INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTING

NOTES BY GHULAM MOHIUDDIN

HISTORY OF INTERNET
The Beginning: A "Network of Networks
The seeds of the Internet were planted in 1969, when the Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense began connecting computers at
different universities and defense contractors. The resulting network was called
ARPANET. The goal of this early project was to create large computer network with
multiple paths—in the form of telephone lines—that could survive a nuclear attack or a
natural disaster such as an earthquake. If one part of the network were destroyed, other
parts of the network would remain functional and data could continue to flow through
the surviving lines.
The network jumped across the Atlantic to Europe in 1973, and it never stopped
growing. In the mid-1980s, another federal agency, the National Science Foundation
(NSF), joined the project after the Defense Department stopped funding the network.
NSF established five “supercomputing centers” that were available to anyone who
wanted to use them for academic research purposes.
The NSF expected the supercomputers’ users to use ARPANET to obtain access, but the
agency quickly discovered that the existing network could not handle the load. In
response, the NSF created a new, higher-capacity network,called NSFnet, to
complement the older, and by then overloaded, ARPANET. The link between ARPANET,
NSFnet, and other networks was called the Internet. (The process of connecting
separate networks is called internetworking. A collection of "networked networks" is
described as being internetworked, which is where the Internet—a worldwide network
of networks—gets its name
The original ARPANET was shut down in 1990, and government funding for NSFnet was
discontinued in 1995, but the commercial Internet backbone services replaced them. By
the early 1990s, interest in the Internet began to expand dramatically. The system that
had been created as a tool for surviving a nuclear war found its way into businesses and
homes. Now, advertisements for movies are far more common online than
collaborations on physics research.
Today: Still Growing
Today, the Internet connects thousands of networks and hundreds of millions of users
around the world. It is a huge, cooperative community with no central ownership. This
lack of ownership is an important feature of the Internet, bccausc it means that no
single person or group controls the network. Although there are several organizations
(such as The Internet Society and the World Wide Web Consortium) that propose
standards for Internet-related technologies and guidelines for its appropriate use, these
organizations almost universally support the Internet’s openness and lack of centralized
control.
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The Internet’s Major Services

The Internet acts as a carrier for several different services, each with its own distinct
features and purposes. The most commonly used Internet services arc
 The World Wide Web
 Electronic mail
 News
 File Transfer Protocol
 Chat
 Instant messaging
 Online services
 Peer 2 peer services
To use any of these services, you need a computer that is connected to the Internet in
some way. Most individual users connect their computer’s modem to a telephone line
(or use a high-speed connection such as DSL or a cable modem) and set up an account
with an Internet service provider (ISP), a company that provides local or regional access
to the Internet backbone. Many other users connect to the Internet through a school or
business network. To use a specific service, you also need the right type of software.
Some programs enable you to use multiple Internet services, so you do not necessarily
need separate applications for each service.
Understanding the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (also known as the Web or WWW) was created in 1989 at the
European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland. The Web's creators wanted to
create a simple way to access any document that was stored on a network, without
having to search through indexes or directories of files. To do this, they established a
way to “link" documents that were stored in different locations on a single computer or
on different computers on a network. Many people believe that the Web and the
Internet are the same thing, but this is not correct. In fact, they are two different things.
The Web is a service (a system for accessing documents) that is supported by the
Internet
How the Web Works
Web documents can be linked together because they are created in a format known as
hypertext. Hypertext systems provide an easy way to manage large collections of data,
which can include text files, pictures, sounds, movies, and more. In a hypertext system,
when you view a document on your computer's screen, you also can access all the data
that might be linked to it.To support hypertext documents, the Web uses a special
protocol, called the hypertext transfer protocol, or HTTP. A hypertext document is a
specially encoded file that uses the hypertext markup language, or HTML. This language
allows a document's author to embed hypertext links—also called hyperlinks or just
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links—in the document. HTTP and hypertext links are the foundations of the World
Wide Web

