of research into making their engine even
more intelligent and to cover ever more of the deep web.

11. Future of the Internet (cont)

3. The internet is too slow

You know the scene: You want to look at a video clip and you get endless 'buffering'
messages. The fact is, the connection speed is often too slow and the problem lies mainly
in the 'last mile' to your home.
The main internet 'backbone' to the telephone exchange is carried over fibre optic cable
and that can carry traffic at a vast speed. But the last stretch to your house is done with
copper wire. And that is very slow. So there are efforts underway to convert the last mile to
fibre optic as well. Once that is in place we can look forward to smooth and buffer-free
video streams.

4. Connecting to the internet will increase

Up to fairly recently, the only way to connect to the internet was to use a computer, either a
desktop or a laptop using a modem. But now there are many other devices that can
connect as well - mobile phone, tablets, e-book readers.
Also city-wide wireless connections are being set up so in the future you can look forward
to being able to connect from anywhere using all kinds of devices.

5. The online and offline world will blur together

With connection to the internet becoming available anywhere, anytime, it is now possible
to blend what you are seeing with extra information streaming from the internet. This is
called 'augmented reality' or AR for short.
For instance viewing a city street on a smart phone not only shows the shops in view, but it
may stream special offers and other details on the view as well. Just like those science
fiction movies where the cyborg sees overlaid data as he walks around, except in real life it
is more about the kind of pizza on offer!

Conclusion

All in all, you can expect the internet to become faster, anywhere, anytime and to become
as much part of our everyday lives as the mobile phone has become, even on the move.

Intranets and extranets

1. Intranets and Extranets

The Internet is a world wide system which offers web pages, email, forums, instant
messaging and so on.
Because of its use as a communications tool many companies and organisations want
their own local version to support their employees or members. To enable this to happen,
intranets were developed.
Sometimes a company will want to allow specific customers to access their intranet. This
is known as an extranet.
We will look in more detail at both intranets and extranets over the next few pages. Use
the menu on the left-hand side to navigate through the theory notes.

2. Intranet
An intranet has almost the same services as the wider Internet, but it is a private system. It
is only accessible to authorised people within the organisation.
An intranet can over a local area network (LAN) where only staff in the same building or
locality can use it. Or it can run over a wide area network (WAN) where staff from around
the world can log in.
An example intranet is shown below:
This intranet for a university is offering many services that are only available to their
students. No one on the web can access or use this page because they would not have
the login details.
Commercial companies offer their own particular services for their employees. For
example, an intranet for a building society might have a section explaining the different
types of savings products. Staff can refer to these pages as a reference guide. There
might be a page with links to important documents or templates. There might be another
section which lists all of the internal telephone numbers and email addresses of every
member of staff. And there might be an area that publishes details of social events e.g. the
staff Christmas party.

3. Intranet services
These are virtually the same as the Internet, but for internal use only.
Some of the services include:

Email
File transfer

Real time chat

Web pages
Video and Audio streaming services
Each service requires at least one server to provide the service e.g. Web server and Email
servers.
Although it is unlikely that the video and audio services are there for entertainment (unlike
the Internet). They can be used to stream business multimedia - for instance video training
packages streamed to the students' computer.
The internet itself can usually be accessed through the organisation's firewall. This is quite
often restricted though in order to reduce employee 'time-wasting' and to reduce
bandwidth costs. For instance many companies block access to social networking sites
and sports sites.
The point of an intranet is make people more effective at their work rather as a means of
entertainment or socialising.

4. Advantages of an Intranet
In theory every employee could use the Internet to get the same services. But an Intranet
has the following advantages:

Commercial or confidential data is kept secure within the organisation

Emails remain private and may also be encrypted
High bandwidth. No connection limits unlike the Internet
Reliable. The company will have dedicated IT personnel to keep things
running smoothly
Information specificly tailored to the organisation or staff's needs can
be published
5. Extranet
An Extranet is one where people from outside the organisation can connect to the internal
Intranet.
For example, external suppliers may have been set up to allow them to communicate via
the company Intranet.
Remote business offices may be set up to use an intranet.
Employees on business travel may use an Extranet.
They are not connected directly to the LAN or WAN but instead are able to establish a
connection with the correct equipment and authorisation.

