OPTIMIZING INTERNET CONNECTIVITY AND USAGE FOR ACADEMIC RESEARCH AND COMMUNICATION A PRACTICAL INFORMATION FOR UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN

N NETWORK USERS

Obilor Benneth Chijioke

Ag. Director Computing Centre, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Email: bc.obilor@mail.ui.edu.ng, benobilor@yahoo.com +2348055122215

A Faculty Seminar Presented on 10th April 2008 at the Faculty Lecture Theatre Faculty of Science, University of Ibadan

Table of Contents

Content Introduction What is the Internet History/Growth of the Internet Common uses of the Internet How the Internet works The University of Ibadan Network Expectation from Good internet Connection Why Internet Connection can be so slow Improving Internet Browsing Performance Troubleshooting your connection Conclusion Acknowledgement References Appendix

Introduction Information and communication technology revolution has the Internet as its prime engine. The internet is arguably one of the most significant technological developments of the late 20th century and has become an important tool in research, international communication, development and education. Many people use the internet and this trend is expected to increase in strength as the internet offers more and more facilities. The internet is allowing greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with the spread of high-speed connections and Web applications. The Internet can now be accessed virtually anywhere by numerous means -Mobile phones, data cards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet from anywhere there is a cellular network supporting that device's technology. The Internet provides several opportunities for the academia. It is a mechanism for information dissemination and a medium for collaborative interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic limitation of space (Leiner et al., 2000; Singh, 2002). Peters and Lankshear (1996) asserted that while printed materials have a certain fixity and finitude, texts published via the Internet have a much more fluid character. With texts no longer housed within library or bookshop walls, it becomes impossible to 'pin down' all or even most of the available materials in given subject areas for archival and classification purposes. The Internet might thus be described as a 'sea of information', subject to the ebb and flow of various forces (political, corporate, institutional, etc.), creating an ever-shifting shoreline. There are now thousands of Internet 'home pages' which serve as information sources for institutions and organizations. Most universities, polytechnics and colleges of education throughout the world have established their presence on the Internet, thereby making it possible for researchers to access past and current research publications. Prospective students can also access information on courses being offered by Institutions as well as their admission requirements. There are also numerous individual home pages, where people construct a site either as a means of expressing their creativity or for a very limited range of potential visitors. The World Wide Web also provides very easy access to some government documents and legislative materials. Journals, magazines, newspapers, books and archives provide another important avenue for the construction, publication and circulation of Internet texts. Many classic literary and philosophical books are available for reading in electronic form. The only costs that readers incur are the standard Internet connection fees. Unlike print versions of the same volumes, the books themselves have no prices attached. Most of these books have been converted to hypertext mark-up language (HTML) while a few are still available in ASCII format. Additionally, there are now hundreds of serials published via the Internet. These include informal newsletters constructed for small groups on individual personal computers to sophisticated, highly specialized, fully refereed academic journals. Some newspapers such as The Guardian, The Punch, Time and The Independent produce electronic equivalents of their print publications. Increasingly, however, serials of all kinds are being released in electronic form only. Some of these make the most of the new medium, and would be impossible to duplicate in the print world (Jagboro, 2003). In the University of Ibadan where connection to the Internet is through the university network, every Internet user expects a fast connection during downloading and uploading of documents. However, there are times when things will slow down to a crawl. Many users are yet to understand that their actions directly impact the performance of the

network. Within the framework of the University of Ibadan, Internet connectivity, the goal of this presentation is to review the history of the Internet, its services and its growth, and underlying infrastructure and technologies that make it work; to identify the factors that may slow down Internet connection speed and the levels of troubleshooting that users can perform; to provide practical information on how to gain the largest benefits from existing connections to the Internet despite the limited bandwidth available to users.

WHAT IS THE INTERNET? "Internet" refers to the global information system that - (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein. [FNC Resolution, 1995]. The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series 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 resources of the World Wide Web (WWW). It is a network of networks based on the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol, Internet Protocol). TCP/IP is a coding system that lets computers electronically describe data to each other across a network (Wikipedia, 2008). Any type of computer can be connected to this web of networks as long as it speaks the universal Internet language, TCP/IP. The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) are not synonymous. The Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc. In contrast, the Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is one of the services accessible via the Internet, along with many others including e-mail, Usenet, file sharing and others. The World Wide Web, or WWW, is simply the visual part of the Internet. The WWW consists of a compilation of pages linked to one another. A page is a document that may contain text, images, animation, sound, graphs etc. These linked pages can belong to an individual, company or body and are commonly referred to as the authors website. Sometimes called simply "the Net," it is a public, cooperative, and self-sustaining facility accessible to hundreds of millions of people globally. Nobody owns the Internet but there are some no-profit organisations that define how we use and interact with the Internet: 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 (IP) addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. On November 16, 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis, established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues. The Internet is revolutionizing our society, our economy and our technological systems and no one should underestimate its importance.

History/Growth of the Internet Walt (2007) Asserts that the Internet was the result of some visionary thinking by people in the early 1960s who saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields. The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure. Its history is complex and involves many aspects - technological, organizational, and community. And its influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer communications but throughout society as we move toward increasing use of online tools to accomplish electronic commerce, information acquisition, and community operations. Leiner et al. (2000) asserts that the first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962 discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. He envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site. In spirit, the concept was very much like the Internet of today. Licklider was the first head of the computer research program at DARPA, starting in October 1962. While at DARPA he convinced his successors at DARPA, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts, of the importance of this networking concept. Leonard Kleinrock at MIT published the first paper on packet switching theory in July 1961 and the first book on the subject in 1964. Kleinrock convinced Roberts of the theoretical feasibility of communications using packets rather than circuits, which was a major step along the path towards computer networking. The other key step was to make the computers talk together. To explore this, in 1965 working with Thomas Merrill, Roberts connected the TX-2 computer in Mass. to the Q-32 in California with a low speed dial-up telephone line creating the first (however small) wide-area computer network ever built. The result of this experiment was the realization that the time-shared computers could work well together, running programs and retrieving data as necessary on the remote machine, but that the circuit switched telephone system was totally inadequate for the job. Kleinrock's conviction of the need for packet switching was confirmed. In late 1966 Roberts went to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop the computer network concept and quickly put together his plan for the "ARPANET", publishing it in 1967. At the conference where he presented the paper, there was also a paper on a packet network concept from the UK by Donald Davies and Roger Scantlebury of NPL. Scantlebury told Roberts about the NPL work as well as that of Paul Baran and others at RAND. The RAND group had written a paper on packet switching networks for secure voice in the military in 1964. It happened that the work at MIT (1961-1967), at RAND (1962-1965), and at NPL (1964-1967) had all proceeded in parallel without any of the researchers knowing about the other work. The word "packet" was adopted from the work at NPL and the proposed line speed to be used in the ARPANET design was upgraded from 2.4 kbps to 50 kbps. In August 1968, after Roberts and the DARPA funded community had refined the overall structure and specifications for the ARPANET, an RFQ was released by DARPA for the development of one of the key components, the packet switches called Interface Message Processors (IMP's). The RFQ was won in December 1968 by a group headed by Frank Heart at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). As the BBN team worked on the IMP's with Bob Kahn playing a major role in the overall ARPANET architectural design, the

network topology and economics were designed and optimized by Roberts working with Howard Frank and his team at Network Analysis Corporation, and the network measurement system was prepared by Kleinrock's team at UCLA. Due to Kleinrock's early development of packet switching theory and his focus on analysis, design and measurement, his Network Measurement Center at UCLA was selected to be the first node on the ARPANET. All this came together in September 1969 when BBN installed the first IMP at UCLA and the first host computer was connected. Doug Engelbart's project on "Augmentation of Human Intellect" (which included NLS, an early hypertext system) at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) provided a second node. SRI supported the Network Information Center, led by Elizabeth (Jake) Feinler and including functions such as maintaining tables of host name to address mapping as well as a directory of the RFC's. One month later, when SRI was connected to the ARPANET, the first host-to-host message was sent from Kleinrock's laboratory to SRI. Two more nodes were added at UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah. These last two nodes incorporated application visualization projects, with Glen Culler and Burton Fried at UCSB investigating methods for display of mathematical functions using storage displays to deal with the problem of refresh over the net, and Robert Taylor and Ivan Sutherland at Utah investigating methods of 3-D representations over the net. Thus, by the end of 1969, four host computers were connected together into the initial ARPANET, and the budding Internet was off the ground. Even at this early stage, it should be noted that the networking research incorporated both work on the underlying network and work on how to utilize the network. This tradition continues to this day. Computers were added quickly to the ARPANET during the following years, and work proceeded on completing a functionally complete Host-to-Host protocol and other network software. In December 1970 the Network Working Group (NWG) working under S. Crocker finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol (NCP). As the ARPANET sites completed implementing NCP during the period 1971-1972, the network users finally could begin to develop applications. In October 1972 Kahn organized a large, very successful demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC). This was the first public demonstration of this new network technology to the public. It was also in 1972 that the initial "hot" application, electronic mail, was introduced. In March Ray Tomlinson at BBN wrote the basic email message send and read software, motivated by the need of the ARPANET developers for an easy coordination mechanism. In July, Roberts expanded its utility by writing the first email utility program to list, selectively read, file, forward, and respond to messages. From there email took off as the largest network application for over a decade. This was a harbinger of the kind of activity we see on the World Wide Web today, namely, the enormous growth of all kinds of "people-topeople" traffic (Remondino & Chen, 2004). The precursor of the Internet is called ARPANet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). Walts (2007) noted that the Internet, then known as ARPANET, was brought online in 1969 under a contract let by the renamed Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which initially connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern US (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UCSB, and the University of Utah). The contract was carried out by BBN of Cambridge, MA under Bob Kahn and went online in December 1969. Charley Kline at UCLA sent the first packets on ARPANet as he tried to connect to Stanford Research Institute on Oct 29, 1969. The system crashed as he reached the G in LOGIN! By June 1970, MIT, Harvard, BBN, and Systems Development Corp (SDC) in Santa Monica, Cal. were added. By January 1971,

