THE INTERNET

Learning Activities:

By the turn of the century, information, including access to the Internet, will be the basis for personal,
economic, and political advancement. The popular name for the Internet is the information superhighway.
Whether you want to find the latest financial news, browse through library catalogs, exchange information
with colleagues, or join in a lively political debate, the Internet is the tool that will take you beyond
telephones, faxes, and isolated computers to a burgeoning networked information frontier.

The Internet supplements the traditional tools you use to gather information, data graphics, news and
correspond with other people. Used skillfully, the Internet shrinks the world and brings information,
expertise, and knowledge on nearly every subject imaginable straight to your computer.

What is Internet?

The Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of

The Internet or “net” (network of network) is the largest computer network in the world that connects
billions of computer user. The word internet comes from combination between “interconnection” and
“network”. Network is a collection of computers and devices connected via communication channels and
transmission media allow to share resources (hardware, software, data, information). Generally, nobody
owns the internet.

Some common ways of connecting to the Internet include:

• Internet service provider (ISP) by modem

What Can I Do on the Internet?

• Send and receive email messages.

How the Net really works: TCP/IP and DNS

TCP/IP, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol is the Internet's fundamental
"control system" and it's really two systems in one. In the computer world, a "protocol" is simply a standard
way of doing things—a tried and trusted method that everybody follows to ensure things get done properly.
So, what do TCP and IP actually do?

Internet Protocol (IP) is simply the Internet's addressing system. All the machines on the Internet—yours,
mine, and everyone else's—are identified by an Internet Protocol (IP) address that takes the form of a series
of digits separated by dots or colons. If all the machines have numeric addresses, every machine knows
exactly how (and where) to contact every other machine. When it comes to websites, we usually refer to
them by easy-to-remember names (like www.explainthatstuff.com) rather than their actual IP addresses—
and there's a relatively simple system called DNS (Domain Name System) that enables a computer to look
up the IP address for any given website. In the original version of IP, known as IPv4, addresses consisted
of four pairs of digits, such as 12.34.56.78 or 123.255.212.55, but the rapid growth in Internet use meant
that all possible addresses were used up by January 2011. That has prompted the introduction of a new IP
system with more addresses, which is known as IPv6, where each address is much longer and looks
something like this: 123a:b716:7291:0da2:912c:0321:0ffe:1da2.

The other part of the control system, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), sorts out how packets of data
move back and forth between one computer (in other words, one IP address) and another. It's TCP that
figures out how to get the data from the source to the destination, arranging for it to be broken into packets,
transmitted, resent if they get lost, and reassembled into the correct order at the other end.

