CSC111

Introduction to Computer Science

Introduction to the Internet
and Web
The Internet: Development History
• Grew out of a research network originally funded by U.S.
Department of Defense.
• - Development of this network, known as the ARPAnet
after the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA),
began in 1969.
• - As the network grew, it was used for applications
beyond research, such as electronic mail.
• In the early 1980s, the current versions of the core Internet
protocols, TCP and IP, were introduced across the network.
• In 1992, the Center for European Nuclear Research (CERN)
released the first versions of World Wide Web software.
Internet
• The term Internet comes from the word inter-network - an
interconnected set of networks.

• It is the largest network in the world that connects

hundreds of thousands of individual networks all over the
world.

• The popular term for the Internet is the “information

highway”.

• Rather than moving through geographical space, it moves

your ideas and information through cyberspace – the
space of electronic movement of ideas and information.
Internet

• No one owns it
• It has no formal management organization.
• As it was originally developed by the
Department of defense, this lack of
centralization made it less vulnerable to
wartime or terrorist attacks.
• To access the Internet, an existing network
need to pay a small registration fee and agree
to certain standards based on the TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol) .
 Internet Protocol
• Email (Simple Mail Transport Protocol)
• Telnet (Login to remote host computer)
• FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - transfers
files between server and client
• HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)
The uses of the Internet

• Send e-mail messages.

• Send (upload) or receive (down load) files
between computers.
• Participate in discussion groups, such as mailing
lists and newsgroups.
• Surfing the web.
How to access the Internet?
• Many schools and businesses have direct
access to the Internet using special high-
speed communication lines and equipment.
• Students and employees can access through
the organization’s local area networks (LAN)
or through their own personal computers.
• Another way to access the Internet is through
Internet Service Provider (ISP).
How to access the Internet?
• To access the Internet, an existing network
need to pay a small registration fee and agree
to certain standards based on the TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol) reference model.
• Each organization pays for its own networks
and its own telephone bills, but those costs
usually exist independent of the internet.
• The regional Internet companies route and
forward all traffic, and the cost is still only that
of a local telephone call.
Internet Service Provider (ISP)

• A commercial organization with permanent

connection to the Internet that sells
temporary connections to subscribers.
• Examples:
• Spectranet, Cobranet, Smile, Swift, Glo, MTN,
Airtel, Etisalat, Visafone,IPNX, etc….
 The World Wide Web: History
• March, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee of Geneva's European Particle Physics
Laboratory
• (CERN) circulated a proposal to develop a hypertext system for global
information
• sharing in High Energy Physics community.
• (http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html)
• - The World Wide Web project began to take shape at the beginning of 1991.
• Before the end of 1991, CERN announced the Web to the High Energy
Physics
• community in general.
• - Essentially, 1992 was a developmental year. In March of 1993, WWW traffic
clocked in at 0.1 percent of total Internet backbone traffic.
• In July of 1994, CERN began to turn over the Web project to a new group
• called the W3 organization, a joint venture between CERN and MIT to
develop the Web further
 What is Web?
• The Web (World Wide Web) consists of
information organized into Web pages containing
text and graphic images.
• It contains hypertext links, or highlighted
keywords and images that lead to related
information.
• A collection of linked Web pages that has a
common theme or focus is called a Web site.
• The main page that all of the pages on a
particular Web site are organized around and link
back to is called the site’s home page.
How to access the Web?
• Once you have your Internet connection, then
you need special software called a browser to
access the Web.
• Web browsers are used to connect you to
remote computers, open and transfer files,
display text and images.
• Web browsers are specialized programs.
• Examples of Web browser: Internet Explorer,
Firefox Mozilla, Chrome, Opera, Safari, UC, etc.
Client/Server Structure of the Web

• Web is a collection of files that reside on

computers, called Web servers, that are located
all over the world and are connected to each
other through the Internet.
• When you use your Internet connection to
become part of the Web, your computer
becomes a Web client in a worldwide client/
server network.
• A Web browser is the software that you run on
your computer to make it work as a web client.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

• The public files on the web servers are ordinary

text files, much like the files used by word-
processing software.
• To allow Web browser software to read them, the
text must be formatted according to a generally
accepted standard.
• The standard used on the web is Hypertext
markup language (HTML).
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

