Chapter 2 - The Internet and the World Wide Web

I. Chapter Overview and Objectives

This chapter discusses the history and how the Internet works, since one of the major
reasons users purchase computers is for Internet access. It describes at length the
World Wide Web, including topics such as browsing, navigating, e-commerce, and
Web publishing. It also presents services available on the Internet, such as
e-mail, FTP, newsgroups and message boards, mailing lists, chat rooms, and instant
messaging.
After completing this chapter, students will be able to:
1. Discuss the history of the Internet
2. Explain how to access and connect to the Internet
3. Analyze an IP address
4. Identify the components of a Web address
5. Explain the purpose of a Web browser
6. Search for information on the Web
7. Describe the types of Web sites
8. Recognize how Web pages use graphics, animation, audio, video, virtual reality,
and plug-ins
9. Describe the types of e-commerce
10. Explain how e-mail, FTP, newsgroups and message boards, mailing lists, chat
rooms, and instant messaging work
11. Identify the rules of netiquette
12. Identify the steps and tools required for Web publishing
II. The Internet
A. What is the Internet?
1. A network is a collection of computers and devices connected together via
communications devices and media such as modems, cables, telephone lines
and satellites.
2. The Internet is the world's largest network. The Internet, also called the
Net, is a worldwide collection of networks that links millions of businesses,
government agencies, educational institutions, and individuals.
3. Today, more than one-half billion users connect to the Internet for a variety of
reasons.
B. Objective 1 - Discuss the history of the Internet
1. Started, in 1969, with four computers at the University of California at Los
Angeles, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford Research
Institute, and the University of Utah.
2. Initial work funded by an agency of the Department of Defense, Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
3. The Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (ARPA’s) goal was to build a
network, called ARPANET, that:

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 1) Allowed scientists at different locations to share information and work
together on military and scientific projects and
2) Could function even if part of the network was disabled or destroyed by a
disaster such as a nuclear attack.
4. Today, the Internet consists of many local, regional, national, and international
networks.
5. Both public and private organizations own networks on the Internet.
6. Each organization on the Internet is responsible only for maintaining its own
network.
7. No single person, company, institution, or governmental agency controls
or owns the Internet.
8. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), composed of several groups,
oversees research and sets standards and guidelines for many areas of the
Internet.
C. Internet2
1. Internet2 is a not-for-profit Internet related research and development project
whose focus is to improve on the inefficiencies of the Internet, especially to
relieve bottlenecks in the current architecture.
2. Members include more than190 universities in the United States, along with
more than 60 companies and the U.S. government.
D. How the Internet works
1. Data sent over the Internet travels via networks and communications media
owned and operated by many companies.
2. Objective 2 - Explain how to access and connect to the Internet
1) Most employees and students connect to the Internet through a business or
school network. These networks usually use a high-speed line leased
from a local telephone company to connect to an access provider.
2) Many home and small businesses connect to the Internet with dial-up
access, which uses a modem in the computer and a standard telephone
line. Dial-up access provides an easy and inexpensive way for users to
connect to the Internet.
3) Some home and small business users opt for higher-speed connections,
such as DSL, ISDN, or cable television Internet services. DSL (Digital
Subscriber Line) and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) are
technologies that provide higher-speed using regular copper telephone
lines. Some experts predict DSL will replace ISDN because it is much
easier to install and can provide faster data transfer speeds. A cable
modem provides high-speed connections through the cable television
network. These services (DSL, ISDN, and cable television) cost about
twice as much as dial-up access, but are normally always on and do not
need re-connections to the Internet.
4) Wireless Internet access enables mobile users and others to connect to the
Internet via satellites or cellular radio network connections.
3. Access Providers
1) An access provider is a business that provides individuals and companies
access to the Internet for a fee.