A Brief History of the Internet

Precursors

• 1844: Samuel Morse transmits the first electric telegraph message, eventually making it possible
for people to send messages around the world in a matter of minutes.
• 1876: Alexander Graham Bell (and various rivals) develop the telephone.
• 1940: George Stibitz accesses a computer in New York using a teletype (remote terminal) in New
Hampshire, connected over a telephone line.
• 1945: Vannevar Bush, a US government scientist, publishes a paper called As We May Think,
anticipating the development of the World Wide Web by half a century.
• 1958: Modern modems are developed at Bell Labs. Within a few years, AT&T and Bell begin
selling them commercially for use on the public telephone system.
• 1960s: Preparing for a global network
• 1964: Paul Baran, a researcher at RAND, invents the basic concept of computers communicating
by sending "message blocks" (small packets of data); Welsh physicist Donald Davies has a very
similar idea and coins the name "packet switching," which sticks.
• 1963: J.C.R. Licklider envisages a network that can link people and user-friendly computers
together.
• 1964: Larry Roberts, a US computer scientist, experiments with connecting computers over long
distances.
• 1960s: Ted Nelson invents hypertext, a way of linking together separate documents that eventually
becomes a key part of the World Wide Web.
• 1966: Inspired by the work of Licklider, Bob Taylor of the US government's Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA) hires Larry Roberts to begin developing a national computer network.
• 1969: The ARPANET computer network is launched, initially linking together four scientific
institutions in California and Utah.
• 1970s: The modern Internet appears
• 1971: Ray Tomlinson sends the first email, introducing the @ sign as a way of separating a user's
name from the name of the computer where their mail is stored.
• 1973: Bob Metcalfe invents Ethernet, a convenient way of linking computers and peripherals
(things like printers) on a local network.
• 1974: Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn write an influential paper describing how computers linked on a
network they called an "internet" could send messages via packet switching, using a protocol (set
of formal rules) called TCP (Transmission Control Protocol).
• 1978: TCP is improved by adding the concept of computer addresses (Internet Protocol or IP
addresses) to which Internet traffic can be routed. This lays the foundation of TCP/IP, the basis of
the modern Internet.
• 1978: Ward Christensen sets up Computerized Bulletin Board System (a forerunner of topic-based
Internet forums, groups, and chat rooms) so computer hobbyists can swap information.
• 1980s: The Internet gives birth to the Web
• 1983: TCP/IP is officially adopted as the standard way in which Internet computers will
communicate.
• 1982–1984: DNS (Domain Name System) is developed, allowing people to refer to unfriendly IP
addresses (12.34.56.78) with friendly and memorable names (like google.com).
• 1986: The US National Science Foundation (NSF) creates its own network, NSFnet, allowing
universities to piggyback onto the ARPANET's growing infrastructure.
• 1988: Finnish computer scientist Jarkko Oikarinen invents IRC (Internet Relay Chat), which allows
people to create "rooms" where they can talk about topics in real-time with like-minded online
friends.
• 1989: The Peapod grocery store pioneer’s online grocery shopping and e-commerce.
• 1989: Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web at CERN, the European particle physics
laboratory in Switzerland. It owes a considerable debt to the earlier work of Ted Nelson and
Vannevar Bush.
• 1990s: The Web takes off
• 1993: Marc Andreessen writes Mosaic, the first user-friendly web browser, which later evolves into
Netscape and Mozilla.
• 1993: Oliver McBryan develops the World Wide Web Worm, one of the first search engines.
• 1994: People soon find they need help navigating the fast-growing World Wide Web. Brian
Pinkerton writes WebCrawler, a more sophisticated search engine and Jerry Yang and David Filo
launch Yahoo!, a directory of websites organized in an easy-to-use, tree-like hierarchy.
• 1995: E-commerce properly begins when Jeff Bezos founds Amazon.com and Pierre Omidyar sets
up eBay.
• 1996: ICQ becomes the first user-friendly instant messaging (IM) system on the Internet.
• 1997: Jorn Barger publishes the first blog (web-log).
• 1998: Larry Page and Sergey Brin develop a search engine called BackRub that they quickly decide
to rename Google.
• 1999: Kevin Ashton conceives the idea that everyday objects, and not just computers, could be part
of the Internet. This idea is now known as the Internet of Things.
• 2000s: Internet and Web for all
• 2003: Virtually every country in the world is now connected to the Internet.
• 2004: Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg revolutionizes social networking with Facebook, an easy-
to-use website that connects people with their friends.
• 2006: Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams found Twitter, an even simpler "microblogging" site where
people share their thoughts and observations in off-the-cuff, 140-character status messages.
• 2017: Russian president Vladimir Putin approves a plan to create a private alternative to the Internet
to counter the historic dominance of the (traditional) Internet by the United States.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Internet

Advantages:

1. Communication:

The foremost target of internet has always been the communication. And internet has excelled beyond the
expectations. Still; innovations are going on to make it faster, more reliable.

Now we can communicate in a fraction of second with a person who is sitting in the other part of the world.
Today for better communication, we can avail the facilities of e-mail; we can chat for hours with our loved
ones. There are plenty messenger services in offering. With help of such services, it has become very easy
to establish a kind of global friendship where you can share your thoughts, can explore other cultures of
different ethnicity.

2. Information

Information is probably the biggest advantage internet is offering. The Internet is a virtual treasure trove of
information. Any kind of information on any topic under the sun is available on the Internet. The search
engines like Google, yahoo is at your service on the Internet. You can almost find any type of data on almost
any kind of subject that you are looking for. There is a huge amount of information available on the internet
for just about every subject known to man, ranging from government law and services, trade fairs and
conferences, market information, new ideas and technical support, the list is endless.