Stanford, MIT's Lincoln Labs, Carnegie-Mellon, and Case-Western Reserve U were added. In months to come, NASA/Ames, Mitre, Burroughs, RAND, and the U of Illinois plugged in. After that, there were far too many to keep listing here. All the computers used different operating systems and they were able to talk to each other across the network. During the 1970's, the ARPANET grew to connect research institutes and laboratories supported by the Department of Defence in various parts of the USA. Many of these were university laboratories studying data processing and computer networks, which developed the TCP/IP network protocol and its applications for the Internet. During the 1980's, the Internet was still considered to be a temporary system designed for the research world while in the 1984 the TCP/IP data transmission protocol was adopted as the US Department of Defence's official network standard. At the same time that the Internet technology was being experimentally validated and widely used amongst a subset of computer science researchers, other networks and networking technologies were being pursued: USENET, based on a UNIX communication protocols; BITNET (Because It's Time NETwork), started as a cooperative network at the City University of New York; NSFNET, initiated by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF); NSINET, developed by NASA; CSNET (Computer Science NETwork), developed by a group of computer scientists and some university. By that time Internet was an essential tool for communications, however it also began to create concerns about privacy and security in the digital world and new words, such as "hacker" or "cracker" were created. In 1990 ARPANET ceased to exist while the country already connected to NSFNET were 28 with ca 300,000 hosts. The NSFNet soon connected to the CSNET, which linked Universities around North America, and then to the EUnet, which connected research facilities in Europe. Since the Internet was initially funded by the government, it was originally limited to research, education, and government uses. Commercial uses were prohibited unless they directly served the goals of research and education. This policy continued until the early 90's, when independent commercial networks began to grow. It then became possible to route traffic from one commercial site to another without passing through the government funded NSFNet Internet backbone. Tim Berners-Lee, researcher at CERN of Geneva, noticed that many people were having difficulties in sharing information due to a range of different network information retrieval protocols and a range of workstation types with widely varying display capabilities. For this reason he proposed an Internet-based hypertext system which would have linked together behind a single and easy-to-use interface the various information spread around the Internet. He produced a WWW browser-editor which reads HyperText Markup Language (HTML) documents from Uniform Resource Locator (URL) addresses: i.e. the Web was born (Berners-Lee, T., 1990). An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW based upon HyperCard. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In the next years the Internet Society (ISOC) was founded (1991); the World Bank goes on-line (1992); Mosaic, the first commercial graphical Web browser was released by Eric Bina and Mark Andreesen (1993); In 1993 the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. "Yahoo" (Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle) was invented by two PhD students from Stanford University (1994); NSFNET reverted back to a research project and left the Internet in commercial hands (Remondino & Chen, 2004). A current trend with major implications for the future is the growth of high speed connections. On October 24, 1995, The Federal Networking Council (FNC), in consultation with the leadership of the Internet and Intellectual Property Rights Communities, unanimously passed a resolution defining the term Internet.

According to Internet World Stats, as of December 30, 2007, 1,319 billion people use the Internet. Slabbert (2006), has asserted that the Internet is fast becoming a basic feature of global civilization, so that what has traditionally been called "civil society" is now becoming identical with information technology society as defined by Internet use. INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICS Usage Population % Population Internet Usage, % % of ( Penetration Latest Data of World ) World 14.2 % 12.1 % 2.9 % 5.1 % 8.6 % 0.5 % 44,361,940 510,478,743 348,125,847 33,510,500 238,015,529 126,203,714 19,175,836 1,319,872,109 4.7 % 13.7 % 43.4 % 17.4 % 71.1 % 22.2 % 57.1 % 20.0 % Usage Growth 20002007

World Regions Africa Asia Europe Middle East North America Latin America/Caribbean Oceania / Australia WORLD TOTAL

Population ( 2007 Est.) 941,249,130 801,821,187 192,755,045 334,659,631 569,133,474 33,569,718

3.4 % 882.7 % 38.7 % 346.6 % 26.4 % 231.2 % 2.5 % 920.2 % 18.0 % 120.2 % 9.6 % 598.5 % 1.5 % 151.6 % 100.0 % 265.6 %

3,733,783,474 56.5 %

6,606,971,659 100.0 %

Source: Internet world statistics

The Table below depicts a summary of the internet history to date YEAR 1961-1968 1969 1974 1980 1990 1993 MAJOR ACTIVITY Theoretical framework in packet switching and computer networking Birth of the Internet TCP Specifications TCP/IP protocol adopted, by 1984, 1000 hosts Birth of WWW and HTML Mosaic Browser, proliferates the web with a 341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic. Mosaic, provides a graphical interface to search the Internet, thus making the Internet more visually appealing; explosion of the Web. In 1994, "Yahoo" (Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle) was invented. 30 Million users 30 Million hosts Internet/web as information superhighway

1996 1998 2000

ORGANISATIONS THAT MONITORES AND MAINTAINS

Although nobody owns the Internet, it is monitored and maintained in different ways. There are organisations that define how we use and interact with the Internet. The ISOC, Internet Society [ISOC], oversees the formation of the policies and protocols. The World Wide Web Consortium, created in 1994, tries to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a non-profit corporation formed in 1998 to assume responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management and root server system management, all functions previously performed under U.S. Government contract by IANA (Internet Assigned Number Authority) (IANA) and other organisations. They all assume responsibility for technical function, provide reliable information about the Internet and develop interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential as a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.

Common uses of the Internet E-mail The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. Email offers a cheap and easy alternative to traditional methods of correspondence. It's faster and easier than writing snail mail and cheaper than using the telephone. Internet e-mail may travel and be stored unencrypted on many other networks and machines out of both the sender's and the recipient's control. During this time it is quite possible for the content to be read and even tampered with by third parties. Intranet mail systems, where the information never leaves the corporate or organization's network, are much more secure. The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (known as "WWW', "Web" or "W3") is a huge set of interlinked documents, images and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. These hyperlinks and URLs allow the web-servers and other machines that store originals, and cached copies, of these resources to deliver them as required using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). The Web has a body of software, and a set of protocols and conventions. Through the use of hypertext and multimedia techniques, the web is easy for anyone to

roam, browse, and contribute to. Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox access web pages and allow users to navigate from one to another via hyperlinks. Web documents may contain almost any combination of computer data including photographs, graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content including games, office applications and scientific demonstrations. Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines, like Yahoo!, and Google, millions of people worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data. It is also easier, using the Web, than ever before for individuals and organisations to publish ideas and information to an extremely large audience. The World Wide Web (known as "WWW', "Web" or "W3") is the universe of network-accessible information, the embodiment of human knowledge.

File sharing A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a Web site or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication; the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands before or after access to the file is given. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example a credit card whose details are also passed hopefully fully encryptedacross the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests. These simple features of the Internet, over a world-wide basis, are changing the basis for the production, sale, and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of print publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products. Internet collaboration technology enables business and project teams to share documents, calendars and other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research, software development, conference planning, political activism and creative writing (wikipedia, 2008). Streaming media Many existing radio and television broadcasters provide Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC). They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. The range of material is much wider, from pornography to highly specialized technical Web-casts. Podcasting is a variation on this

theme, whereusually audiomaterial is first downloaded in full and then may be played back on a computer or shifted to a digital audio player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual material on a worldwide basis. Webcams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full frame rate video, the picture is usually either small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal, the traffic at a local roundabout or their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams are also popular. Many uses can be found for personal webcams in and around the home, with and without two-way sound. Voice telephony (VoIP) VoIP stands for Voice over IP, where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional two-way voice extension to some of the Instant Messaging systems that took off around the year 2000. In recent years many VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the Internet carries the actual voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a normal telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on Internet connections such as cable or ADSL. Thus VoIP is maturing into a viable alternative to traditional telephones. Interoperability between different providers has improved and the ability to call or receive a call from a traditional telephone is available. Simple inexpensive VoIP modems are now available that eliminate the need for a PC. Voice quality can still vary from call to call but is often equal to and can even exceed that of traditional calls. Remaining problems for VoIP include emergency telephone number dialling and reliability. Currently a few VoIP providers provide an emergency service but it is not universally available. Traditional phones are line powered and operate during a power failure, VoIP does not do so without a backup power source for the electronics. Most VoIP providers offer unlimited national calling but the direction in VoIP is clearly toward global coverage with unlimited minutes for a low monthly fee. VoIP has also become increasingly popular within the gaming world, as a form of communication between players. Popular gaming VoIP clients include Ventrilo and Teamspeak, and there are others available also.