Method 1: Mobile phone

A sales person on the road wants to connect to the company Intranet. They use the mobile
phone network to contact the company's secure server.

Method 2: Virtual Private Network

With this method, connection to the company's secure server is made through the normal

Internet. But now the secure server and the laptop will exchange secret keys which they
use to encrypt all communication between the two. No one can eavesdrop on the data
being exchanged. This is a 'virtual private network'.
Many teleworkers use a VPN to connect to their company Intranet.

Connecting to the internet

1. Introduction
You will no doubt have used the Internet, if only in school but most likely at home as well.
In school, all the equipment and services needed will have been already been set up for
you and probably at home as well.
But you need to be aware of what are the things needed in order to connect to the Internet.
These are :-

The right hardware

Browsing software
An Internet service provider
A physical connection
2. Hardware
You are probably reading this from a school computer. But how do you connect to the
Internet from home or a company?
Once you have your computer switched on, you need a MODEM to connect your computer
to the telephone line in your house.
A modem (short for
MODulator/DEModulator) converts your
computer's digital signal into an analogue
signal which the telephone line can deal
with. It then converts analogue data coming
down the telephone line into digital data for
your computer to use.
Most of you will probably have broadband
or ADSL connections by now, although in
the past people used to have very slow
dial-up connections.
You will also need a method of getting the
data from your computer to the Internet. This is usually via the telephone network.
However, some people connect to the Internet using satellites, fibre-optic cables or radio
waves (Wi-Fi).
Not that long ago, computers were the only devices that most people could use to connect
to the internet. However, over the last few years, smart phones, tablet computers, PDAs,
e-book readers and many other devices are now Internet enabled.

Many people can even connect to the Internet via their television.
On a local area network (LAN) many
computer workstations can connect to the
Internet (your school for example), but they
do not all have to have a modem. Instead
each workstation will send requests over
the LAN and through a 'firewall'.
A firewall examines each data request and
each piece of downloaded data to make
sure it is allowed by the school. If the data
is not allowed, then the data is discarded.
For example, some malware may be trying
to get in from a rogue web site, but the
firewall will try to prevent it getting through.
A firewall can be a pure software application but more serious firewalls are pieces of
equipment sitting in the server room.
There is a modem on the other side of the firewall that connects the school to the Internet.

3. Software for the Internet - Browsers

The most common use of the Internet is to view web pages on the World Wide Web and
for this you need a software application called a 'web browser'.
A web browser will take in all the data coming down from the web site and convert it into a
format you can see (or listen to). After all, a web page is made up of many pieces of data text, images, video, sound. The job of the browser is to 'render' the page into the correct
format.
There are many browsers available, most of which are free or built into the operating
system.
For instance,

Firefox
Internet Explore
Google Chrome
There are also text-only web
browsers. Such as the Lynx
viewer. These are very useful for
people who can't see so well or
do not want to see graphics.

4. Search Engine
A search engine indexes the web pages on the World Wide Web. It uses different methods
to index them such as the URL (the unique web page address), the page title and

keywords that appear in the text.

To find relevant web sites you type in
your keywords into the search box. The
search engine then searches through
the billions of web pages stored in its
database index to find the best
matches.
Because the search engine will
probably find thousands of results it
needs a way of showing you the most
relevant pages first. To do this it uses a
complicated algorithm which factors in
a number of different things such as the
number of external links to the webpage.
You will then be presented with a list of results with the most appropriate ones on the first
page.There will be a title for each result, a short text introduction so that you can judge
what the web page contains and then
the url link to the web page. All of this
happens in a fraction of a second.
There are many search engines on the
Web. You probably stick to the same
one out of habit. But it is worth
exploring the others as well as they all
return a different list of web pages.
No single search engine has indexed
the whole of the web.

