Networks

A network is a group of computer devices that are connected in some way. The best known and
largest network is the Internet, but networks may be found in offices, universities and companies
of all sorts. If the network is in a limited geographical area like a university, it is called a LAN
(Local Area Network); otherwise it is called a WAN (Wide Area Network).
Connecting the computers makes it easier to share files as well as resources such as printers and
Internet connections. Unfortunately, this makes them susceptible to hackers and computer
viruses.
In LAN networks, devices may be connected wirelessly or using cables plugged into network
cards. For WAN networks, telephone lines, fibre optical cables or even satellites may be used.
Bandwidth
The communication channel determines the available bandwidth (how fast data can be
transmitted). For example, cables are normally faster than wireless and fibre-optic cables have a
much higher bandwidth than regular telephone lines.
The Internet
The Internet is a worldwide network of networks. In order to access the Internet, you, or your
company must first sign up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) such as FLOW. Your
company, or office network, will also need to be connected to a modem, which is normally
provided by the ISP. You plug the telephone or cable line into the modem which is in turn
connected to your computer. The modem then converts the digital data into a form that can be
transmitted over the line. A modem on the other end does the reverse.

Figure 9.1 A DSL modem

The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is not the only part of the Internet, but is certainly the most visible. It consists of
billions of documents called web pages that are linked together. A group of related web pages forms what
is known as website. Each web page and website has an address called a URL, normally in the form
http://www.whatever.com ( though the http://www.part may be omitted).

Web browsers
Web pages are written in a special language called HTML in order to view a web page, you need to use a
program called a web browser that interprets the HTML and displays it accordingly. The most popular
web browsers are Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, although Google Chrome is steadily gaining
momentum. Although there are a number of web browsers, they all work in the same way. Here are some
of the things they have in common.
Figure 9.2 The Google home page displayed in three different browsers.

Address bar
Near the top of every web browser is an address bar, “where you type websites’ URLs (if you
know them). The address bars also keep track of the most recently visited addresses.
Going from one web page to the next
The typical web page contains several hyperlinks ( called links for short) which you can click to
go to other web pages. Links may be in the form of words or images. When the mouse pointer
passes over a link, it changes to a hand, like in Figure 9.3 Links are often, but not always,
distinguished from normal text by putting them in blue or underling them.

Figure 9.3 Clicking a link.

When you point at a link, the URL of the page it points to is displayed in the status bar at the
bottom of the browser. For instance, in figure 9.3 when the user clicks on the auto link he/she
will get taken to the URL http;//autos.msn.com.
You can also go from one web page to the next by using the back and Forward buttons at the top
of the web browser. These work in much the same way as those in the My Computer window.
Downloading
The process of transferring data from a remote computer to your own is called downloading.
When you click on a download link, such as those used for email attachments, the web browser
will begin downloading the file. You will have the option of running the file automatically or
saving it so you can access it later see figure 9.4

Figure 9.4 downloading a file in Internet Explorer.

If you choose the Save option, the file will be saved in the Download folder, on the Desktop or in
another folder of your choosing.

Search engines
If you do not know the URL of a particular website or web page, which is most of the time, you
can search for it using a special type of website called a search engine. You will probably be
familiar with at least one search engine, Google.com but they are others like Bing.com. when
you type in what you are looking for and click search, the search engine returns a list of web
pages that contains the search terms. For each result the title of the page, its URL and a sample
of the matching text is displayed ( see figure 9.5).
Figure 9.5 Results from a search engine.