Web Browsers and HTML Tags

In 1993, developers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
created Mosaic, a point-and-click Web browser. A Web browser (or browser) is a
software application designed to find hypertext documents on the Web and then open
the documents on the user’s computer. A point-and-click browser provides a graphical
user interface that enables the user to click hyperlinked text and images to jump to
other documents or view other data. Several text-based Web browsers are also
available and are used in nongraphical operating systems, such as certain versions of
UNIX. Mosaic and Web browsers that evolved from it have changed the way people use
the Internet. Today, the most popular graphical Web browsers are Microsoft's Internet
Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari.
URL:
The hypertext transfer protocol uses Internet addresses in a special format, called a
uniform resource locator, or URL. In a URL, type specifies the type of server in which the
file is located, address is the address of the server, and path is the location within the
file structure of the server. The path includes the list of folders where the desired file
(the Web page itself or some other piece of data) is located. Consider the URL for a page
at the Library of Congress Web site, which contains information about the Library’s
collection of permanent exhibits.
Using Your Browser and the World Wide Web:
You can specify a URL in several ways, but three methods are most commonly used:
 Type the URL in the browser’s Address box.
 Click a hyperlink that is linked to that URL.
 Store the URL in your browser's Favorites list, then sclcct the URL from the
list. (If you use Chrome, this list is called Bookmarks.)
For example, suppose you want to visit the Web site of the National Football League
(NFL). To do this, you can click in the Address box, type http^/www.nfl.com, and then
press ENTER. The home page of the NFL Web site appears in the browser window
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It is not always easy to find what you want on the Wei). That is because there are tens
of millions of unique Web sites, which include billions of unique pages! To search the
Web successfully, you should use this section as a starting point; then spend some time
experimenting with a variety of search tools. The two most basic and commonly used
Web-based search tools are
» Directories. A directory enables you to search for information by selecting categories
of subject matter. The directory separates subjects into general categories (such as
"companies"), which are broken into increasingly specific subcategories (such as
"companies—construction—contractors—builders and designers"). After you select a
category or subcategory, the director)1 displays a list of Web sites that provide content
related to that subject. The 1-ookSmart directory at http://www.looksmarT.com
» Search Engines. A search engine lets you search for information by typing one or more
words. The engine then displays a list of Web pages that contain
Using B oolean O perators in Your Searches
Three basic Boolean operators are sometimes used in Web searches: AND, OR, and NOT.
To use an operator, simply include it in the text box where you type your keywords. The
following table shows simple examples of keyword searches that include the operators,
and it explains how the operator affects each search. A few search engines also support
a fourth operator NEAR. This operator determines the proximity, or closeness, of your
specified keywords. For example, you may specify “ printer NEAR color,” with a
closeness of 10 words. This tells the search engine to look for pages that include both
terms, where the terms arc no more than 10 words apart.
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The World Wide Web (WWW): The World Wide Web is a computer system which
links documents and pictures into a database that is stored in computers in many
different parts of the world and that people everywhere can use. The abbreviations
WWW and the Web are often used.
OR
a group of Internet sites interconnected by means of hypertext, providing access to
images and sound in addition to text
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Electronic mail (e-mail): Electronic mail (email) is a digital mechanism for exchanging
messages through Internet or intranet communication platforms.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP): File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a client/server protocol
used for transferring files to or from a host computer. FTP may be authenticated with
user names and passwords.
OR
FTP is the Internet standard for moving or transferring files from one computer to
another using TCP or IP networks. File Transfer Protocol is also known as RFC 959.
Peer-to-peer services(P2P): A peer-to-peer (P2P) service is a decentralized platform
whereby two individuals interact directly with each other, without intermediation by a
third party.Examples are Napster and Kazaa
OR
Group of computers that are interconnected to each other and sharing the same
workload, rights, and duties without a central server to manage them.
Internet service provider:(ISP) is a company that provides web access to both
businesses and consumers.
OR
ISPs may also provide other services such as email services, domain registration, web
hosting, and browser services.
Dial-up: Internet connection that is established using a modem. The modem connects
the computer to standard phone lines, which serve as the data transfer medium.
High-speed access Connect through a special line 2 – 25 times faster than dialup DSL,
Cable, T1 are common
IMP: The interface message processor (IMP) was the first packet-router. It was part of
the ARPANET, the the precusor to today's Internet. IMPs monitored network status and
gathered statistics. They were also the heart of the ARPANET from its launch until it was
decomissioned in 1989. They also represent the first generation of the gateways that
are now known as routers