10.0 Introduction In the last two decades, the Internet has known a huge growth around the world.

Mauritius has not been left behind - in 2004, there were some 77000 Internet subscribers in Mauritius (Mauritius in figures, June 2005, CSO publication, page 23). With the advent of mobile technologies, the Internet has known an even bigger growth. Nowadays people can connect to the Internet and send emails using their mobile phones or some other mobile device. 10.1 What is the Internet? The Internet is a network of networks connecting all countries of the world. The networks are made of different kinds of computers which are connected to each other via cable, satellite or even using wireless technologies. These machines transmit huge amount of information between them. The Internet consists of:

many independent networks computer hosts (servers) routers & switches (hardware) leased phone lines satellite and radio connections cable connections wireless connections 10.2 History of the Internet 1960s The Internet started in the 1960s when researchers were investigating the possibility of connecting computers to share information and programs from anywhere. In 1969 the first such physical network was developed by the ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) which is now known as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The network interconnected four computers in four different universities in the United Stated and was known as the ARPAnet. In the following years the ARPAnet grew as more computers and more networks were added to the initial network. 1970s As the ARPANET grew, the need for a reliable service was felt and to cater for that a protocol was required. The protocol would maintain effective communication between the different machines and take care of problems like jamming, interference and loss of data. In the early 1970s a complete protocol called the Network Control Protocol (NCP) was developed and users could now begin developing applications. Web-based electronic mail was also developed. A few years later an improved protocol called TCP/IP was developed, to allow computers and different kinds of network to communicate with each other. In 1976 Europe joined the ARPANET. It was at that time that the term Internet was introduced.

1980s In the 1980s TCP/IP became The protocol on the Internet. During the 1980s computer sellers began to sell desktop computers equipped with networking software and companies started to become interested with the Internet. At the end of the 1980s, the first worm was released on the Internet causing concern on privacy and security on the Internet. Terms like cracker and hacker were created. 1990s In the 1990s the original ARPANET was dismantled and was replaced by the NSFNET backbone. At that time the WWW was invented. The WWW changed the way information was presented and accessed on the Internet. Web browsers were invented to access web pages. In 1997, all countries of the world were connected to the Internet. 2000s In the 2000s there has been an explosion in the use of wireless devices such as mobile phones and PDAs and therefore the WWW had to change to cater for these users as well. The web size surpassed 1 billion indexable pages. (Survey carried out by NEC-RI and Inktomi)

10.3 The World Wide Web (WWW) The World Wide Web (also known as WWW or the web) is a series of web pages, connected to each other via hyperlinks. Tim Berners-Lee invented the WWW in 1989 while working at CERN research labs. He proposed a global hypertext project which would allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents. Closely related to the WWW are the terms hypertext, hyperlinks and hypermedia. Hypertext is the ability to have web pages containing links, which are text or buttons or graphics on a web page on which you can click your mouse button to retrieve another document from the WWW into your computer. This new document also contains further links that the user can click on, hence navigating or browsing the WWW. 10.3.1 How does the WWW work? The World Wide Web is based on the client-server model. There is a web server and a client. In the client-server model, a client program makes a request to a server program which fulfils the request and sends a response. The server and client programs can be found on the same machine but most of the time they are found on two separate machines. A web server is a host computer with web server software installed on it and it stores and shares files over the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the both the first World Wide Web server, "httpd". Examples of Web Server software are Apache and Microsoft IIS. A web client on the other hand is a computer with client software installed on it and it makes requests to the web server. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first client, "WorldWideWeb" a whatyou-see-is-what-you-get hypertext browser/editor. Examples of Web Client software are web browsers.

A web site is a collection of web pages linked to each other via hyperlinks. Each website has a unique address that identifies it. 10.3.2 Uniform Resource Locator A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is an address that identifies an individual file on the Internet. It is analogical to a phone number. Consider the URL below: http://www.uom.ac.mu/Faculties/foe/index.asp http: The protocol HTTP specifies the protocol that is being used. Examples of internet protocols are: HTTP for web pages, FTP for files (movies, music files, programs) etc www.uom.ac.mu: The domain name of the server The Server is the computer where the website is hosted on the Internet. Faculties/foe/: The path The path is the folder or directory on the server in which the web page is found. index.asp: The File The File is the web page that the client is trying to access. 10.3.3 IP Address and Domain Names Every computer that is connected to the Internet must have a unique IP address (like a phone number) to identify it. An IP address consists of set of 4 numbers, each separated by a dot. Each number ranges from 0 to 255. Example of an IP address: 168.156.125.25 Web servers have a domain name as well as an IP address. Domain names are more easily remembered than IP addresses. A Domain Name Server keeps a list of Domain names and their corresponding IP addressees. Example of a domain name: www.uom.ac.mu 10.3.4 What happens when a person clicks on a link? Consider a person who comes across an interesting link, http://www.uom.ac.mu/Faculties/foe/index.asp while surfing the web and clicks on it. The browser understands that this web page is being requested. It looks after the http:// and before the closing / if there is one. This represents the name of the server i.e the machine where the website resides and the specific page required. In the above example the server is: www.uom.ac.mu and the page is index.asp. The browser sends the request to that server and the request travels the Internet moving from machine to machine until it reaches the server.