5. ISP - Internet Service Provider

ISP stands for 'Internet Service Provider'.
An ISP is a company that provides Internet access. For a monthly fee they will offer you a
broadband connection to the Internet. Without this service, most businesses and
individuals would not be able to use the Internet.
Often, they provide other services as well such as email, web site building and web site
hosting.
The way it works is that your modem at home connects to one of their servers. This will
then send and receive internet traffic for you.
ISPs may provide connections at different speeds, from a low 1Mb/s connection to a super
fast 50 Mb/s connection and higher. However the usual real limit on speed is the
connection from the house to the nearest telephone exchange. Purchasing a faster link
than this bottleneck is a waste.
The ISP contract will include a monthly data allowance. Cheaper deals offer lower data
allowance e.g. 40 Gigabytes per month. This is fine if all you want is some email and a bit
of web browsing.

However, if you view catch-up TV such as the BBC iPlayer, then this can quickly be used
up. For example a single one hour show is about a Gigabyte. It will not take many
programs to run out of data allowance.
Higher data allowance will of course cost more - so it is a balance of how much use will be
made of the connection.

6. Broadband
There are various technologies available to make an Internet connection.
For example early modems used very slow analogue methods. The highest speed they
could achieve was around 56 kilobits per second. Many people in rural areas still have to
use these modems because they cannot get a better connection.
To overcome this slow speed, digital technology was developed, such as ISDN. This
offered 64 to 128 kilobits per second. But it was fairly expensive and so only businesses
took it up.
Then around the year 2000 a new service was launched called broadband or ADSL as it is
known. (Short for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line).

ADSL is a digital technology offering speeds from 1 Mbit/s to 100Mbit/s, with the most
common speed today being around 4 Mbit/s.
The speed is mainly set by the limitation of your local connection from house to exchange.
This author lives in a country village where 2Mbit/s is the best that can be acheived. On
the other hand someone living in a city with a fibreoptic connection can take advantage of ISPs offering
50Mbit/s.
This speed limit is a form of 'digital divide' that
depends on where you live - see also the mini web on
digital divide.

7. Wi Fi
At home, there may be single computer attached to a
single modem by cable. This is fine. Not complicated
at all.
Then maybe a second computer is used in the home it is networked with the first one with a cable in order

to share the internet connection. Again, this works fine.

But what if the computer is a laptop that you want to use in the living room or bedroom? It
is not practical to have cables trailing everywhere. And what if you also have a tablet
computer or e-book reader or music player that you want to download files from the
internet?
The solution to this connection problem is 'Wi-Fi'. This is a radio-wave based system that
connects your computer / pda / tablet / e-book to the home router / modem without any
trailing wires.
A Wi-Fi router will send and transmit radio signals to any connected device within range.
Of course it is a poor idea to allow just any device to connect to the router and so the Wi-Fi
is set up to require an username and password. This keeps the connection private.
Wi-fi is widely used in public areas as well such as cafes, libraries, schools and airports in which case they called 'hot spots'.

8. Summary
Hardware needed

The key device is the modem. This sends and receives internet traffic.
A firewall is used to avoid malware from being downloaded or to block unwanted site from
being accessed. A firewall can be software or hardware.
Software

The most important application for Internet access is the web browser
Services

A search engine allows you to retreive the most relevant web pages given a set of key
words
An Internet Service Provider provides an internet connection

Connection technology

Although analogue technology is still in use in the form of dial-up modem, by far the most
common method is to use a broadband ADSL connection. An alternative is to use Wi-Fi
radio based system that at some point is connected to a wi-fi enabled router.

Downloads and video streaming

1. Introduction
As soon as home computer appeared, the first thing that people wanted to do was to put
something on it - a game or an application perhaps. There were two ways to do this,
namely to install files from a floppy disk. And the other way was 'downloading'.
Downloading is the word given to obtaining a file by linking to a distant computer and

moving data from it into your local machine.

In other words, digital data is transferred from one computer to another by means of a
communication line. Usually the Internet.
This mini-web takes you through what you need to know for your GCSE studies.

2. How to download - Method 1

There are two main ways to download a file from another computer on the Internet.
The first method is called 'FTP' download
With this method you have an FTP client installed on your local machine. When you want
to download a file, you enter the connection details of the distant computer, such as URL
host name or IP address into the application, along with your password.
The distant computer checks out the password and
if it correct, it will allow you to see the files available
for download.