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 2) An Internet service provider (ISP) is a regional or national provider that
allows users to access the Internet, normally for a fee.
a) Two types of ISPs are a regional ISP and a national ISP.
1) A regional ISP usually provides Internet access to a specific
geographical area; like Computron, Brazosport College, and Trip
Net.
2) A national ISP is a larger business that provides Internet access in
several major cities and towns nation wide; like AT&T World Net
and EarthLink.
3) An online service provider (OSP) supplies Internet access, but an OSP
has many members-only features that offer a variety of special content and
services such as news; weather, legal information; financial data; hardware
and software guides; games; and travel guides. The two most popular are
America Online (AOL) and Microsoft Network (MSN).
4) A wireless service provider (WSP) is a company that provides wireless
Internet access to users with wireless modems or Web-enabled mobile
devices.
E. How Data Travels the Internet
1. Computers connected to the Internet transfer data and information using
servers and clients, which use the main communication lines on the network
referred to as the backbone.
2. A server, or host computer, is a computer that manages the resources on a
network and provides a centralized storage area for resources.
3. A client is a computer that can access data, information, and services on a
server.
4. According to Figure 2-3, on page 2.07, how data might travel the Internet
using a dial-up connection is as follows:
1) You request data from the Internet, by clicking on a hyperlink or by typing
in a Web page address.
2) A modem converts the digital signals into analog signals, which are
carried by telephone lines.
3) The request travels through telephone lines to a regional ISP.
4) Data may pass through one or more routers before reaching its final
destination.
5) The regional ISP uses lines, leased from a telephone company to send data
to a national ISP.
6) A national ISP routes data through the Internet backbone to another
national ISP.
7) Data moves from a national ISP to a regional ISP and then to a destination
server (in this example, the server contains the requested Web page or Web
site).
8) The server retrieves the requested data (a Web page) and sends it back
through the Internet backbone to your computer.

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F. Internet Addresses
Objective 3 - Analyze an IP address
1. The Internet relies on an addressing system to send data to a computer at a
specific destination. An IP (Internet protocol) address is a number that
uniquely identifies each computer or device connected to the Internet. The
address usually consists of four groups of numbers, each separated by a
period. The first part of the IP address identifies the network, the second the
company or organization, the third the computer group, and the fourth the
specific computer.
IP address: 198.105.232.4
2. Because IP addresses are hard to remember and use, the Internet supports the
use of a text version of the IP address. The text version of the IP address is the
domain name.
Domain name: www.microsoft.com
web server computer domain type
company name
3. Domain names are registered in the domain name system (DNS) and are
stored in Internet computers called domain name servers. Domain name
servers use the domain name to look up the associated IP address.
4. Common domain types:
a. .com – Commercial organizations, businesses, and companies
b. .edu - Educational institutions
c. .gov - Government agencies
d. .mil - Military organizations
e. .net - Network and administrative computers
f. .org - Nonprofit and miscellaneous organizations
5. Newer domain types
a. .museum – Accredited museums
b. .biz – Businesses of all sizes
c. .info – Businesses, organizations, or individuals providing general
information
d. .pro - Professionals, such as doctors or lawyers
e. .aero - Aviation community members

III. The World Wide Web

A. The World Wide Web (WWW)
1. The World Wide Web (WWW), or WEB, consists of a worldwide collection
of electronic documents. Each of these documents is called a Web page that
has built-in links to other related documents, text, graphics, sound, and video.
2. A Web page with links to other related documents contains hyperlinks, which
are links that allow you to move quickly from one document to another,
regardless of whether the documents were in the same computer or in
computers in different countries.
3. A Web site is a collection of related Web pages.

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B. Browsing the Web – Objective 5 – Explain the purpose of a Web browser
1. A Web browser, or browser, is application software that allows users to
access and view Web pages. The most widely used Web browsers are
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Mozilla.
2. To browse the Web, you need a computer connected to the Internet and a Web
browser.
3. After starting one of the browser’s above, the home page or starting page is
displayed. The home page provides information about the Web site’s purpose
and content. The home page or starting page can be changed!
C. Web Addresses
Objective 4 – Identify the components of a Web address
A Web address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a unique address for a
web page. The URL can point to an Internet site, a specific document, or a
location within a document at a site. There are four pars of the URL:
protocol domain name path file