When the server receives the request, it looks at file extension of the requested file to determine what kind of file it is. Some files can be sent directly while others need to be processed first and then sent, hence the need to look at the file extension. The server then sends a response to the client; the response travels the Internet from machine to machine until it reaches the client. When the client browser receives the response, it reads the data and renders it in the browser for the user. The whole process is a series of requests and responses. The new document contains hyperlinks and the user can again click on these, starting the whole process again.

10.4 Difference between the Internet and the WWW The Internet or the net is a network of networks. As mentioned previously it is made from computers and cables. The main purpose of the Internet is to share information. When you are sending information to someone else on the Internet, that information is broken down into packets and the address of the receiver is attached to the packet. This is then sent to the next computer connected to the Internet which sends it to the next computer and so on until it reaches the destination computer. Therefore the Internet delivers packets anywhere in the world and normally well under a second. The World Wide Web is an abstract space of information. It consists of all the web pages connected to each other via hyperlinks. On the Internet there are computers hardware; on the web there are text documents, images, music, videos and other files - information. On the Internet the computers are connected via cables while on the web the documents are connected via links. The Internet came about much earlier than the web and exists without it. The web is based on the Internet and cannot exist without it.

10.5 Internet protocols There are different kinds of computers on the Internet and these computers have different operating systems e.g. Windows, UNIX, Mac OS, etc. For these machines to be able to communicate they need to follow the same rules and these are defined by protocols. A protocol is the special set of rules that different communicating bodies use to exchange messages. These rules define how information is sent and also what happens in case there is loss of information during the transfer. The most common protocols that are used on the Internet are HTTP, FTP, TCP/IP, HTTPs

10.5.1 TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)

TCP/IP is the basic communication language of the Internet. As mentioned in the history section, it followed the original protocol on the Internet, NCP. It is also used in private networks like intranets and extranets. 10.5.2 HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) HTTP is the set of rules used to transfer information and files on the WWW. The files can be text, graphic images, sound, video and other multimedia files. 10.5.3 HTTPs (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) When a URL starts with HTTPs, it means that HTTP itself is to be used, but with a different default port and an additional encryption/authentication layer between HTTP and TCP. This is a more secure version of HTTP and is indicated by a URL starting with HTTPs and a padlock in the status bar. 10.5.4 FTP (File Transfer Protocol) FTP is a protocol that is used to exchange files on the Internet. 10.6 Accessing the Internet For a home user to have access to the Internet, the following components are normally needed:

A PC A modem A telephone line or a wireless device An Internet Service Provider (ISP)

The Internet Service Provider, also called Internet Access Provider, is an organization that offers users access to the Internet and to its related services like email. Many ISPs are telephone companies but not all of them. The user connects to the ISP which is always connected to the Internet and can thus access the Internet.

A software

The user also needs some software to connect to the Internet. These can either be web browsers or email clients.

10.7 Web Browsers A web browser is a software application that enables a user to view and interact with text, images, and other information located on a web page at a website on the World Wide Web. Examples of web browsers are Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple Safari. Although browsers are typically used to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by web servers in private networks or content in file systems.

10.8 Search Engines and Web Directories The WWW contains billions of files loaded with information. If a user is looking for some specific information, it is very difficult to start unless he has the address of a website that he has obtained somewhere. A special kind of website exists to enable users to look for information. Such websites are known as search engines. Search engines enable Internet users to search for web pages containing specific information. They also have the option of refining the search by putting conditions such that more specific and appropriate information is obtained. There are various kinds of search engines; some can be used to look for any kind of information while some can only be used to look for information on a specific subject. There are general search engines, meta search engines, regional search engines, pay-per-click search engines, email-based search engines, answer-based search engines, job search engines, shopping search engines, blog search engines, news search engines, multimedia search engines, medical search engines and a lot more. Closely related to search engines are web directories. Web directories are human-compiled indexes of sites, which are then categorised. The fact that a website is reviewed by an editor before being placed in the index means that getting listed in a directory is often quite difficult. Consequently, having a listing in a directory guarantees the website a good amount of welltargeted visitors. Most search engines will rank a website higher if they find that web site in one of the directories. Popular Search Engines: Google http://www.google.com Lycos http://www.lycos.com Ask Jeeves http://www.askjeeves.com Popular Web Directories Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com Open Directory Project http://dmoz.org/ Looksmart http://search.looksmart.com/

While web directories are maintained by human editors, search engines operate on their own.