Students and children are among the top users who surf the Internet for research. Today, it is almost required
that students should use the Internet for research for the purpose of gathering resources. Teachers have
started giving assignments that require research on the Internet. Almost every coming day, researches on
medical issues become much easier to locate.

3. Entertainment

Media of internet has become quite successful in trapping multifaceted entertainment factor. Downloading
games, visiting chat rooms or just surfing the Web are some of the uses people have discovered. There are
numerous games that may be downloaded from the Internet for free. The industry of online gaming has
tasted dramatic and phenomenal attention by game lovers. Chat rooms are popular because users can meet
new and interesting people.

4. Services

Many services are now provided on the internet such as online banking, job seeking, purchasing tickets for
your favorite movies, guidance services on array of topics engulfing every aspect of life, and hotel
reservations. Often these services are not available off-line and can cost you more.

5. E-Commerce

Ecommerce is the concept used for any type of commercial maneuvering, or business deals that involves
the transfer of information across the globe via Internet. It has become a phenomenon associated with any
kind of shopping, almost anything. You name it and Ecommerce with its giant tentacles engulfing every
single product and service will make you available at your door steps. It has got a real amazing and wide
range of products from household needs, technology to entertainment.
Disadvantages:

1. Theft of Personal information

If you use the Internet, you may be facing grave danger as your personal information such as name, address,
credit card number etc. can be accessed by other culprits to make your problems worse.

2. Spamming

Spamming refers to sending unwanted e-mails in bulk, which provide no purpose and needlessly obstruct
the entire system. Such illegal activities can be very frustrating for you, and so instead of just ignoring it,
you should make an effort to try and stop these activities so that using the Internet can become that much
safer.

3. Virus threat

Virus is nothing but a program which disrupts the normal functioning of your computer systems. Computers
attached to internet are more prone to virus attacks and they can end up into crashing your whole hard disk,
causing you considerable headache.

4. Pornography

This is perhaps the biggest threat related to your children’s healthy mental life, a very serious issue
concerning the Internet. There are thousands of pornographic sites on the Internet that can be easily found
and can be a detrimental factor to letting children use the Internet.

Internet Communication

Internet communication is referred to as the sharing of information, ideas, or simply words over the World
Wide Web, or the Internet. The Internet consists of a worldwide string of connected networks that
exchanges data through packet switching using the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP).

Types of Internet Communication

With the advent of high-speed internet connections, the internet has created more ways of instant
communications that provide a vast option of information sharing.

Social Media Sites

This is a no-brainer. Almost everyone with access to the web has a social media account. Whether it be
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or what have you, a single post can connect you to a friend or loved one
through means of “liking”, “sharing”, or “commenting”.

Instant Messaging

Instant message, or IM, is sending a real-time message from one user to another. Examples are Yahoo!
Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, or the millennial-crush Snapchat.
E-mail

Electronic mail, is the techy version of the traditional mail. This is more likely to be performed when
engaging with a person officially, be it conducting a business, heeding for certain requests, or just simply
saying “Hi”.

Chat Rooms

Before the rise of Social Media, chat rooms were the golden boys of the internet. It’s the equivalent of
partying and getting to know each other where people come together to communicate in the same “room”.

Forum

Forums are specifically directed to people who have questions or want to start an idea or thought through
group discussions. Each post is classified as a thread and is normally monitored by a mod, or moderator,
who can either edit or remove unnecessary posts that are irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Blog

Consider this as your pre-internet, journal or diary. Before, a journal zooms in on one person’s life story.
Now, a blog is used for more than life-sharing people do blogs to earn money by promoting products,
information-sharing, giving tutorial, and even making political statements. People can comment and
subscribe to their blogs if they like the contents.

Internet Terms:

aDSL – Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. A data communications technology that uses copper-based
telephone lines for transmission. It’s a distance sensitive service, meaning your Internet speed will depend
on your location from a central telephone exchange.

ASP – Application Service Provider. A company that provides software applications to customers over the
Internet.

DNS – Domain Name System. This system allows the association of a website name to an IP (Internet
Protocol) address, so we don’t have to remember an IP address all the time.

Gbps – Gigabit Per Second. Bit rate or data rate measurement of a computer network. A 1Gbps fiber
Internet connection = 1000Mbps (Megabits Per Second).