Leisure The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web, with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much of the main traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short cartoons in

the form of Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas. The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other Web sites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries' use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity. A song in the Broadway musical show Avenue Q is titled "The Internet is for Porn" and refers to the popularity of this aspect of the Internet. One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from roleplaying games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet. While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer, which players of games would typically subscribe to. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or certain games. Many use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. As discussed above, there are paid and unpaid sources for all of these, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies. Discretion is needed as some of these sources take more care over the original artists' rights and over copyright laws than others. Many use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and book holidays and to find out more about their random ideas and casual interests. People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. Social networking Web sites like Friends Reunited and many others like them also put and keep people in contact for their enjoyment. The Internet has seen a growing amount of Internet operating systems, where users can access their files, folders, and settings via the Internet. An example of an opensource webOS is Eyeos.

Marketing Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing, e-commerce or Emarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. It is the process of growing and promoting an organization using online media. The Internet has also become a large market for companies; some of the biggest companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient nature of low-cost advertising and commerce through the Internet; It is the fastest way to spread information to a vast amount of people simultaneously. The Internet has also subsequently revolutionized shoppingfor example; a person can order a CD online and receive it in the mail within a couple of days, or download it directly in some cases. The Internet has also greatly facilitated

personalized marketing which allows a company to market a product to a specific person or a specific group of people more so than any other advertising medium.

HOW THE INTERNET WORKS Each computer connected to the Internet must have a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address in the form nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn where nnn must be a number from 0 - 255. Depending on the type of connection, IP addresses are temporarily assigned, permanently assigned or obtained temporary from a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server. There are many communication protocols required for the Internet to function. These include the TCP and IP protocols, routing protocols, medium access control protocols, application level protocols, To communicate ('talk') to other computers connected to the Internet, the message must be transmitted over whatever kind of medium (phone line, wireless, fibre optics, coaxial cable etc) connects your computer to the Internet through protocol stack. Every computer needs one to communicate on the Internet and it is usually built into the computer's operating system. The protocol stack used on the Internet is referred to as the TCP/IP protocol and its structure is as illustrated below using a talk (communication) between two computers computer 1 and Computer 2 on the Internet: Protocol Layer Comments

INTERNET Application TCP IP Hardware

Computer 1

Computer 2

Application TCP IP Hardware

Application TCP IP Hardware

Application Protocols Layer Transmission Protocol Layer Control

Protocols specific to applications such as WWW, e-mail, FTP, etc. TCP directs packets to a specific application on a computer using a port number. IP directs packets to a specific computer using an IP address. Converts binary packet data to network signals and back. (E.g. ethernet network card, modem for phone lines, etc.)

Internet Protocol Layer Hardware Layer

For any two computer systems to communicate over the Internet, the series of activities that takes place is as follows: 1. The message would start at the top of the protocol stack on your computer and work it's way downward. 2. If the message to be sent is long, each stack layer that the message passes through may break the message up into smaller chunks of data (packets). 3. The packets would go through the Application Layer and continue to the TCP layer. Each packet is assigned a port number. 4. After going through the TCP layer, the packets proceed to the IP layer. This is where each packet receives it's destination address 5. Now that our message packets have a port number and an IP address, they are ready to be sent over the Internet. 6. On the other end of the connection, your ISP router examines the destination address in each packet and determines where to send it. Often, the packet's next stop is another router. A router is usually connected between networks to route packets between them. The information used to get packets to their destinations are contained in routing tables kept by each router connected to the Internet. Each router knows about it's subnetworks and which IP addresses they use. The router usually doesn't know what IP addresses are 'above' it. When a packet arrives at a router, the router examines the IP address put there by the IP protocol layer on the originating computer. The router checks it's routing table. If the network containing the IP address is found, the packet is sent to that network. If the network containing the IP address is not found, then the router sends the packet on a default route, usually up the backbone hierarchy to the next router. Hopefully the next router will know where to send the packet. If it does not, again the packet is routed upwards until it reaches a NSP backbone. The routers connected to the Network service Providers (NSP) backbones hold the largest routing tables and here the packet will be routed to the correct backbone, where it will begin its journey 'downward' through smaller and smaller networks until it finds it's destination. 7. After your packets traverse the network and your ISP's local equipment, they are routed onto the ISP's backbone or a backbone the ISP buys bandwidth from. From here the packets will usually journey through several routers and over several

backbones, dedicated lines, and other networks until they find their destination. Eventually, the packets reach the second computer. Here, the packets start at the bottom of the destination computer's TCP/IP stack and work upwards. 8. As the packets go upwards through the stack, all routing data that the sending computer's stack added (such as IP address and port number) is stripped from the packets. 9. When the data reaches the top of the stack, the packets have been re-assembled into their original form.

How the web pages you request for are downloaded One of the most commonly used services on the Internet is the World Wide Web (WWW). The application protocol that makes the web work is Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP. HTTP is the protocol that web browsers and web servers use to communicate with each other over the Internet. It is an application level protocol because it sits on top of the TCP layer in the protocol stack and is used by specific applications (web browsers and web servers) to talk to one another. HTTP is a connectionless text based protocol. Clients (web browsers) send requests to web servers for web elements such as web pages and images. After the request is serviced by a server, the connection between client and server across the Internet is disconnected. A new connection must be made for each request. Most protocols are connection oriented. This means that the two computers communicating with each other keep the connection open over the Internet. HTTP does not however. Before an HTTP request can be made by a client, a new connection must be made to the server (Richard, 1994). You retrieve documents from the internet by typing the documents Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in your web browser. The browser breaks the URL into 3 parts: the protocol ("http"), the server name e.g. ("www.ui.edu") and the file name e.g ("finance.html"). When you type a URL into a web browser, this is what happens:

1. If the URL contains a domain name, the browser first connects to a domain name server (DNS) to translate the server name "www.ui.edu.ng" into an IP numerical address, which it uses to connect to the server machine.
The DNS is a distributed database which keeps track of computer's names and their corresponding IP addresses on the Internet. Many computers connected to the Internet host part of the DNS database and the software that allows others to access it. These computers are known as DNS servers. No DNS server contains the entire database; they only contain a subset of it. If a DNS server does not contain the domain name requested by another computer, the DNS server re-directs the requesting computer to another DNS server. The Domain Name Service is structured as a hierarchy similar to the IP routing hierarchy. The computer requesting a name resolution will be re-directed 'up' the hierarchy until a DNS server is found that can resolve the domain name in the request. When an Internet connection is setup (e.g. for a LAN or Dial-Up Networking in Windows), one primary and one or more secondary DNS servers are usually specified as part of the installation. This way, any Internet applications that need domain name resolution will be able to function correctly. For example, when you enter a web address

into your web browser, the browser first connects to your primary DNS server. After obtaining the IP address for the domain name you entered, the browser then connects to the target computer and requests the web page you wanted. A domain is a name which identifies a web site on the Internet. The web browser connects to the web server and sends an HTTP request (via the protocol stack) for the desired web page. 2. The web server receives the request and checks for the desired page. If the page exists, the web server sends it. If the server cannot find the requested page, it will send an HTTP 404 error message. (404 means 'Page Not Found') 3. The web browser receives the page back and the connection is closed. 4. The browser then parses through the page and looks for other page elements it needs to complete the web page. These usually include images, applets, etc. 5. For each element needed, the browser makes additional connections and HTTP requests to the server for each element. 6. When the browser has finished loading all images, applets, etc. the page will be completely loaded in the browser window.

The Internet network is design in a way that information can reach its destination using many different paths. When the information is sent through the network, it is split into tiny packets and each packet use a different path to reach its destination. When all the packets reach the destination, they are regrouped to form the original information. If one packet does not reach the destination, the receiving site asks for another copy of this packet. The routes covered by the Internet information are not always the shortest ones, but usually the fastest one. The figure below is a visualization of the various routes through a portion of the internet.

Visualization of the various routes through a portion of the internet

THE UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN NETWORK/INTERNET CONNECTIVITY

Internet

Router Cisco 3600

Mail Server

Public Switch

MicroTik (Firewall, Bandwidth shaper, Traffic logger , Web proxy, NAT, Installed and connect every node to the network)
Ci S

Local Switch Node 1 Node 2 Node 4

02 14

RADIUS FreeBSD INTRANET LOCAL DNS

The University of Ibadan Computer Network has over 34 nodes, each representing one Faculty/unit (the number of computers on each node fall between 20 and 200) . The Faculties/units communicates with the ICT building where the University Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) is situated. Two LMR 400 cables- receiver and transmitter connect the VSAT to the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) and satellite Modem respectively. The VSAT receives signals from our provider, Intelsat (an International ISP Company). The Omni-directional antenna installed on the mast at the lCT building beams signals to the uni-directional mesh antennae at the different nodes. The nodes are presently linked to the ICT building by Fibre Optics, Wireless Link (EM Radio waves), or twisted copper wires. Most of the Network hardware are Cisco products except the Microtik routers. Linux and Microsoft Windows are the Major OS.