10.9 Uses of the Internet 10.9.1 Information The Internet was created initially to share information and programs and it is still very much used today as a source of information. This has increased even more so with the advent of the WWW since information is presented better and it is easier to use search engines to look for information. People can use the Internet to search for almost any kind of information. Someone interested in gardening can visit millions of websites related to gardening on the Internet.

Someone else who is interested in cooking can use the WWW to look for recipes or can learn to cook. There is information for everyone on the Internet, whatever the persons age and interests. Most major newspapers and news channels are also online these days. Therefore anyone who wants to know the latest news simply has to visit any one of these websites and since these are updated many times a day, they are even more up-to-date than newspapers. 10.9.2 Communication One of the major uses of the Internet today is for communication purposes. It is much faster to send an email to someone than to send a letter and the response can be as rapid. There are various means of communication on the Internet. [See Section 10.10 for more information on communicating on the Internet] Communication can also be in terms of sharing information. As mentioned previously, most major newspapers and news channels are online these days and news are communicated in real time (as they happen). 10.9.3 Education More and more the Internet is being used for education purposes. Students use the Internet to look for information when they have some coursework or assignment to submit or they use it as a learning aide. But many people are also following courses online, meaning they register for a course and instead of going to a classroom at a university or training centre, they sit in front of a computer at home or at the office and follow their courses by reading the lecture notes online or by viewing a video of their lecturer delivering a course. This mode of learning known as e-learning has the added advantage of taking place at home or at the office and at a time that is convenient to the learner. 10.9.4 Business More and more businesses are going online either for marketing purposes or for conducting business directly. Ecommerce and eBusiness are two terms that almost everyone has heard of. Electronic business, or "e-business", is any business process that is empowered by information technology. Electronic commerce, e-commerce or ecommerce consists primarily of the distributing, buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. EBusiness is more than just e-commerce. It covers business processes along the whole value chain: electronic purchasing ("e-procurement") and supply chain management, processing orders electronically, customer service and cooperation with business partners.

10.9.5 Entertainment A lot of people use the Internet for entertainment purposes. People listen to music and watch movies on the Internet they can either do these in real time (e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/) or they can download them and use later. People also play games on the Internet (e.g. http://games.yahoo.com/games/front), either alone or with other people who are connected to the Internet. 10.10 Communicating on the Internet 10.10.1 Email 10.10.1.1 What is Email? Electronic mail, abbreviated e-mail or email, is a method of composing, sending, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems. The electronic communication system can be either over the Internet or can be in an intranet. The term e-mail applies both to the Internet e-mail system based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and to intranet systems allowing users within one company or organization to send messages to each other. Intranet email predates the Internet. Email came into existence in 1965 as a way for multiple users to communicate. But the invention of the Internet brought about web based email. Electronic mail can be used to:

Send a single message to many recipients Send a message that has attachments, these include text, audio, video, graphics or some other documents like a PowerPoint presentation Send a message to which a computer program responds

Email addresses have a specific format. They are made of two parts separated by the at sign character, @. The prefix of the email address identifies the user and the suffix gives the domain name of the mail server. For example: Cse1010user@uom.ac.mu The domain name uom.ac.mu indicates that uom is an academic institution, ac sub domain, found under Mauritius mu domain. 10.10.1.2 Privacy Issues of Email Email messages are not private. Sometimes email messages are not encrypted when they are sent over the web and therefore can be read by other people. Email messages go through a series of machines before reaching the recipient and these emails can be easily intercepted and read. Furthermore, many ISPs keep a copy of email messages on their mail servers before sending them to the user and although the user might have deleted his email after reading it, a copy of the email may still be on the mail server for some time.

10.10.1.3 What is Spam? Email spam is the sending of unsolicited identical email messages to thousands (or millions) of recipients. Spammers (perpetrators of spamming) harvest these email addresses from web pages where they are listed or obtain them from databases. Therefore WWW users should be careful when they are asked to provide their email addresses, these addresses can be harvested by special software on the web and the user can be spammed as a result. Spammers send emails for various reasons. Emails are sent first and foremost for advertising purposes. Spamming is a very cheap mode of advertisement; thousands of emails can be sent in one click. Email users often get more spam emails than unsolicited emails. The user either has to waste time reading each one of them and ensuring they are spam emails before deleting them hence wasting a lot of time. Else these get accumulated over time and take up a significant amount of disk space. Disk space is not an issue for email users who use free web emails but for companies that provide email to their employees, it can be a real problem. Spam emails can also be sent as fraudulent emails asking for personal information or can even contain viruses. These two cases are more dangerous than the previous one and unfortunately very much exist. People can be sent fraudulent emails from their bank and they might reply, the spammers thus get their bank details and these can be used fraudulently. 10.10.2 Chat Rooms Chat is another popular activity on the web. A chat system is one where the user has to register and is provided with a username and password. Using this username and password he can access the chat system at any time of the day. Different kinds of chat system exist; in some chat systems the user has a buddy list and he usually chats to these people only, other chat systems are more open and the user can choose to chat to anyone randomly.