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/index.html
D. Navigating Web Pages
1. Most Web page contain links. A link, short for hyperlink, is a built-in
connection to another related Web page or part of a Web page. By clicking on
a link it is possible to branch off and investigate related topics as they are
encountered. Learning occurs in a nonlinear way.
2. Some people use the phrase surfing the Internet to refer to the activity of
using links to explore the Internet.
3. Links on a web page are either underlined text of a different color or a
graphic. When you position your mouse pointer over a hyperlink, the pointer
changes to a small hand with a pointing finger. Some browsers display the
URL at the bottom of the screen on your status bar.
4. Web pages you have visited while connected to the web are stored in a history
list. When using Netscape, these can be seen by clicking on the menu item
Go and then looking at the bottom of the drop down menu. If you are using
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer you can see the history list by clicking on View
from the menu bar, and then clicking on Go To and then looking at the last
items on the sub-menu.
5. A Web browser also allows you to keep a bookmark or favorite, the title of a
Web page and the URL of that page. Bookmarks or favorites are stored on
your computer and can be used in future Web sessions to redisplay the stored
Web page bookmarked.
6. Make sure you know at least 5 ways to navigate Web pages
1) Use existing links (hyperlinks) on the current Web page
2) Use an item in the history list (web page you have previously viewed)
3) Use a bookmark or favorite (a shortcut back to a Web page and URL)
4) Use a search engine (see below)
5) Use the standard toolbar icons (Forward, Back, Home, Search, …)

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 E. Objective 6: Know how to search for information on the Web
1. A search engine is used to find Web sites, Web pages, and Internet files that
match one or more keywords, or search text, that you enter.
2. Many search engines use a spider, also called a crawler or bot, which reads
pages on Web sites in order to create a catalog, or index, of hits. A hit is any
Web page found as a result of a search.
3. Some of the Web Search engines are:
a) AltaVista e) LooksSmart
b) Excite f) Lycos
c) Google g) WebCrawler
d) HotBot h) Yahoo!

IV. Objective 7: Describe the types of web sites

There are eight types of Web sites: portal, news, informational, business/marketing,
educational, entertainment, advocacy, and personal.
1. A portal Web site offers a variety of Internet services from a single, convenient
location. Most offer free services such as search engines; local, national, or world
news, sports and weather; free personal Web pages; reference tools; auctions;
message boards, calendars, and chat rooms. Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) is a
good example of a portal Web site.
2. A news Web site contains material including stories and articles relating to
current events, life, money, sports and the weather. An example of this might be
the New York Times at www.nytimes.com (see Figure 2.13b on page 2.15 of your
textbook).
3. An informational Web site contains factual information. Most governmental
agencies have informational Web sites that provide information on census data,
tax codes, and the congressional budget. According to Figure 2.13c, on page 2.15
in your textbook, the Internal Revenue Service provides an informational Web
page at http://www.irs.gov.
4. A business/marketing Web site contains content that promotes or sells products
or services. The illustration in your textbook is Allstate’s web site at
http://www.allstate.com on page 2.15, Figure 2.13d.
5. An educational Web site offers an exciting, challenging avenue for formal and
informal teaching and learning.
6. An entertainment Web site offers an interactive and engaging environment and
may include Web sites that offer music, videos, sports, games, sweepstakes, chats,
and more.
7. An advocacy Web page contains content that describes a cause, opinion, or idea
attempting to convince the reader of the validity of the cause, opinion, or idea.
Sponsors of advocacy Web sites include the Democratic National Committee, the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Republican National
Convention.
8. A personal Web page is not associated with any organization but is life
experiences or information published by an individual.

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V. Objective 8: Recognize how Web pages use graphics, animation, audio, video,
virtual reality, and plug-ins

Multimedia refers to any application that combines text with graphics, animation,
audio, video and/or virtual reality. A web page that uses multimedia has much more
appeal than one with only text on a gray background.

