What is the Internet?

The Internet is a...

...distributed

hypermedia

network

of networks

Distributed

• Information on the Internet is located on many millions of computers

• No one agency has jurisdiction of the Internet; everyone plays a part

Hypermedia• The Internet supports many different

formats of information

Text filesPicturesPhotographsSound filesVideo files

Network of Networks• Network : two or more computers

hooked together

• Network of networks : Hundreds of Thousands of networks of computers all hooked together

How the Internet Works

• Packet Switching–TCP-IP

• Connecting to the Internet–Schools, Companies–Online Service– Internet Service Provider

E-Mail Addresses

• Username followed by “@” symbol• Computer name and domain

mbroadstreet@student.ponderisd.netUsername Computer name & domain

Internet Addresses

• IP Address– Internet Protocol – 4-part numeric address for internet locations

198.105.232.4• Domain Name – Text version of the IP

address

www.microsoft.com

URL: Uniform Resource Locator

• “Address” of a file on the Internet• Contains type of protocol followed by the

computer name, directory and file name

http://www.capecod.net/Wixon/wixon.htm ftp:// wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/windows/psp3.zip mailto:mbroadstreet@student.ponderisd.net

Anatomy of a URLhttp://www.ponderisd.net/mbroadstreet/bim.htm

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

Address of ISP

Directory on the server

File name (HTML format)

Web Browsers

• A computer program that lets you access the WWW and “browse” the Internet for information

• Common browsers :Netscape NavigatorInternet ExplorerFirefoxAOL, MSN

Home Page

Web site• Internet locations that

contain hyperlinked documents

• Links in documents that quickly move the user from one document to another.

Hyperlink

Different Domains on the Net

.com commercial

.net network

.edu educational

.org organization

.mil military

.gov government

Multimedia on the Web

1. GraphicsGifs, JPEGS

2. AnimationAnimated GIFs, Flash, Shockwave

3. AudioSimple Audio, Streaming Audio

4. VideoStreaming Video, Real Player

5. Virtual reality – 3D Games

Searching for Information on the Web

• Organized Directories of Web sites

• Search tools• Search engine –

software program that finds web sites

Finding Information on the WWW

Search Engines• Software programs

that scan the contents of Web servers to create large indices of information

• User can perform keyword searches

• Google, Yahoo• Newest – Cuil, Bing

Where do you want to go today?