EXPECTATIONS FROM A GOOD NETWORK/INTERNET CONNECTION Fast Uplink and Downlink No dropouts Stable/Low downtime Support for wireless access points Offers Security and protection for stored Documents on local servers and Ensures protection of user accounts (through user authentications)

Why Internet connection can be so slow and downtime high Many things can affect how you experience the Internet and the speed of your Internet connection. Just as it's possible for a telephone conversation to be interrupted for example, it's possible for problems to occur with your Internet connection. There are many factors that may make it difficult to get to Web destinations even with a speedy modem connection: heavy network traffic, Web server demand, incorrect addresses (URLs) and files, graphically intensive sites , computer woes (viruses and other programs), type of connection you have, your computer type(specifications) and external factors that affect connection speed etc. Bandwidth Internet bandwidth is, in simple terms, the transmission speed or throughput of your connection to the Internet. It is generally referred to as the volume of information per unit of time that a transmission medium (like an Internet connection) can handle. Data is to available bandwidth as water is to the size of the pipe. In other words, as the bandwidth increases, so does the amount of data that can flow through in a given amount of time, just like as the size of the pipe increases, so does the amount of water than flow through during a period of time. An Internet connection with a larger bandwidth can move a set amount of data. Presently, the university of Ibadan download band width is 7Mb and Uplink is 3M. Three factors outside of your computer control how quickly you can view Web pages: The Internet bandwidth between your computer and the site you're viewing, the round-trip time between your computer and the site you're viewing, the response time of the site you're viewing.

User activities on the Net Many users are yet to understand that their actions directly impact the performance of the university Internet connectivity. Activities such as: opening many browsing windows at a time when reading mails online, running peer-to-peer programs, multiple request to the same site, constant sending of attachments, use of the internet explorer for browsing, not logging off after browsing, use of free mail service such as yahoo etc greatly affect network performance. Your Computer system Most browsers require a certain amount of computing power (processor speed), memory, and disk space to run efficiently. Every webpage you view is first downloaded to memory and then saved to temporary disk files. Running another program that is using lots of memory and computing power can compete with the browser causing delays. If you find your Internet connection running slowly and you have other programs running, try closing them. If you want to run several programs, consider increasing the memory you have on your computer. Low disk space can also cause performance problems. Computer woes: spyware, viruses, and other programs

Two of the most frequent causes of poor Internet performance are spyware and viruses. Spyware can slow your system by interfering with your browser and monopolizing your Internet connection. Spyware monitors your Internet use and keystrokes, which adds delays. The problem is compounded when there are multiple spyware programs running at the same time. If the problem is severe enough, you can lose connectivity altogether. To get your Internet performance back, you should regularly run an antispyware program to clean out any spyware infestation. Viruses and worms A virus is a segment of self-replicating code that attaches itself to application programs or to other executable system. These code segments move from program to program and machine to machine. They can replicate an indefinite number of times or as limited by their creator (Manheim, Marvin, 1992). They are just one type of malware (or malicious software). Other types include worms and trojan horses. Computer virus infections can: Cause erratic system behaviour, Harm, destroy or overwrite parts of the operating system or parts of files, Corrupt system software, Slow down system operations, Disable certain system functions, Prevent or inhibit access by system users, and Provide back doors for hackers as well as other tools to further spread the infection. Often, the term "virus" is used in the broader sense to include all types of malware. Network viruses spread by using popular network programs and protocols, such as SMTP, to spread themselves from one computer to another. Worms are similar to viruses in that they are spread from machine to machine, but worms typically do not have a malicious payload. While the goal of a virus is to steal data or damage computers, worms are simply intent on replicating as fast and as widely as possible. Trojan horses include software that masquerades as something useful (such as a utility or

game), but secretly installs malware on your machine. Viruses and worms sometimes use trojan horses as a vector for infection. If a user can be tricked into double-clicking an email attachment or other program, then the programs can infect the user's machine. Viruses can saturate a network with random traffic that can slow down a local area network and bring an Internet connection to a standstill. A virus will spread across your network much like the common flu will spread around a city. A network virus will typically start on a single PC, and then scan the entire local network looking for hosts to infect. It is this traffic that typically will kill the network. A single infected PC may not cause a big problem for the network, but as the number of infected PCs grows, the network traffic will grow exponentially. Another strategy viruses use is to send themselves through email. This type of virus will typically attempt to email itself to everyone in your address book with the intention of infecting them with the virus. Recently, more diabolical viruses have been found that create vast bot networks. These are used to send spam, perform DDoS attacks, or simply log traffic and send it back to a central location. These bots often use IRC as a control channel, where it receives further instructions (Flichenger etal. 2006). Viruses can indeed cause poor Internet performance. When a virus infects a computer, it installs computer code which will attempt to propagate itself, usually by sending copies of itself through e-mail. Some viruses can multiply at the rate of hundreds of e-mail messages per minute, which leaves little computing power and Internet connection bandwidth for anything else. Viruses often do not give any obvious indication that they are running, so it is best to run your antivirus software at all times. Browser add-ons also cause performance problems. Browser addons are programs, such as multimedia add-ons, search bars, or other programs that usually appear on your browser's toolbar. Many browser add-ons can add to a rich browsing experience, offering multimedia or specialized document viewing. However, some addons can slow your Internet connection. If you suspect that add-ons are causing slow performance, try starting Internet Explorer in Add-ons disabled mode. Add-ons are disabled only for the session, but if you find your performance improves, you can use the Add-on Manager to turn them off permanently. To access the Add-on Manager from Internet Explorer, click Tools, and then click Add-on Manager. Other malicious programs Trojan Horses A Trojan Horse is a code fragment that hides inside a program and performs a disguised function. It is a very popular mechanism for disguising a virus or a worm. The basic idea of this type of program is as old as the original Trojan Horse. The operation is as simple as it is dangerous. While the user is mesmerized by fantastic graphics displays, perhaps accompanied by music, the program reformats the hard drive-virtually unnoticed. Many viruses are known to hide in Trojan Horses, but Trojan Horses do not have the ability to replicate themselves, A recent example of such a Trojan Horse is the "AIDS" virus. Distributed to major corporations and PC user groups around the world, this virus arrives as a diskette entitled, "AIDS Information-An Introductory Diskette." When installed, the program immediately prints out an invoice for the software which asks that $378.00 be mailed to PC Cyborg Corporation in Panama. When it is rebooted, the system then selfdestructs. This virus has clearly perpetrated the largest single targeting of destructive code yet reported (Karen, 1994). Logic bomb A logic bomb is a set of instructions that will execute when certain conditions are met, usually resulting in a system error. The logic bomb is similar to the Trojan Horse in its programming and ability to damage data but has a built-in timing device so that it will

activate at a particular time. (Thus, logic bombs are often referred to as time bombs.) Virus programs often include coding similar to that used in logic bombs, but the bombs can be very destructive on their own, even if they lack the ability of the virus to reproduce. Several examples of the time or logic bomb method of attack are the so-called "Columbus Day" that strikes in October and the "Jerusalem-D" and "SYS-B," which will format the infected system's hard disk on any Friday the 13th after 1990. Trapdoors A trapdoor allows unauthorized access through hidden weakness in the code and thus provides easy access. Since the trapdoor is a secret, undocumented entry point into a module that exposes the system to modification during execution, this type of attack does not always produce a negative effect on the system. These viruses are commonly placed into authorized programs by the programmer as command insertions that aid in the testing stage. Also, auditors use trapdoors to trace the flow of specific transactions. Unfortunately, they can also evolve from poor error checking of a system's design; this allows unacceptable data to enter the system as acceptable, thus becoming a trapdoor. Trapdoors may be exploited by the original programmer or by individuals who accidentally or deliberately find vulnerability in the program. When used intentionally, trapdoors must be completely removed or tightly controlled. Worms A worm will burrow itself into the computer memory and attempt to replicate itself until the memory is exhausted, possibly triggering a system crash. A worm destroys data, but it does not replicate as a virus does. Worms were innocently invented at the Xerox Corporation laboratory, where early work on self-replicating programs has taken place. Worms and viruses are often confused as they share similar characteristics.

The Design of Department Local Area connection (LAN) When a local Area network through which you are connected to the Internet is poorly designed, this will surely affect all connections to the Internet through that LAN. Better results are obtained when there is a direct link from departments/units to the central server. When the degree of castigation of connecting computers is high i.e. connecting computers are far linked to the main departmental switch cutting across in some cases more than four other switches then connection speed will be high. Some departments may indeed, consider redesigning the LAN in order to improve internet connection. Changes in browser settings Occasionally, settings get changed in your browser that could possibly affect how the Browser works. You can reset your browser to its default settings. External factors that affect connection speeds Unfortunately, there are events and conditions that are outside your control. Even with a fast connection, external factors, such as busy websites can slow the entire web. Popular websites can become overwhelmed with users. If the website isn't prepared to handle the traffic, you might encounter delays. Local Internet congestion can also result in slower-

than-normal connection speeds. These slowdowns occur when many people try to connect to the Internet at the same time, and they occur most often at peak activity times. ISP (Local and International) Presently in the University of Ibadan, Internet communication is through the server at the management Information system unit (MIS), which also depends on an external service provider (Intelsat), anytime there are technical problems at any of these two ends, internet communication will surely be affected. Technical problems Technical problems may also occur in the users computer or the departmental network. Surely, internet service will be affected until such problems are rectified.