A. Graphics – A graphic, or graphical image, is a digital representation of nontext

information such as a drawing, a chart, or a photograph. Graphics were the first
media used to enhance the text-based Internet. Four common file formats for
graphical images used on the Web are BMP, GIF, JPEG, and PCX. A
thumbnail is a small graphical image you normally click to display the full-sized
image.
B. Animation – Many Web pages use animation, which is the appearance of motion
created by displaying a series of still images in sequence. The movement of
graphics or text images can make Web pages more visually interesting or draw
attention to important information or links.
C. Audio – allows digitized sound to be replayed; audio includes music, speech, or
any other sound; streaming audio allows you to hear the sound as it downloads to
your computer; audio files are often used by music companies on their Web sites
to provide samples of the latest hits; a common file format is MP3 that reduces an
audio file to about one-tenth of its original size.
D. Video – allows movie clips to be downloaded and viewed; streaming video
allows you to view longer or live video images as they are downloaded to your
computer; most movie clips are quiet short because video clips are large and can
take a long time to download; MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) is a
popular video compression standard and MPEG-4 is the current compression
standard.
E. Virtual reality (VR) – is the simulation of a real or imagined environment that
appears as a three-dimensional space. VR uses three-dimensional images and is
used in games and to create real or imagined model of buildings and rooms.
F. Plug-ins – A plug-in is a program that extends the capability of browser. Most of
the time plug-ins are free and you can download them to enhance the basic
multimedia elements on a Web page. A few of the plug-ins mentioned in your
textbook, on page 2.23, are Acrobat Reader which allows you to view, navigate,
and print Portable Document Files (PDF) – documents formatted to look just as
they look in print; Flash Player which allows you to view dazzling graphics and
animation, hear outstanding sound and music, display Web pages across an entire
screen; Quick Time when allows you to view animation, music, audio, video, and
VR panoramas and objects directly in a Web page; and RealOne Player which
allows you to listen to live and on-demand near-CD-quality audio and newscast-
quality video.

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VI. Electronic Commerce – Objective 9 – Describe the types of e-commerce

A. Electronic commerce, short for e-commerce, is a business transaction that

occurs over an electronic network such as the Internet.
1. Three of the most popular uses of e-commerce are investing, banking, and
shopping.
2. Three types of e-commerce are: business to consumer (B-to-C or B2C)
which consists of the sale of goods to the general public; consumer to
consumer (C2C or C-to-C) which occurs when one consumer sells directly to
another, such as in an online auction; and business to business (B2B or B-to-
B) e-commerce, which is the most prevalent type that takes place between
businesses, with businesses providing services to other businesses.
B. M-commerce (mobile commerce) is used to identify e-commerce that takes
place using mobile devices (laptop computers, handheld computers, pagers,
cellular telephones).

VII. Objective 10: Explain how e-mail, FTP, newsgroups and message boards,
mailing lists, chat rooms, and instant messaging work

A. E-mail
1. E-mail (short for electronic mail) is the transmission of messages and files
over a network from one person to another. E-mail was one of the original
features of the Internet.
2. With e-mail you can create, send, forward, store, print, and delete messages.
3. To receive e-mail you must have a mailbox, a file used to collect your
messages on an Internet computer.
4. An e-mail address is a combination of a username and the domain name that
identifies user and the location of the mailbox computer. Your user name, or
user-ID, is a unique combination of characters that identifies you. Your user
name or user-ID must be unique. The following is an example:
gpeacock@msn.com

user-ID – often a combination of domain name – location of a person’s

or a person’s first initial and e-mail account
user last name
5. Your ISP may assign the user-ID or you may choose it, especially if you use
Hotmail or Yahoo mail.
6. http://people.yahoo.com and www.411.com are web sites that allow you to
search for people, places, and telephone numbers. These may not locate all
users because there is no complete listing of Internet users or addresses. Most
of this information is collected from public sources.
B. FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
1. File Transfer Protocol allows the user to upload and download files.
a) Uploading files is the process of transferring documents, graphics, and
other objects from your computer to a server on the network.