• HTML uses codes, or tags, to tell the Web browser

software how to display the text contained in the
document.
• For example, a Web browser reading the following
line of text:
<B> Introduction to Computers<I>Visual Basic
Fundamentals</I></B>
• recognizes the <B> and </B> tags as instructions to
display the entire line of text in bold and the <I> and
</I> tags as instructions to display the text enclosed
by those tags in italics.
 Addresses on the Web:IP Addressing
• Each computer on the internet does have a
unique identification number, called an IP
(Internet Protocol) address.
• The IP addressing system currently in use on the
Internet uses a four-part number.
• Each part of the address is a number ranging
from 0 to 255, and each part is separated from
the previous part by period,
• For example, 106.29.242.17
 IP Addressing
• The combination of the four IP address parts
provides 4.2 billion possible addresses (256 x
256 x 256 x 256).
• This number seemed adequate until 1998.
• Members of various Internet task forces are
working to develop an alternate addressing
system that will accommodate the projected
growth.
• However, all of their working solutions require
extensive hardware and software changes
throughout the Internet.
 Domain Name Addressing
• Most web browsers do not use the IP address to
locate Web sites and individual pages.
• They use domain name addressing.
• A domain name is a unique name associated with
a specific IP address by a program that runs on an
Internet host computer.
• This program, which coordinates the IP addresses
and domain names for all computers attached to
it, is called DNS (Domain Name System ) software.
• The host computer that runs this software is
called a domain name server.
 Domain Name Addressing
• Domain names can include any number of parts separated
by periods, however most domain names currently in use
have only three or four parts.
• Domain names follow hierarchical model that you can
follow from top to bottom if you read the name from the
right to the left.
• For example, the domain name spgs.unilag.edu.ng is the
computer connected to the Internet at the School of post
graduate studies (spgs), which is an academic unit of the
University of Lagos (unilag), which is an educational
institution (edu) in Nigeria.
• No other computer on the Internet has the same domain
name.
 Uniform Resource Locators
• The IP address and the domain name each identify a
particular computer on the Internet.
• However, they do not indicate where a Web page’s HTML
document resides on that computer.
• To identify a Web pages exact location, Web browsers
rely on Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
• URL is a four-part addressing scheme that tells the Web
browser:
 What transfer protocol to use for transporting the file
 The domain name of the computer on which the file
resides
 The pathname of the folder or directory on the computer
on which the file resides
 The name of the file
Structure of a Uniform Resource Locators

protocol pathnam
e
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines

Domain name filename

http => Hypertext Transfer Protocol

HTTP
• The transfer protocol is the set of rules that the
computers use to move files from one computer
to another on the Internet.
• The most common transfer protocol used on the
Internet is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP).
• Two other protocols that you can use on the
Internet are the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and
the Telnet Protocol
How to find information on the Web?
• Search engines are programs that search
documents for specified keywords and returns a
list of the documents where the keywords were
found.
• They users to search for documents on the World
Wide Web.
• A number of search tools have been developed
and available to you. Examples:
Yahoo  www.yahoo.com
Bing  www.bing.com
Google  www.google.com
How to find information on the Web?
• You can find information by two basic means.
• Search by Topic and Search by keywords.
• Some search services offer both methods, others
only one.
• Yahoo offers both.
Search by Topic
You can navigate through topic lists
Search by keywords
You can navigate by entering a keyword or phase
into a search text box.
 Internet Terminology
• Internet – a network that links networks worldwide by
satellite and telephone
• Web – a collection of electronic files linked together;
anatomy similar to a spider’s web
• Search engine – a computer program that searches for
specific words or phrases on the web
• Website – a collection of one or more web pages
• Intranet - an internal network of data and information
that is used in many companies; typically password
protected, accessible only from within the company’s
confines, and housed on a separate server. Contains the
same features as the internet
 Internet Terminology…
• Home page – the first page of a website; usually
contains an index of the entire website
• Server - systems that store information shown on
the web; stores web pages and other information
used both on the internet and intranet
• Address field – the place on the screen in which you
type the URL or web address
• Online – being connected to the Internet
• Status bar – a symbol at the bottom of a web page
that indicates the percentage of the page that has
loaded
 Internet Terminology…
• URL – Uniform Resource Locator; a unique address that sends
a request to the server which houses the information you are
looking for
• Window – a screen that displays a web page
• Domain – an identification string located at the end of a web
address; examples - .net, .org, .com
• www – world wide web; the extension which begins many
URLs
• Hyperlinks – text and images within a website that reference
other web pages or sites; usually appear in a different color
and are underlined. Cursor will change to a hand icon when
touched
• Tab – a feature that allows you to open multiple web pages or
windows at once
Web Applications
• Distributing and Sharing Scientific Data:
• Share scientific information ( data, papers, databases)
• among scientists around the world
• E-Commerce:
• Electronic marketing and advertising, online shopping
• (order/purchase, payment), online trading, online customer services.
• Online Education and Training:
• On-line courses, training program and information, distance learning
• Organization and Public Service:
• Distributing public service information for organizations and
• government offices.
• Online Publishing:
• Online books, magazines and journals, newspapers, Video, CD .
• Online Banking and Trading:
• Support online bank transactions for banks and stockbrokerages