Improving Internet browsing performance The ultimate vision of the internet is a truly ubiquitous network where information flows freely to wherever humans can make use of it. It is likely that we will eventually build a network where there is sufficient bandwidth for all. But until this is achieved, we must continue to carefully manage network resources, ensuring that this limited resources is equitably accessible to everyone (Flichenger et al., 2006). As pointed out above, there are events and conditions that are outside your control in making effective use of the Internet. However, with the optimization techniques explained below, you can gain the largest benefits from existing connections to the Internet despite the limited bandwidth available to users. Optimize your web browser Every web browser includes options that will limit bandwidth usage. Some of these options include: Disable automatic updates. While keeping your browser software up-to-date is vitally important from a security point of view, updating in an ad-hoc and automatic way may waste significant bandwidth at peak times. Simply disabling automatic updates immediately reduces background bandwidth usage. You must remember to manually update the software when the network is not busy in order to apply security patches and feature updates.

In Windows XP or Vista, the default setting is to have XP scan for updates automatically. You should follow a specific routine for your updates (e.g. once in a week), this will assist in proper bandwidth usage and avoid your work from interrupted by persistent call for updates. You can disable windows update as follows: Open the System icon in Control Panel (or right-click My Computer and select Properties), and choose the Automatic Updates tab (in windows vista is upgrade windows vista). To check for updates manually, open Internet Explorer and select Windows Update from the Tools menu.

OR Open Control Panel, Select Performance and Maintenance, then Select System then select Automatic Updates

Even if you have enabled full automatic updating, Windows XP may only install critical updates. It's a good idea to check with Windows Update manually to make sure the updates you want are installed.

To disable automatic updates in your browser, follow the following steps:

In Firefox Go to the "Tools" menu and choose "Options." Click the "Advanced" icon. Select the "Update" tab. Change "Automatically download and install the update" to "Ask me what I want to do" and click OK.

This way, when Firefox finds a new update, it will ask you if you'd like to install it or not. You can wait to install it after you are safely out of Adobe Connect.

Increase the size of the local cache. If there are sufficient resources on the local machine, increase the browser size. More is generally better, but a cache of several hundred megabytes is usually reasonable.

Your browser cache is simply a place where your computer stores web pages, so when you go back to those pages it only has to download the changes, instead of downloading the entire page again. This saves considerable amounts of time and saves bandwidth for you and your Internet Service Provider. To increase your browser cache in recent versions of Internet Explorer, look up at the top of your browser and find the menu option labeled "Tools". Click it, and a drop down menu will display. Click the menu item labeled "Internet Options". A window will popup, and there will be several tabs at the top. You should be on the general tab, if you aren't click the tab labeled "General". There will be several buttons, click the one labeled "Settings". You will get yet another window popup, this one will have an option for "Amount of disk space to use:", and it

should have a slider bar. You can drag the slider bar to increase the size of your browser cache. When you're done, click OK on both windows. Close all Internet Explorer windows, and then start Internet Explorer. The changes should now have taken effect.

Older versions of Internet Explorer and other browsers, such as Netscape, Mozilla, AOL, Firefox, Opera, etc. may have different methods for increasing your browser cache size. If your computer seems to be running very slowly, you may need to clear your browsers cache.

To change cache size in Firefox Select 'Tools' Select 'Options'. Open 'Privacy' tab and select 'Cache' sub-category. In "Use up to ... MB of disk space for the cache" set how many MB of disk space you want to use for storing cache. The default size is 50MB. When you quit Firefox, it performs cache maintenance. If maintenance takes longer than you wish, you may decrease cache size.
Disable bandwidth-hungry plugins like Java and Flash. Unless a particular site requires Java for access, it can simply be disabled. Since the vast majority of Java and Flash applications are simple animations, games, and videos, there is rarely any need to download them except for entertainment purposes. Use the HTML version of sites that include both HTML and Flash options. Note that many sites require the use of JavaScript, which is significantly smaller and faster than Java, and can usually be enabled without any noticeable speed penalty. Disable pop-ups. Pop-up windows are unwanted advertisements containing large images or flash movies, and will automatically consume significant amounts of unintentionally requested bandwidth. Popups can be disabled in all modern browsers. Well-coded sites that require pop-up windows for functionality will still work, and the user can always allow pop-ups on a case by case basis.

Using Internet Explorer: From the Internet Explorer browser menu bar (usually located at the top of the browser) go to Tools, then Internet Options, then the Privacy tab. Ensure that you have pop-up blockers enabled by ensuring that the box next to the Block pop-ups option is ticked.

Click the Apply button and then OK

Alternatively, in Internet Explorer, you can go to Tools from the menu, then Pop-Up Blocker, and Turn ON Pop-Up Blocker. You can then go to Pop-Up Blocker Settings, list of allowed sites.

Using Firefox From the Firefox browser menu bar (usually located at the top of the browser) go to Tools, then Options, then the Web Features. Tick the box next to the Block Popup Windows option . Click the OK button.

If you have anti-virus software installed, be sure that it is set to allow pop-ups also. Also, if you have any toolbars - such as yahoo or google - ensure that they allow pop-ups Use ad blocking software. Ad blocking software gets rid of all annoying ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page. Ad Blocks software saves your time and traffic. By blocking ads before you download them, you can save bandwidth and reduce user frustration. Free and commercial ad blocking packages are available for every browser. For Mozilla Firefox, download and install the software free from any of the following sites: *AdBlock Plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1865/ * Element Hiding Helper - http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4364 * Filter Uploader - http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4042 After installing the software, right-click on a banner and choose "Adblock" from the context menu - the banner won't be downloaded again. Maybe even replace parts of the banner address with star symbols to block similar banners as well. Or you select a filter subscription when Adblock Plus starts up the first time, then even this simple task will usually be unnecessary: the filter subscription will block most advertisements fully automatically.

Install anti-spyware tools. Malicious sites may install spyware programs that consume bandwidth and introduce security problems. These attacks nearly always come through the web browser. Using a spyware detection and removal tool (such as Lavasoft AdAware) will keep these problems to a minimum. http://www./avasoftusa.com/ software/adaware/ Other fee programs that can be used to check for Spyware and Adware are Microsoft Defender, Spybot, Adaware. Once installed, you should run them regularly - Defender defaults to an automatic schedule and you can set it to daily or weekly, the others should be run once a month or so.

Ensure Full Virus protection on your system and update it on regular Running antivirus software is very important but is only successful if the sig natures are updated regularly. Commercial Antivirus packages offer greater capabilities however, some free windows virus Packages can be installed: AVG Free Edition http://free.grisoft.com/ Avira Personal edition http://www.freeav.com/ Avast Free http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html There are lots of commercial antivirus vendors that will give very good pricing to academic institutions.
Use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Although it is the default browser on most Windows boxes, IE is a notorious attack point for spyware and viruses, and is widely considered obsolete since the release of Mozilla Firefox

(http://www.mozilla.comlfirefox/). I.E. will attract at least 60% more spyware than Firefox. Since it is an open source project, Mozilla Firefox has a very large and flexible set of extensions that allow you to configure and optimise just about every aspect of how the browser works. One popular extension is FireTune (http://www.totalidea.com/contentlfiretune/firetune-index.htm/) , which groups many common optimization options into a simple, easy to understand menu. Other extensions provide excellent content filtering, presentation, and download optimization features.

Temporarily disable images. For many kinds of online work, graphical images may not be required. Since graphic files are considerably larger than HTML code, disabling the display of images (even temporarily) can significantly improve response time and reduce bandwidth use. If possible, configure your browser to only display graphics when explicitly requested. To do this, follow
these steps:

1. Open Internet explorer 2. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options. 3. Click the Advanced tab, and then verify that the Show Pictures check box is not (checked) selected under Multimedia. 4. Click OK. You can always negate the above steps to display pictures when you feel like.
The most effective bandwidth optimization tool is simply refraining from requesting information that you don't need especially during peak network times. The more you request from a busy network, the longer everyone will have to wait for their requests to be filled. Be considerate of your fellow network users, and your network will be healthier and faster.

Optimise your email Web browsing and email are the most commonly used services on the Internet. Just as you can optimise your web browser to minimise bandwidth usage, there are many steps you can take as a user to make your email work better too. Don't use web mail. Sites such as Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail use significantly more bandwidth than do traditional email services. With graphics, advertisements, and an HTML interface, an individual email may represent thousands of times the number of bytes of the equivalent text email. The university network provides email services via its mail server. Subscribe at the Management Information systems unit and get a personalized email account (log in id and password). Presently it cost only N1000.00 (one thousand Naira) per month which will be deducted from your salary. Plans are on the way to improve the performance of the network and to provide more services and software protection for individual computers. To access the university email service follow the following steps: Open Internet explorer or Firefox Type (at the address bar) the following URL http://www.ui.edu.ng select webmail from the main menu item (top right) log in using your id and password as requested

1. 2. 3. 4.

