What is Internet?

Other users.The Internet is a huge collection of computer networks that can communicate with each other- a network of networks. A network, further, is a collection of interconnected individually controlled computers through networks, each computer user can communicate and share common resources, such as printers and storage space, with

When you connect to Internet from office or home, your computer becomes a small part of this giant network.

Internet is a huge network of computer networks. Computers of all kinds constitute the Internet. It is an umbrella under which many different networks, small or big, freely exchange information.

How does the Internet work?

In order to make the Internet work the requirements is:

1. A physical connection between the computers, and

2. A common language called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) for the computers to communicate over the Internet. By using TCP/IP protocol, all kinds of computers with different operating system fun on the Internet.

What is WWW?

The World Wide Web (WWW) is a vast collection of documents stored on the Internet Computers.

World Wide Web is considered one of the key milestones in Internet Usage. WWW has changed the way information is accessed on the Internet since its inception.

Tim-Berner-Lee invented the web (WWW) in early 1990s.

It has grown very rapidly. Four years ago only around 1250 web servers were online. Today over 10,00,000 web serves.

The idea behind the development of the web was to provide easy access to information and to provide the capability to move freely on the Internet.

WWW documents can contain text, pictures, sound, videos and more.

What is web server?

Web server is a program and a computer clubbed in to one entity, which responds to the requestor from web browsers for Internet resources.

What is Home Page:

Home page is the first hypertext document to be shown when a user follows a link to the web server.

What is HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the protocol used by the Web to transfer hypertext documents and other Internet Resources.

What is URL (Uniform Resource Locator)?

Uniform Resource Locator is a special scheme that tells the user exactly where a resource is located on the Internet.

What is web browser?

A web browser is a program that is allows a user to display and interact with a hypertext document. Some of the popular web browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Eye, Neoplanet, Lynx etc.

Web browsers are of two types:

1. Text Only Browsers

A text only browser such as Lynx allows you to visit web pages without showing art or page structure. Essentially you look at text on the screen. The advantage of a text-only browser is that it displays web pages very fast. This is because it need not transfer images, voice and other media that occupy large amount of memory.

2. Graphical Browsers

The two graphical browsers that are currently in use are Netscape, Internet Explorer. The graphical browsers are significantly slower than their text only counterparts since the multimedia files/graphics in these browsers often take a long time to download.

NOTE : You can download the browsers free from the following URLs

Netscape Navigator : http://home.netscape.com

Microsoft Internet Explorer : http://www.mocrosoft.com > downloads

How to surf the web with a Browser?

Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer are very popular browsers in use today. Both browsers have a simple tool bar for navigating the web including the web buttons to move backward and forward through pages you have visited as well as button to reload/refresh the current page. Several other options, including printing and searching, are also available from the toolbar.

You can jump to any site on the web by typing its URL in the Location Box/ Address Bar and pressing Enter. Both Netscape and Internet Explorer use the search button to find just about any web site that is available.

Internet Explorer and Netscape, both remember your favorite web pages by using bookmarks creating bookmarks allows you to create a permanent link to the current page. You can instantly jump to any of the your marked pages by selecting it from the Bookmark Menu.

Hyperlinks on the web page:

Hyperlink allow you to jump to another page on web. Normally, hyperlink text is underlined and appears in a different colour on the webpage. (Mainly Blue colour). There is another way to identify the hypertext (Link). When your cursor points to it the hand sign will appear.