Mekelle University Faculty of Business & Economics

Computer Science Department

ICT132: Networks and Digital Communications

Handout 8 Network Applications

1. Introduction

Computer networking has revolutionised the way people

use computers. This final handout will briefly examine
some of the applications of computer networking that
have led to this massive change. In particular we will
look at the Internet and electronic mail (or email).

2. The Internet

The Internet is a vast network of networks, the ultimate

WAN, consisting of tens of thousands of businesses,
universities, and research organizations with millions of
individual users and using a variety of different network
architectures.

What is now known as the Internet was originally formed

in 1970 as a military network called ARPAnet
(Advanced Research Projects Agency network) as part of
the United States Department of Defence. The network
opened to non-military users in the 1970s, when
universities and companies doing defence-related
research were given access, and flourished in the late
1980s as most universities and many businesses around
the world started to use the Internet. In 1993, when
commercial Internet service providers were first
permitted to sell Internet connections to individuals,
usage of the network grew tremendously. There were
millions of new users within months, and a new era of
computer communications began. Today, it is estimated
that over 500 million people use the Internet worldwide.
The table below breaks this number down by region.

Continent Number of Internet

users
Africa 4.15 million
Asia/Pacific 143.99 million
Europe 154.63 million
Middle East 4.65million
Canada & USA 180.68 million
Latin America 25.33 million
World Total 513.41 million

Every site on the Internet has an address, just like people

have PO Box numbers at their local post office. On the
Internet addresses are called URLs (Uniform Resource
Locators). URLs are written as a number of words
separated by dots, for example www.yahoo.com. The
word after the final dot (e.g. com) is the domain of the
address. The domain indicates the category of the web
site. The table below lists some of the more common
categories of address on the Internet.

Domain Organisation type

 type
edu Educational institution
com Commercial organisation
gov Governmental
mil Military
net Network providers and support
org Other organisations
country A country code, for example .et
code for Ethiopia, .uk for the United
Kingdom

2.1 The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (WWW) is a way of browsing the

information on the Internet in a pleasant, easy to
understand. Text can be mixed with graphics, video, and
audio to provide multimedia (i.e. many different media)
Internet content.

This is all made possible by using a special

communications protocol, called the Hypertext Transport
Protocol (HTTP). You may have noticed when using the
Internet that many URLs begin with the letters
http:// - this means that the page of information
will be transmitted using the Hypertext Transport
Protocol. Pages of multimedia Internet content are
commonly written in a special language called HTML
(the Hypertext Markup Language)

2.2 FTP and Telnet

There are two other important communications protocols
for use on the Internet. Both are quite old now but still in
common use.

The file transport protocol (FTP) uses the TCP protocol

as the underlying transport protocol. (TCP is part of the
TCP/IP protocol suite.) The purpose of FTP is to safely
and efficiently transport files over computer networks.

Secondly the TELNET protocol is used for providing

remote terminal access over a network. For example,
using TELNET a user can log in to another computer
somewhere else on the network and take part in an
interactive session on that computer. TELNET also uses
TCP as its underlying basis for communications.

2.3 Instant messaging

One of the more recent innovations in the use of the

Internet is instant messaging. Using instant messaging
software two users in different parts of the world can
take part in an on-line conversation using their personal
computers. Text typed at one computer will be
instantly transmitted to the screen of the other. Instant
messaging provides for much faster and interactive
communication than electronic mail.

2.4 Electronic mail

When most people think of applications of the Internet

they probably think first of electronic mail, or email.
Originally email was a way of sending simple text
messages to different users over local area networks.
However, nowadays email can be used to send
multimedia content such as audio, video or even
computer software to a user anywhere in the world.

Email is made possible by using the Simple Mail

Transport Protocol (SMTP). SMTP specifies how
electronic mail messages are exchanged between
computers using TCP. In order to use email, it is
necessary to install software on both the sending and
receiving computer. Email uses the client-server method
to allow mail to be exchanged. Client computers
exchange messages with a mail server that is responsible
for ensuring that the message reaches its destination. On
the server computer each user is assigned a specific
mailbox. This electronic mailbox is just like a normal PO
Box mail is stored there until a user logs on to collect
their mail. Each electronic mailbox has a unique email
address. Email addresses are divided into two parts: the
user name and the mailbox name. These two parts are
separated by an @ character. For example,
Elizabeth@telecom.net.et is a valid email address. The
user name is Elizabeth, and the mail server that is
responsible for collecting the mail is located at the
computer called telecom.net.et. In this case
telecom.net.et is a mail server running at Ethiopian
Telecom in Addis Ababa. Remember from Handout 6
(Protocols) that this computer name will also have an
associated IP address to identify it on the Internet.

SMTP is the protocol used to send email on the Internet.

The receiving computer will need to use another protocol
to access the incoming mail. Two different protocols
exist for this purpose: the Post Office Protocol (POP3)
and the newer alternative, Internet Message Access
Protocol (IMAP).

3. The future

The potential of the computer networks and the Internet

to change our lives still further is great. As processor
speed and network bandwidth increases many new
applications will undoubtedly emerge. Already it is
becoming possible to view television programs, films
and other multimedia content on demand over the
Internet. Once this becomes more commonplace it will
fundamentally change the way we organise our leisure
activities. In the workplace too further changes will
occur. One interesting current development is known as
the grid. The Internet consists of hundreds of thousands
of computers, most of which are idle most of the time.
The grid is a way of utilising this unused processor
power. In the future it may be possible to run complex
and processor-intensive software by simultaneously
using CPUs in many different parts of the world.

Summary of Key Points

Probably the single major application of computer

networking is the Internet, a vast network of
computers and LANs covering almost the entire
world
 Today it is estimated that more than 500 million
people use the Internet
Internet sites are access by specifying an Internet
address, or URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
URLs consist of a sequence of words separated by
dots (e.g. www.yahoo.com)
The final word in the sequence is known as the
domain of the address, and indicates the category of
the web-site (e.g. educational, governmental, etc.)
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a way of
browsing multimedia Internet content. The WWW
uses the Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP),
which in turn uses the TCP protocol to
communicate
Other common protocols in use on the Internet are
the file transfer protocol (FTP) and TELNET
Electronic mail (email) is a way of sending
messages consisting of text, video, audio or pictures
to a user in a different part of the world
Sending email uses the Simple Mail Transport
Protocol (SMTP), which in turn uses TCP
Receiving email can use either the Post Office
Protocol (POP3) or the Internet Message Access
Protocol (IMAP)
 Notes prepared by: FBE Computer Science
Department.

Sources: Networking Essentials Plus, Microsoft

Press
An Introduction to Computer
Networking, Mansfield & Antonakos