Gig – Gigabit. In data communications, a Gigabit is equal to one billion bits.

HTML – Hypertext Markup Language. A type of system used to markup text files to add fonts, color,
graphics, links etc. Commonly used by web designers.

HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol. An application protocol for information systems and the data
communication foundation for the web.

IoT – Internet of Things. A network of devices or physical objects connected via the Internet.
IP – Internet Protocol. Often used with IP address. An IP address is a number assigned to any device which
connects to the Internet. Check your IP address and find out more about IP addresses by clicking on the
link.

ISP – Internet Service Provider. A company that provides Internet and often telephone services as well.

Kbps – Kilobits Per Second. A measurement of data transfer speed. Often associated with modems or
Internet connections. 1Kbps = 1000 bits per second.

LAN – Local Area Network. A computer network that connects computers within a certain area, such as
an office, school, lab or home.

MAN – Metropolitan Area Network. Larger than a LAN, a MAN is a computer network that may cover
part of a city, a city or even designated areas around a city.

Mbps – Megabits Per Second. A measurement of data transfer speed. 1Mbps = 1000 kilobits.

PBX – Private Branch Exchange. A phone system used to make both internal employee to employee calls
and external phone calls.

RAM – Random Access Memory. A form of computer data storage. Not to be confused with the Daft Punk
Album, ‘Random Access Memories’.

SSL – Secure Sockets Layer. Security technology which encrypts links commonly between web servers
and browsers.

LTE – Long Term Evolution. A 4G mobile / wireless communications standard, that is faster than 3G, but
not as fast as the 5G mobile standard. LTE provides faster connection speeds than 3G and 4G over devices
such as smartphones and tablets.

VoIP – Voice Over Internet Protocol. A method and technology used to deliver voice communications
using an Internet connection. For example, Skype, or Viber.

VPN – Virtual Private Network. A secure private network, which uses a public network such as the Internet
to connect users.

WAN – Wide Area Network. A network that covers a large area. For example, a telecommunications
network that may cover a metro, national or even international area.

Wi-Fi / WiFi / Wifi / Wi-fi – Wireless Fidelity. Local wireless technology that allows devices to exchange
data.

3G – (3rd generation). A collection of 3rd generation cellular data technologies.

4G – (4th generation). A collection of 4th generation cellular data technologies, which succeeded 3G.

5G – (5th generation). A collection of 5th generation cellular data technologies, which succeeded 4G. The
current mobile standard available, as of 2019 and beyond in many nations.
The Importance of Internet in Students Life

The internet has brought about many advancements in communication, technology, communication as well
as education. The internet could serve as a tutor to the students. Students can use the internet for quick
purposes to avail information and the knowledge they need for the projects and assignments. In spite of the
debates and criticisms against internet use for students, it still contributes to the growth in their lives and
academic world.

1) It does not require breaks or time

The world of internet is always active and never takes a break. This fact allows the students to complete
their assignments, research projects and work at any time that suits them. Regardless if you are looking for
assistance or a report for reading, you can always find it around the clock in the internet.

2) Real-time data

The online world has the capability of being in real time. There is an estimation that more than 60,000 pages
of new data are inserted to the web each passing day. This estimation implies students have better current
information that is up-to-date. The real-time data also assist the teachers in tailoring lectures in a more
exciting way.

3) New methods of socialization

The internet provides students with new methods of interacting with each other through social media
platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Various online applications additionally permit students to get
meaningful ways of connecting and building relationships as they study. Students can interact with their
companions at any time they want.

4) Helps in the research process

The Internet makes research basic, simple, and speedy and also makes it more appealing. The internet is an
effective platform for conducting your research if your lecturer gives you a research project to work on.
You will find a lot of sites on the web that can provide vast information about various subjects and topics.

5) New ways of connecting with colleagues and friends

Internet is becoming a crucial tool for connecting students to their teachers and friends. There are a lot of
social networking websites on the internet which allows you to interact with teachers and friends.
Additionally, some developers have innovated social networks which are mainly designed for teachers and
students.

6) Online Education

Online education is garnering popularity among students across the globe. And also, online learning allows
you to learn a course without joining campus. A lot of well-known universities have created a lot of online
programs, and students mostly use this to further their studies even as they work.