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 b) Downloading allows you to copy files one computer on the Internet to
another computer (your own computer probably, unless you are on
someone else’s computer).
2. Many of the files can be viewed before they are uploaded or downloaded.
C. Newsgroup
1. A newsgroup is an online area in which users conduct written discussions
about a particular subject.
2. To participate, a user sends a message to the newsgroup and other users in the
newsgroup read and reply to the message. The entire collection of Internet
newsgroups is called Usenet, which contains thousands of newsgroups on a
multitude of topics.
3. A computer that stores and distributes news-group messages is called a news
server.
4. To participate in a newsgroup, you use a program called a newsreader, which
is included in most browsers.
5. In some newsgroups, a moderator reviews an article and then posts it if the
article is appropriate. The moderator may edit or discard inappropriate
articles.
6. A popular Web-based type of discussion group that does not require a
newsreader is a message board or discussion board.
D. Mailing Lists
1. A mailing list is a group of e-mail names and addresses given a single name.
When a message is sent to a mailing list, every person on the list receives a
copy of the message in his or her mailbox. To add your e-mail name and
address to a mailing list, you subscribe to a mailing list. To remove your
name, you unsubscribe.
2. Some mailing lists are called LISTSERVs, named after a popular mailing list
software product.
E. Chat Rooms
1. A chat is a real-time typed conversation that takes place on a computer. Real-
time means you and the people with whom you are conversing are online at
the same time. As you type the text displays on the computer screens.
2. A chat room is a location on the Internet server that permits users to chat with
each other.
F. Instant Messaging
1. Instant Messaging (IM) is a real-time Internet communications service that
notifies you when one or more people are online and then allows you to
exchange messages or files or join a private chat room with them.
2. To use IM you install software, called an instant messenger, from an instant
messaging service.

VIII. Objective 11 - Identify the rules of netiquette

Netiquette, which is short for Internet etiquette, is the code of acceptable behaviors
users should follow while on the Internet; the code expected of individuals while
online.

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 The rules of netiquette are:
Golden Rule: Treat others, as you would like them to treat you.

1. In e-mail, newsgroups, and chat rooms:

 Keep messages brief using proper grammar and spelling.
 Be careful when using sarcasm and humor, as it might be misinterpreted.
 Be polite. Avoid offensive language.
 Avoid sending or posting flames, which are abusive or insulting messages.
 Avoid sending spam, which is the Internet's version of junk mail. Spam is an
unsolicited e-mail message or newsgroup posting sent to many recipients or
newsgroups at once.
 Do not use all capital letters, which is the equivalent of SHOUTING!
 Use emoticons to express emotion. Popular emoticons include:
:) Smile
:( Frown
:| Indifference
:\ Undecided
:o Surprised
 Use abbreviations and acronyms for phrases such as:
BTW by the way
FYI for your information
FWIW for what it's worth
IMHO in my humble opinion
TTFN ta ta for now
TYVM thank you very much
 Clearly identify a spoiler, which is a message that reveals a solution to a game
or ending to a movie or program.
2. Read the FAQ (frequently asked questions) document, if one exists. Many
newsgroups and Web pages have a FAQ.
3. Do not assume material is accurate or up to date. Be forgiving of other's mistakes.
4. Never read someone's private e-mail.

VIII. Web Publishing

A. Web Publishing is the development and maintenance of Web pages.

B. There are 5 major steps to Web publishing:
1) Plan the Web site - think about issues that could affect its design; identify the
purpose of the Web site and the characteristics of the people that you want to
visit it.
2) Analyze and design the Web size - determine specific ways to meet your goals
and then sketch the design or Web page(s) on paper
3) Create the Web site - Creating a Web site, called Web page authoring,
involves working on the computer to compose the Web site.

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Objective 12: Identify the tools required for Web publishing
Web pages are created and formatted using a set of codes called HTML
(hypertext markup language). These codes, called tags, specify how the text
and other elements display in a browser. Web page authoring software is
software specifically designed to help you create Web pages. You may also
use many word processing packages or text editors to create basic Web pages.
Other Web publishing tools include digital cameras, scanners, and/or CD-
ROM or DVD-ROM image collections to incorporate pictures; sound cards
and microphones to incorporate sound; and PC cameras and video cameras to
incorporate videos.
4) Deploy the Web site - After your Web pages are created, you can store them
on a Web server. If your ISP does not include this service, a Web hosting
service provides storage for your Web pages for a monthly fee. For others to
access your Web pages, you will nee to upload the Web pages (copy the Web
pages to the Web server hosting your Web site). To help others locate our Web
site, you should register it with various search engines. A submission service
is a Web-based business that offers a registration package in which you pay to
register with numerous search engines.
5) Maintain the Web Site - The Webmaster is the individual responsible for
maintaining a Web site and developing Web pages.

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