You can latter download your mail using Microsoft outlook so that you can read them offline. Send emails in plain text, not HTML. HTML emails are bigger than their

equivalents in plain text, so it is preferable to send plain text emails to reduce bandwidth requirements. Most email clients let you set plain text as the default format, and/or on a per email basis. As well as reducing the amount of bandwidth needed, you'll also benefit from your email being less likely to be treated as spam by the recipient. Limit the use of attachments. While it is possible to send colossally huge files through email, the protocol wasn't really designed for this use. Instead of sending a large file to a group of people, post the file to a web server and send the link instead. This will not only speed up your own email, but it will save significant bandwidth for everyone receiving the message. If you must include an attachment, make it as small as possible. You can use a compression utility to reduce the size of the file (WinZip is one popular commercial tool, but many free alternatives exist. One list of WinZip alternatives is http://freebackup.info/free-winzip.htm/). If the attachment is a photograph, reduce the image size to something reasonable, such as 1024x768 or 800x600. This size is usually fine for on-screen viewing, and is significantly smaller than a raw 3+ Megapixel image. In addition, websites exist which allow files to be uploaded and included in the email as a link. This allows recipients to choose whether or not to download the file. One such service is Dropload, http://www.dropload.com/. Don't send spam. Junk email (commonly referred to as spam) comes in many guises. While we are all familiar with the "get rich quick" and "improve your love life" variety, other kinds are more subtle. One example of this is the so-called "boycott" email, where someone sends you a petition for a popular cause (such as lowering gasoline prices or changing an unjust law). You are instructed to "sign" the petition with your email address, and send it to six of your friends. These messages are completely fabricated by spammers who then use the collected email addresses as targets for more spam. These kinds of scams are easily avoided if you ask yourself, "what will really happen if I send this message with my email address to total strangers?" The answer: wasted bandwidth, with the promise of more wasted bandwidth to follow.

You can improve your computers internet performance There are a number of things that can cause degradation of your Computer's performance. There are couple of things you can do yourself to improve your computer performance. Generally, a computer with regular maintenance operates far better than one without any form of maintenance at all. Hardware Some questions you should answer are:

How big are your disk drives? How much RAM is installed on your system? Given adequate processor speed and disk performance, this is probably the most important question. What is your processor speed and type?

A good rule of thumb, especially if you are buying a new system, is to get as much disk and RAM as you can afford. Insufficient memory has a direct bearing on how fast programs run. Insufficient RAM Memory means that your computer will make use of temporary disk space instead. Disk space memory (called virtual memory) is much slower so your computer slows down. If you have added new programs or changed how you use your computer, you may need more memory. Computers running Windows XP need a

minimum of 256MB and 512MB is recommended. If you use a photo editing program like PhotoShop or if you often have many programs open simultaneously you will need more. You can find out how much RAM you have by going to Start>Control Panel>System. It's shown on the bottom of the first page. Adding memory requires that you buy additional memory (of the right kind) and open your computer box. Good instructions on this are usually included in the manual that came with your computer. Otherwise, you might want to get help All windows vista OS must have a minimum of 1GB RAM for optimum performance. Processor Intel Pentium processors are generally more efficient in performance than Celeron processors. You can notice this when you are downloading pages that have a lot of graphics, pictures or video. This will load very slowly or even half way on Celeron based Processors. The Celeron chip is based on a Pentium 4 core. Celeron chips have less cache memory (Cache technology is the use of a faster but smaller memory type to accelerate a slower but larger memory type), than Pentium 4 chips do. A Celeron might have 128 kilobytes of L2 cache, while a Pentium 4 can have four times that. The amount of L2 cache memory can have a big effect on performance. Intel manufactures the Pentium 4 chips to run at a higher clock speed than Celeron chips. The fastest Pentium 4 might be 60 percent faster than the fastest Celeron. There are differences in the maximum bus speeds that the processors allow. Pentium 4s tend to be about 30 percent faster than Celerons. Consider upgrading your processor to Intel Pentium, your system will surely improve when browsing and generally in performance. Processor speed will be good for things such as running Java, animated GIFs and VRML. It's a good idea to get more than one disk if you can. This allows you to spread your files over the disks and thus improve performance. It's even better to install more than one disk controller, as this spreads out the I/O even more. Hard Disk Your hard disk should have about 25% or more of its capacity free. For example, a 60GB disk should have 15GB free. This number shows up in Disk properties or in My Computer details. If the free space is very small you will get warning messages and some operations will be slow or freeze but 25% should be plenty for all situations except possibly installing large new programs. Disks can have problems although they are usually rare in recent years. However, it is still a good idea to make regular backups.

Operating System Which operating system are you using? If you are not running any Microsoft-based application program that may not be support in Linux plat form, I will suggest that you install Linux Operating system instead of windows operating system. Linux is an open source software that is not prone to virus attack as Microsoft windows is. It comes with inbuilt Office application for processing of documents, thus with Linux fully installed, you do not need to buy separate office application packages. Most versions of Linux OS are free. Linux OS has features that accelerate Internet access and diagnoses of access problems. Indeed, with Linux operating, you can achieve a lot of things that hitherto you can not achieve in windows environment. Moreover you can partition your hard disk (if it

has enough space), so that it can support two different OS e.g. Linux and Microsoft Windows. Microsoft windows OS is equally good but is very much prone to virus attack.

Things to do in software Acquire licensed software and avoid Pirated software: greater percentages of software intalled on systems in most institutions are pirated softwarethere is always a price to pay on every free item These pirated copies of software can never perform as the original commercial copies. They can be sources of Computer virus and worms that breaks down systems. People often complain on cost as the major driving force in patronization of pirated software but consider what you may loose when your system breaks down as a result of pirated software or virus attack through the pirated software it may surely be more than the cost of the licensed software. More over with licensed software you can get technical support and updates from the vendors, they also come with manuals and there are usually academic prices. Learn to budget on software just as you budget on hardware. A computer is made up of the two broad subcomponents. Avoid unnecessary (mostly free) downloads and upgrades. Most of them are the sources of malicious programs that break down or degrade your system. Download only from authorised, reliable sources mostly trusted organisational pages and sites. Take advantage of your browser cache. Make it large and, if possible, put it on another disk drive. This does introduce the annoyance of possibly looking at old pages (a refresh will cure that), but it will make your surfing faster. Tips for wireless network users When connecting to a wireless network (Wi-Fi), your Internet connection speed can be affected by both where your computer is located and whether other wireless devices are in the same area. Wireless networks operate on frequencies that are similar to those used by other devices, such as microwave ovens or cordless phones (Some models of Panasonic, Siemen and Jabra handsets). Operating a 2.4 gigahertz (GHz) cordless phone next to your 2.4 GHz wireless laptop can cause interference, or completely block the wireless network connection. If you want to make phone calls while surfing the web, either use a wired telephone or cordless phone that operates at a different frequency than your wireless network. Proximity to the wireless access point or router, as well as physical obstructions, can affect the quality of your Internet connection. To improve your connection speed, move closer to the access point and make sure that there are no physical obstructions between the access point and your computer. Never enable both LAN and wireless network capabilities at the same time i.e. if you are making use of the university wireless capability to connect to the Internet then disconnect the LAN line (twisted copper wire) before connecting to the Internet. Enabling the two will lead to interference of signals which will surely affect your utilization of Internet facilities. Open one window at a time Discipline yourself to opening one browsing window at a time. You can close it later before opening another window. In this way, you are helping yourself and others on better

management of the university costly bandwidth. You definitely can not be working on twenty computers at the same time.

Read your mails offline

Most web based email services (yahoo, hotmail, justice etc), that people use for sending and receiving mails use the Hypertext transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP protocol is not a protocol dedicated for email communications, but it can be used for accessing your mailbox. This protocol can be used to compose or retrieve emails from your account. The process is connection oriented. That means, once you log in to read your mails or to send mails, you are connected to the web mail server (taking some bandwidth), and you will remain connected till you log out of the web mail. Even when you log off and want to check mail gain, you still have to get connected to the web server.
You can configure Microsoft outlook to download your mails from the university mail server so that you can read them offline. By this action, you are freeing the bandwidth for others to use thereby preventing traffic congestion on the Net.

To Set Up Your E-mail Account in Microsoft Outlook Express (Note that in Windows Vista OS, Outlook Express has been replaced by Windows Mail), follow the following steps: Log in to the University network using your ID and password. 1. In Microsoft Outlook Express, from the Tools menu, select Accounts.

2. Go to the Mail tab and from the Add menu, select Mail.

3. In the Display Name field, enter you full name and click Next.

4. In the E-mail address field, enter your email address and click Next.

bc.obilor@mail.ui.edu.ng

5. On the E-mail Server Names page, enter your information as follows: My incoming mail server is a: Select POP3. Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server Type mail.ui.edu.ng Outgoing mail (SMTP) server Type mail.ui.edu.ng Click Next.

bc.obilor@mail.ui.edu.ng

bc.obilor@mail.ui.edu.ng

6. In the Account Name and Password fields, enter your email address and password, and then click Next .

bc.obilor@mail.ui.edu.ng

7. On the setup confirmation page, click Finish.

Your Outlook Express account is now set up. Click Close to close the Internet Accounts window and return to your Outlook Express. Once you have set up your Outlook Express, you do not have to set it up again each time you want to download mails. All you need to do is to click on the Send/Receive icon button on the main menu or select it from the tools menu. To Use Outlook instead of Outlook Express to achieve the same as above follow the following steps: In Outlook, go to the Tools menu and click on Email Accounts. 1. Select Add a new email account and then click Next. 2. Select POP3 and then click Next. 3. Enter your email information: o Your Name: your name o Email Address: the email address the messages will be sent from o Incoming Mail server (POP3): mail.ui.edu.ng o Outgoing Mail server (SMTP): mail.ui.edu.ng o User Name: the email address used to log into the web mail interface o Password: the password for the email address 4. Click Ok. Click Next. Click Finish.