Figure 11-1 Example of chat: msn messenger Examples of chat are MSN Messenger, Google Talk and Skype. Chat rooms can also be 2D visual chat rooms. In these chat rooms the user can see a graphic representation of other members and they can move about in the room. Examples of this type of chat room are The Palace and The Manor. There are also 3D chat rooms. These are similar to the 2D chat rooms except that they are in 3D and are more realistic. Examples of this type of chat are There, Second Life, and Activeworlds. All these chat rooms also have audio and video communication so that the users can either hear each other or even see each other. 10.10.8 Wikis A wiki is a special kind of website where the user can add, remove and edit the content as well as simply visiting the website. Some wikis allow users to modify the website directly while others require prior registration of the user. Wikis usually contain a system which records all changes made to items so that the page content can be reverted back if need be.

Examples of wikis are: http://www.wikipedia.com http://www.wikiindex.com/Wiki_Index

Figure 11-3 Example of a wiki: http://www.wikipedia.com

10.10.9 Plug-ins A plug-in is a small computer program that understands how to interpret one specific data format. The plug-in usually interacts with a specific program to provide a certain, usually very specific, function. When a new data format is invented, the plug-in to handle the format must also be developed. For example, the plug-in for an audio clip must be able to use audio hardware to convert the digitized format into sounds. Before the new format can be used, the plug-in must be downloaded and used as an extension to the browser. Most new browsers have the some commonly used plug-ins. Typical examples are plug-ins to display specific graphic formats (e.g. SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics, if the program does not support this format natively), to play multimedia files, to encrypt/decrypt email (e.g. PGP, Pretty Good Privacy), or to filter images in graphic programs. Examples of plug-ins are Flash player and QuickTime. 10.10.10 Cookies A cookie is some information that has been sent from the server of a website to the browser. Each time the user accesses that web site, it communicates the cookie information to the server.

This helps the web server to recognize the user. Cookies are used for authentication purposes, to track users, to keep information on user preferences and information on users when they are shopping online. A Cookie is not a program but simply some data and therefore cannot perform any operations. Hence it is virus-free. 10.11 Further readings

Internet Society Website, http://www.isoc.org World Wide Web Consortium Website, http://www.w3.org Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.com Blogger Website, http://www.blogger.com/ Tim Berners-Lee and Mark Fischetti, Weaving the web, 1999

Multiple Choice Questions 1. Which of the following is NOT required when connecting to the Internet? (a) A pc (b) A web browser (c) A telephone line (d) A modem (e) A printer 2. What does a URL do? (a) Stores video clips (b) Identifies the location of an electronic file (c) Prevents viruses from spreading (d) Transmits live web cam pictures (e) Creates backup of data 3. What is a hyperlink? (a) A type of error message (b) A video game (c) A very fast internet connection (d) Words or pictures that when clicked on redirect you to another page (e) A type of network connection 4. Which of the following is NOT a possible error message when accessing a website?

(a) The page does not exist (b) The URL typed is wrong (c) You do not have authorization to view such a page (d) The site is having technical problems (e) Your modem cannot be detected 5. Spam is (a) Sending unsolicited messages (b) Sending emails to friends (c) Deleting an email on reception (d) A web browser (e) A web server 6. Mozilla Firefox is an example of: (a) A web browser (b) A web server (c) A software to listen to music (d) A software to watch video (e) A word-processing software 7. A Blog is (a) A personal web site where other people can leave comments (b) A special kind search engine (c) A web browser (d) A web server (e) A website that can be edited by anyone 8. A wiki is (a) A personal web site where other people can leave comments (b) A web browser (c) A web server (d) A website that can be edited by anyone (e) A router 9. A protocol is (a) A mode of transmission on the web (b) A set of rules that communicating bodies follow to communicate (c) A special kind of search engine (d) A website that can be edited by anyone (e) A kind of network

10. A web server is (a) A computer which contains server software and which hosts web pages on the web (b) A special software that is used to access web pages on the web (c) A special software that is used to read emails on the web (d) A kind of virus that spreads when a user requests a web page (e) Another name for a web browser

Exercises Open-Ended Questions 1. What are the main differences between the Internet and the WWW? 2. How would you subscribe to a mailing list? 3. What does a user need to start using the Internet at home? 4. What is the purpose of a search engine? 5. What are blogs and wikis? 6. What are protocols? Why are they needed on the Internet? 7. What is the difference between a newsgroup and a forum? 8. What is an IP address? Why are computers assigned IP addresses on the web? 9. Explain the term Domain name and its importance on the web. 10. When do you need to install a plug-in and why?