Into the Internet - Chapter 1 assignment

What is the Internet? The internet is a vast number of computers all linked together, in a world wide connection of computers, smartphones, PDAs, and laptops. The protocol, is a standard set of rules for communicating between devices. This protocol is known as TCP/IP, or The Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol .

So what can the internet be used for? The internet is used for researching information, checking weather, news, and sports. Online shopping, games, planning trips, and more. Email and instant messaging are very popular ways to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world. Businesses use the internet for a variety of reasons as well. Keeping up to date on current events in their industries, real time stock market activity, researching new trends and important information in the industry or field of expertise. Ordering supplies, parts and materials for their company all can be done online, with just a few clicks of the mouse.

So how did the Internet get started? In the 1960's, computers had only been used by the universities and the government. With the Cold War going on, the Soviet Union and the US governments were both try to get the upper hand on the technology. The Soviets launched there first satellite, and the US was behind in the technology race. The Department of Defense was tasked with creating the technology that would advance us past that of the Soviets. The ARPA or, Advanced Research Projects Agency was created to do just that. In 1961, a man name Leonard Kleinrock at the University of California (UCLA) was the first person to come up with the idea of packet switching. The idea is similar to that of the telephone system. One party dials a series of numbers and connects to a party with that phone number. These packets could be seperated and sent to the receiving party on any number of routes and be joined together to create an image. After a successful experiment between two computers at both UCLA and Stanford University, the ARPANET was created. For the first time in history two computers were able to communicate using this new technology. In 1972 two men named Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn invented the TCP/IP protocol for the exchange of information used on the Internet. It was not long until the Ray Tomlison of BBN in Massachusetts created the first email program to send and receive communications.In the 1990, two students at the University of Minnesota, created the first file directory. A hiearchical system of organizing data into folders which can be stored on a computer for filing documents. Shortly afterwards, Tim Berners-Lee was able to discover a way to link words of text to other documents. This was known as Hypertext. This lead to more technological breakthroughs. The HTML was created for documents to be read by using special software. Berners-Lee is credited with the first web browser simply called WorldWideWeb. Finally, he came up with the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) which uses the web address to locate a document.

How to connect to the Internet? The oldest and slowest way to connect to the Internet is my using a dial up connection through your local phone line. This way just like making a phone call on a land line. The computer dials a phone number and connects to a modem, which converts the signal to analog to be transmitted over the phone line. This is painfully slow, but cheap. ( I am speaking from personal experience.) However, there is DSL or Digital Subscriber Line. DSL is faster because it is broadband, meaning it can separate the signal into sending and receiving signals. Cable internet connection is the fastest way to the internet. It uses your existing cable line to create a dedicated connection to the internet.

All information is courtesy of : scsite.com/internet3e/sources Shelly Cashman, Discovering the Internet, 3rd edition.