CONFIGURING OUTLOOK TO USE WEB MAILS E.G. YAHOO OR HOTMAIL You can also configure Outlook Express to use your Yahoo Account so that you can download and read mails off line from your yahoo account. Additionally, you can keep a large amount of e-mail without overflowing the storage available to you at Yahoo. However, you must be using either a Yahoo Mail Plus account ($19.99 per year) or a Yahoo Business Email account (($9.95 per month). Yahoo blocked the viewing of their free email accounts through email clients (Outlook/Outlook Express/Mozilla etc) in April 2002. It offers that function only to subscribers who pay for Yahoo Mail Plus or Yahoo Business Email account. If you have the paid, Mail Plus or Business subscription then follow the following steps to configure your outlook express to download mails from your yahoo account. 1. From the Tools menu, choose "Accounts." 2. Select the "Mail" tab. 3. Click the "Add" button. 4. From the Add menu, click "Mail." 5. In the text box labeled Display Name, type your name and click "Next." 6. In the Email Address box, type your Yahoo! Mail address (be sure to include "@yahoo.com") and click "Next." 7. Under "My incoming mail server is a..." select "POP3." 8. Type "pop.mail.yahoo.com" in the Incoming Mail (POP3, IMAP, or HTTP) Server

box. 9. Type "smtp.mail.yahoo.com" in the Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server box. 10. Click "Next." 11. In the Account Name box, type your Yahoo! Mail ID (your email address without the "@yahoo.com"). 12. In the Password box, type your Yahoo! Mail password. 13. If you want Outlook Express to remember your password, check the "Remember password" box. 14. Do not check the boxes labeled "Log on using Secure..." 15. Click "Next." 16. Click "Finish." Important: The Yahoo! Mail SMTP server now requires authentication. To turn this setting on: 1. From the Tools menu, choose "Accounts." 2. Select the "Mail" tab. 3. Double-click the account labeled "pop.mail.yahoo.com." 4. Select the "Servers" tab. 5. Check the box next to "My Server Requires Authentication." 6. Click "OK." To control deletion of messages from the Yahoo! Mail Server: 1. From the Tools menu, choose "Accounts." 2. Select the "Mail" tab. 3. Double-click the account labeled "pop.mail.yahoo.com." 4. Select the "Advanced" tab. 5. In the Delivery section at the bottom of the window, check "Leave a copy of messages on server" if you want to save your Yahoo! Mail messages on the Yahoo! Mail server as well as on your local computer. Do not check this box if you want your messages to be deleted from the Yahoo! Mail server once you have received them in Outlook Express. If you're unable to send email, then you will need to use port 587 instead of port 25 when sending via Yahoo!'s SMTP server. To make this change, follow the directions below: 1. From the "Tools" menu, select "Accounts" 2. Select your Yahoo! POP account and click on the "Properties" button 3. Click on the "Advanced" tab 4. Next to "Outgoing server (SMTP), change port 25 to 587 5. Click "Apply", then click "OK" and "Close"

Use of third party software You can also use a free third party software to achieve the abov operation (of configuring your Outlook Express to work with yahoo). So you have to install a thirdparty application to access Yahoo mail into your Outlook Express client. YPOPs! is an application that provides POP3 access to Yahoo Mail. This application emulates a POP3 server and enables popular e-mail clients such as Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, Mozilla, etc., to download e-mail from Yahoo accounts. This application is more like a gateway. It provides a POP3 server interface at one end to talk to e-mail clients and an HTTP client (browser) interface at the other that allows it to talk to Yahoo. YahooPOPs is a freeware (GPL) application. You can download YahooPOPs!/Windows version 0.6 (filesize 1.13MB) from the following URL: http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file =index&req=viewsdownload&sid=2. 1. To download Yahoo mail into your Outlook Express, please follow these steps: First, you will have to install YahooPOPs application. Then start yahoopops by start - Programs - YahooPOPs - YahooPOPs. This will sit on the system tray. 2. Next, you will have to configure Yahoo mail account into your Outlook Express e-mail client. 3. Open your Outlook Express e-mail client. Click on Tools - Accounts. Click the Add button, select Mail from the popup. 4. In the Display name text box, please type your full name or whatever you would like people to see in the `From' field and click Next. 5. Enter your Yahoo e-mail address and click Next. Select POP3 as `My incoming mail server.' 6. Please type `localhost' as your Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server and type `localhost' as the Outgoing mail (SMTP) server and click Next. 7. In the Account name field, type your full Yahoo e-mail address (accountname@yahoo.co.in). In the Password field, enter your Yahoo password. If you do not wish to type in your password every time you check your mail, please tick the Remember password box and click Next. Then click Finish. Now in the Internet Accounts window, 8. click on the new account named localhost and click Properties. Select `Servers' tab and in the bottom tick the checkbox of `My server requires authentication' and click Settings button. 9. Select `Log on using' and enter your Yahoo Mail address as the Account name and your Yahoo Mail password as the password. Next select the `Advanced' tab and increase the Server Timeout to `Long' (5 minutes). 10. Click OK and close. Now your configuration settings are ended. Please note that when you check Yahoo mails on Outlook Express, you will have to make sure that the YahooPOPs stay on system tray. If you do not invoke YahooPOPs application, you will get an error message.

Now just by clicking the Send/Recieve button of Outlook Express, you will receive Yahoo mails in your inbox folder. If you would like to receive Yahoo mails separately, either use mail rule to move Yahoo mails to one folder or Add new Identity in Outlook Express and repeat the above procedure on the new Identity.

Log Off when you are not using the Internet facilities If you are not doing any processing activity that warrants connection to the Internet then do not log in to the university network and if you do log in, log off immediately after you finished surfing the net, you can always log in latter. By this, you assist the local saver concentrate computing power on computers that are presently connected. Use Meta Search Engines other than search directories A meta search engine is a search engine of search engines. In a meta-search engine, you submit keywords in its search box, and it transmits your search simultaneously to several individual search engines and their databases of web pages. Within a few seconds, you get back results from all the search engines queried. Meta-search engines do not own a database of Web pages; they send your search terms to the databases maintained by search engine companies. "Smarter" meta-searcher technology includes clustering and linguistic analysis that attempts to show you themes within results, and some fancy textual analysis and display that can help you dig deeply into a set of results. However, neither of these technologies is any better than the quality of the search engine databases they obtain results from. Leading Meta search Engines include:

www.clusty.com www.dogpile.com www.mamma.com www.copernic.com

Troubleshooting your Connection When your system fails to connect to the internet, you can do some level of troubleshooting to sort out the problem. Firstly, find out if the problem is local or external i.e. It is just that you alone can not connect or every other person in the department/faculty/university can not connect. To answer this question, you can find out from your office neighbours if they are having the same problem. If the problem is general, you just have to be patient till it is rectified. If it is your system alone that is not connecting, then take the following steps: (a) Ensure that the network cable (twisted copper wires) is well connected - it should be blinking with lights at the port connection to your system. If you are connecting through wireless access point, ensure that you are within a domain that signals can be received. If the network cable is unplugged or not connected, the Local Area network icon on your

taskbar (represented by two tinny computers, superimposed on each other), will show a red cross line on the icon.

If the network icon is not showing follow the following steps to restore it: 1. right click on my network places (Windows XP) 2. Select Properties 3. right click on the displayed LAN icon on the Network connection window that is displayed 4. select properties In the local area connection window that is displayed, check the Show icon in the notification Area when connected, also check the Notify me when this connection has limited or no connected boxes

5. Click Ok b. Check the status of your system to ensure that your system is receiving signals i. right click on my network places (Windows XP) ii. Select Properties iii. right click on the displayed LAN icon on the Network connection window that is displayed iv. select Status

(e) Click on close

(c) Renew your IP address 1. Right click on the Local area connection icon on the taskbar 2. Select Repair

(If you get a different message rather than the one in the window shown above, it implies that there are still some connection problems). Try reconnecting again after renewing your IP address. (d) Enable your LAN if it is disabled. i. ii. iii. iv. right click on my network places (Windows XP) Select Properties right click on the displayed LAN icon on the Network connection window that is displayed select Enable if is activated

MAINTAINING YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM

WHEN YOUR SYSTEMS SUDDENLY BECOMES TOO SLOW Run an Antivirus program and Spyware removal program. Clear your cache (Temporary Internet Files)
To clear cache in Firefox 2.0: Select 'Tools' Select 'Options'. Select 'Privacy'. In Private area click 'Clear Now'. In 'Clear Private Data' window put the check mark for 'Cache' and click 'Clear Private Data Now'. Click OK To clear cache in Internet Explorer 6.x/5.x Open 'Tools' menu. Select 'Internet Options'. Open 'General tab'. In 'Temporary Internet files' area click 'Delete Files' button. Click OK in 'Delete Files' dialog box to clear cache.