Typical FTP client

It can also deal with part-downloads by picking up

from where you left off
This works quite well, but it is not exactly
convenient firing up an FTP client every time you
want to download a file.
The second method is far more popular.

3. How to download - Method 2

The second method is by far the most popular. Namely downloading a file by using your
web browser.

You simply click on the download link (it may be an icon or image) and the browser will
begin to download the file into a local folder. The clip above shows that this particular site
also tells you the size of the file. This is very handy as it allows you to guess how long it
will take. A 2 MB download will only take a few seconds over a broadband connection.
Another way to download is to right click on a link and select 'Save Link As', if the link is to
a file then it may pop up a dialogue box asking 'Open With.. or Save As'..

4. Downloading from legal sites

One of the most popular things to download are music tracks and movies.
Up until the last few years, the problem was that music and films were mainly available
from illegal sites. These sites had no right to distribute music and the artists were not paid
a penny. This is called 'copyright piracy'.
These days however, the situation is far better. There are plenty of legitimate sites that
offer music downloads for a small price. The money is shared with the original artists and
music company, so everyone benefits.

5. What to consider when downloading

Use only legitimate sites

Artists, music companies and distributors all need to make a profit like any other business.
If they don't then they go out of business and everyone is a little bit worse off. So use the
right sites to support your favourite artists.
Avoid peer-to-peer

The problem is that you cannot truly know what it is you are downloading. That digital data
could be anything - a trojan could be included in the file. As soon as you play the file, it
gets installed.
Avoid free sites

Nothing in this world is free. Running a server is not free, someone has to pay for it. And

so be wary of 'free' sites offering music downloads.

Check if your download is limited in some way.

A very popular way of limiting what you can copy to other machines is 'DRM'. Meaning
Digital Rights Management. This software may be included in the movie file you have
downloaded so it will not play on any other machine. Read the download conditions - if you
are fine with DRM files then carry on - otherwise you will need to look for another
legitimate site offering more open downloads.

6. Streaming
Downloads usually end up as a file on
your computer. You then open the file to
view or listen to it. But there is another
way called 'streaming'.
Instead of a file being created on your
computer, the digital data is passed
straight into a media player - nothing
gets stored. You simply listen to the
music or watch the film in 'real time'.
For example the BBC iPlayer offers
streaming of recent programs
With a video streaming service, you
select what you want to watch. The
streaming begins and you view the
program.
The player also allows you to pause
viewing if you wish.
The biggest disadvantage of video streaming compared to a normal download is that the
speed of your connection has to be high enough to support the stream.
If it is too slow, then 'buffering' occurs where the player has to wait for more data.
There are now a number of legitimate sites offering streaming music services. You simply
subscribe and begin to listen.

7. Pros and Cons of downloading and streaming

Downloads
Pro
With downloads, the file has been
stored locally and so you can use it
offlline.
There are plenty of legitimate sites
where you can get safe downloads music, apps, film

Cons
Use virus and malware scanners to
make sure the file is safe to use

Be very wary of 'free' and peer-to-peer

networks.

Pro
You can use FTP or a web browser to
download

Cons
FTP client can be awkward to use, but it
can handle part-downloads.

It is possible to download legitimate

The file may include DRM protection that
music files that do not include DRM
you were not expecting when you joined
and so makes it easier for you to listen
the service. Read the fine print.
to your tracks on different devices.
If you have bought an application or
game online, quite often you can get it
as a 'digital download'. So you can use
it straight away rather than waiting for a
CD through the post

If your computer breaks down or the

hard disk fails, then you may lose the
software you have bought because you
do not have a CD to re-install.

If you have a slow connection, then you

can keep the download going for hours
if need be, in order to get the file. This
is especially true for online game
updates which can be huge (several
gigabytes) files.

You do need a reasonable connection

speed in order to download. Use
broadband if possible rather than a dial
up modem

Streaming
Pro

Cons
Streaming allows you to listen to music Buffering can be a problem with slow
links, especially video streamig
or view a program without taking up
any hard disk space
Streaming allows you to explore new
artists to see if you like them before
deciding to download their tracks

Streaming means you cannot listen or

view programs offline