Run Check Disk - In Windows XP, Go to My Computer>Right click on drive C> select properties>Select Tools> Check Now>Start. Remember you click on Automatically fix system errors and also on Scan for and attempt recovering of bad sectors In Windows XP when you do this, it will say that it needs to run at start up - when it does this, choose y (=yes) and press enter. Next time you start your Computer, Check Disk will run and look for any signs of disk failure. Cleanup - You probably have all kinds of junk on your computer's disk that is not needed. You can find and erase what you don't want by using the Windows Disk Cleanup Utility. Go to Start>All Programs> Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup. After a minute or two, the program will list all files that you can safely delete. Check all the files you do not need. DeFrag - When a computer saves a file on a disk, it puts it in a semi-random location. In some cases - especially large files - it needs to split the file into more than one location so the file becomes fragmented. Reading a file that is fragmented is slightly slower than a contiguous one. If your disk is close to full, fragmentation is a lot more likely. Doing a DeFrag is a slow process but worth doing occasionally. Before you start, turn off your screen saver and close any program you have running (e.g. e-mail) to stop the process being interrupted. To stop your screen saver, go to Start>Control Panel>Display>Screen saver (or Start>Control Panel>Appearance and Themes>Display>Screen Saver ) and in the drop down menu under Screen Saver, choose none. (When you are finished with the Defrag, go back and choose the screen saver previously selected.) Now go to Start>All Programs> Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter. Choose the disk you want to Defrag (e.g. C:) and select

Defragment. It will first analyse and report - it may say you don't need to defrag in which case stop! The process could take an hour or two. Unwanted Software - If you have had your computer a while, you will have software installed that you don't ever use. You should remove these programs. The easiest way is to go to Start>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs. Then look down the list for anything you don't use. If you don't know what it is, leave it alone - you may need it but not know it! Then, one at a time, click unwanted ones and select Remove.

YOUR SYSTEM STOPS RESPONDING FREEZES OR HANGS Your Computer operating system may enter a state of dead lock. In such situation, you should reset your system to restart. If the problem persists then run system restore. System Restore - This applies to Windows XP. If you make a change to your computer and you now have a problem (e.g. you installed a new program, the computer behaves slow or badly and uninstall did not fix it), you can go back to where you were before with System Restore. To access the System Restore dialog, go to Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore. (You can also get here via the Control Panel and System). To restore to an earlier time, select Restore my Computer to an earlier time. You can also select a particular date to restore from.

If the hanging occurs at the booting process then while trying to boot, press F8 key repeatedly. When prompted for booting options, select start Computer with the last known Good Configuration.
CONCLUSION The provision of easy access to computers for all staff and the guarantee of information and communication technology to postgraduate institutions should be considered basic infrastructure for meaningful education in the 21st century (Adesogan, 2005). Internet connectivity has been very crucial for scientists, researchers and academics of the developing countries in keeping them in constant touch with their colleagues in the Western world. The need for connectivity has become very critical in recent times as several conference and meetings are planned and organized through the Internet. Many institutions of higher learning in developing countries now integrate computer, the telephone and wireless technology in order to achieving cost effective Internet networking. Recent advances in digital radio and digital signal processing that form the basis of cellular and satellite communication have reached a degree of maturity. By applying user optimization techniques the effectiveness of available connections can be significantly improved. A future trend is to facilitate better exchange of scientific information, data and literature among researchers all over the world with the hope that the process will enable every scientist to become part of the scientific enterprise no matter where geographically she is located with respect to the main centres of modern science. To achieve this objective, requires not just appreciate bandwidth and computing equipment but also users knowledge and right attitude to the use of existing internet connection. The Internet as a medium for research and communication should be viewed as a paradigm of the larger question of how we deal with value-laden questions associated with technological advances and the capabilities they offer (Obilor, 2004).

Acknowledgements My gratitude to God who created me in His image and likeness and planned that I will graduate and work in the University of Ibadan and still have better plans for me. I am deeply grateful to all the vessels He has been using to accomplish the plans that He has for me, particularly: My late Dad Mr. Paul Nzegbula obilor who thought me how to make the sign of the cross, Dr and Mrs ESD Afrifa, My dear and loving wife Mrs Ngozichukwuka Obilor, my academic mentor and encouraging father, Prof. Idowu Iweibo. I must remember Professors Adesomoju, Osibanjo, Oderinde, A.T. Hassan, and the present dean of Science Prof. T.I. Odiaka, just to mention but a few. These great professors have touched my life by their simple, humble and Godly attitude to life. Despite the big academic and age gap, they accepted me as a colleague and not just a small boy, I thank you all immensely. I remain indebted to Members of the Commonwealth Science Council that sponsored me to a Conference in Spain in 2002, the Abdus Salam International Centre for theoretical Physics (ICTP) and the University of Ibadan that partly sponsored me to a conference in Italy in 2006 on Bandwidth Management. And lastly but not the least, my appreciation to all my friends and members of staff of: Computing Centre, Computer Science Department, Chemistry Department, Africa Regional Centre for Information Science (ARCIS) and the entire faculty of Science staff and students.

REFERENCES Adesogan E.K. , (2005), Reminiscences of 45 years at the University of Ibadan: A bleak future for University Education in Nigeria, if, A valedictory Lecture delivered on 26th August 2005 at the lecture theatre., pp. 51. Berners-Lee, T. (1990), "Intended uses for hypertext at CERN" http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Uses.html, retrieved on March 02, 2008 Federal Networking Council (FNC) Resolution, 1995. 'Definition of the Internet', http://www.itrd.gov/fnc/Internet_res.html, March 2008 Flickenger R., Belcher M., Canessa E., Zennaro M., (2006) How to Accelerate Your Internet, INASP/ICTP, 2006, pp. 105-106,174,254 Internet WorldStats, 2007, Usage and population Statictics http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm March 02 2008 Jagboro, K.O., (2003) A study of Internet usage in Nigerian universities: A case study of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria First Monday, volume 8, number 2. Karen A. Forcht, 1994, Computer Security Management, boyd & fraser (Maccachusetts), pp. 269-270.

Leiner, B.M, Cerf, V.G. D.D. Clark, R.E. Kahn, L. Kleinrock, D.C. Lynch, J. Postel, L.G. Roberts and S. Wolff, 2000. "A brief history of the Internet," at http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml. Retrieved on February 20 2008. Manheim, M. L. (1992), Global Information Technology: Issues and Strategic Opportunities, International Information systems, January 1992, pp. 38. Obilor B.C., 2004, The Internet as a Catalyzing Agent in Scientific Research Challenges and Prospects, Bulletin of Science Association of Nigeria, Vol. 25 (2004), 297-310.

Peters and Lankshear (1996), UCSB Library Newsletter for Faculty, 1996. "Why we buy fewer books and journals: The continuing crisis in scholarly communication, Part II," University of California at Santa Barbara (Spring).

Remondino, F., Chen, T., 2004, 35 years of Internet, 10 years of ISPRS online Invited Paper. International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. XXXV-B6. XXth ISPRS Congress, Istanbul, Turkey, July 2004
Richard W. S., (1994), TCP/IP Illustrated, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts. 1994. Volume 1, The Protocols.

Shuler R, 2005, How Does the Internet Work? http://www.theshulers.com/whitepapers/internet_whitepaper/index.html, retrieved on Feb. 16 2008. Singh, A.M. (2002), "The Internet Strategy for optimum utilization in South Africa," South African Journal of Information Management, volume 4, issue 1, (March). Slabbert, N.J, 2006, The Future of Urbanization How Teletechnology is Shaping a New Urban Order. Harvard International Review, http://www.grantham.edu/public/download/ 2006_06_19_HarvardReview.pdf, Walt, H., (2007), A brief History of the Internet, http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html, retrieved on March 02 , 2008. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2008,Internet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet, February 20, 2008.

Appendix Educational resources on the Web The possibility to find academic articles, reports, journals or entire books on the Web is very high. The table below shows list of some very useful educational resources on the web Educational Resource Gateway to Educational Materials http://www.thegateway.org Remark A general database of educational material, a consortium effort created to provide easy access to the substantial, but uncataloged, collections of educational materials available on various federal, state, university, nonprofit, and commercial Internet sites. It is a huge database including electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, listservs, online library card catalogues, articles and directories of researchers and many other types of information.

Infomine (http://infomine.ucr.edu/).

NASA (http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov), ASPRS specific resources in Remote (http://research.umbc.edu/~tbenja1), CCRS Sensing (http://www.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/ccrs/learn/learn_e.html) and CEOS CD-ROM (http://ceos.cnes.fr:8100/).

List of some useful sites Scirus (www.scirus.com) Enables scientists, students and anyone searching for scientific information to chart and pinpoint data, locate university sites and find reports and articles quickly and easily. Chemie.DE (www.chemie.de) Directory and search engine for information about chemistry. Click on the search engine link on the home page to search.

ResearchIndex (CiteSeer) http://www.researchindex.com ResearchIndex (formerly called CiteSeer) is a computer science research search engine with a number of unique capabilities, including citation indexing, links to related and similar documents, bibliographic coupling and collaborative filtering. Computer Science Research Papers(http://cora.whizbang.com) Cora allows you to search for computer science research papers in PostScript format from universities and labs all over the world. Biocrawler (www.biologie.de) Directory and search engine for biological information. Biolinks (www.biolink.com) A search engine for scientists, with links to journals, organizations, companies and more. It spiders the web and has human-categorized results. SciSeek (www.sciseek.com) SciSeek is a focused web directory created by human editors. Its a useful tool for browsing for information in a specific scientific area. iCivil Engineer (www.iciviengineer.com) catalogs Internet resources of civil engineering technology; covering all disciplines: architectural, construction, environmental, geotechnical hydraulic, structural, surveying and transportation PSI Polymer Search on the Internet (www.polymer-search.com/home/) Search engine for the global polymer, plastic and rubber industries. Includes daily industry news. SStreams (www.sstreams.com) A directory of technical computing oriented links. Top categories are high-level programming languages like MATLAB, LabVIEW, Mathematica, and others.