Internet Basics and Terms
What is the Internet ?
The Internet is a giant computer network that connects other computer networks. More and more of the world's computer networks are being connected to it. Think of the Internet as a giant octopus with millions of tentacles, with each tentacle grasping another octopus.
The Internet hosts several different services. The most popular one is e-mail. Just a few years ago, you couldn't send email to someone unless both you and the recipient were on the same online service. But with the Internet, you can send a message to someone on any online service or on any network connected to the Internet. Some other popular Internet services are FTP and Gopher. The Web accesses different resources that are stored in different kinds of services by using a special kind of address called a URL (Universal Resource Locater). The address that you type to get to a Web page is a URL. For example: "http://www.digitelone.com" is the URL for the Digitel One website.
What is Email?
Electronic mail (or E-mail) is exactly what the name suggests - mail (messages) sent between users electronically. E-mail is the most popular, and probably the most productive, resource available on the Internet.
n User ID: Every person with an e-mail address has a user identification of some sort. It is usually something simple, like jdelacruz, but can be more complex.
@: The "at" sign connects the user ID with the third element.
Domain: You have already learned about domain names; every e-mail address has one.
E-mail addresses never contain spaces or commas. If you see an e-mail address with a comma or space in it, you know right away it is invalid. This rule includes CompuServe addresses, which do contain commas. If you're e-mailing to a CompuServe address from an Internet e-mail account, replace the comma with a period. So, to put it all together, a typical e-mail address contains all three of the preceding elements. One example of an e-mail address is :
The ability to send messages electronically to users around the globe has made it seem smaller, enabling millions to share information and particularly discussions on an unprecedented level. The software and terminology used when sending or discussing e-mail can be really daunting, but once you have mastered a few basic concepts, the path is cleared for a better understanding. According to The New Hacker's Dictionary, the term "e-mail" is derived from the French word emmailleure, meaning "network".
In essence, e-mail is mail sent over a network, whether it is a LAN where all users are in the same building and using the same computer system, or across the globe on non-related computer systems. A computer need not be connected directly to the Internet to send and receive e-mail from other Internet users. Some Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) and other online services offers an e-mail "gateway", through which e-mail can be sent to the wider Internet community. As such, it is important to remember that just because a person has an e-mail address, it doesn't necessarily mean that they have access to all the Internet resources.
What is FTP ?
FTP = File Transfer Protocol, make sense?
Well, it is the way in which files are transferred across the Internet in general. With this powerful tool, a person can send files (upload) to another account which he/she has accesses to or even to a public directory (e.g., when a person would like to send the homepages that he/she created on his/her computer and place it in his/her service provider). Likewise, it can be used to retrieve files from another account which they have access to or even to a public directory. Or when a person would like to retrieve (download) a file to be maintained on their computer, he/she would use the FTP program and retrieve the file/s he/she wanted.
Basic FTP programs exist on UNIX systems and are text based, but in the graphical world of Windows and MacOS, there are graphical versions of the FTP program. One of the best of these programs is WS-FTP, for Windows-based systems, because it is easy to configure and intuitively easy to use. On the Mac side there is FETCH which is a pretty basic FTP program. There are a lot of other FTP programs but you can find out all about them on your own.
What is IRC?
IRC stands for "Internet Relay Chat". It was originally written by Jarkko Oikarinen in 1988. Since starting in Finland, it has been used in over 60 countries around the world. It was designed as a replacement for the "talk" program but has become much much more than that. IRC is a multi-user chat system, where people convene on "channels" (a virtual place, usually with a topic of conversation) to talk in groups, or privately. IRC is constantly evolving, so the way things work one week may not be the way they work the next. Read the MOTD (message of the day) every time you use IRC to keep up on any new happenings or server updates. IRC gained international fame during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, where updates from around the world came across the wire, and most IRC users who were online at the time gathered on a single channel to hear these reports. IRC had similar uses during the coup against Boris Yeltsin in September 1993, where IRC users from Moscow were giving live reports about the unstable situation there.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is a measurement for the rate at which data can be transferred, or in non-digital systems, the range of frequencies available for transmission.
Client
(See web browser.)
Cookie
A piece of data given to your browser by a web server, so that your browser will hand it back to the server with subsequent requests. First implemented by Netscape. Although there has been some furor over the privacy implications of cookies, they cannot be used to reveal anything about you to the server that you have not already explicitly revealed.
DNS
Acronym for Domain Name Service, the mechanism by which human-readable hierarchical names are translated to IP addresses, and vice-versa.
Domain Name
The highest level name of the web site. For example, the domain name for Digitelone is digitelone.com If you type www.digitelone.com in the location area on your browser, you will be connected directly to the Our Website. The domain name is included in the Internet address: http://www.digitelone.com
Download
The transfer of information from the Internet to your computer. Every time you instruct your computer system to retrieve your mail, you are downloading your mail to your computer. You may also download programs to your computer. However, be careful about downloading files or programs from a site in which you are not familiar. You could download a virus and never knew it until it's too late. (A virus will not be active unless you open the downloaded file.)
FAQ
An acronym for Frequently Asked Questions. FAQ usually serves as a mini-help file.
HTML
HyperText Mark-up Language. HTML is not really a programming language, but a way to format text by placing marks around the text. For example, HTML allows you to make a word bold or underline it. Early word processing programs used to work this way. HTML is the foundation for most web pages.
http
HyperText Transfer Protocol. A protocol that tells computers how to communicate with each other. You will notice most web page locations begin with "http://"
Host
The computer on which a web site is physically located.
Hypertext
Text on a web page that links the user to another web page. The hypertext, or links, will usually be a different color than the other text on the page and is usually underlined.
Link
A link will transport you from one Internet site to another with just a click of your mouse. Links can be text or graphic and are recognizable once you know what to look for. Text links usually will be underlined and often a different color than the rest of the text on your screen. A graphic link usually has a frame around it.
Load
Short for download and upload. If someone asks how long did the page take to load? He/She is referring to the time it takes a page to appear on your screen. If a web page is loading slow, it means that it's taking a long time to fully appear on your screen. You can often scroll through a page and look at the parts that have loaded while the rest of the page continues to load. Also, you can usually click a link on the page you are loading and link to another page without waiting for the current page to fully load.
Location
An Internet address. While you are in your browser (which you are probably in now), you will see a section at the top of the page that is titled "Location". If you look right now you will see that the location of this web page is http://www.digitelone.com. If you type in the address of someone's web page and hit enter, your browser will take you to that page. However the address you type in the location bar must be an exact match.
Modem
Short for modulator-demodulator devices. Modems allow computers to transmit information to one another via an ordinary telephone line.
Net
Short for Internet.
Newsgroups
Also called usenets, they are groups that often have nothing to do with news. Newsgroups are ongoing discussion groups among people on the Internet who share a mutual interest.
Online
Having access to the Internet. You are online right now. Often people will say they are online meaning they have access to the Internet and have an e-mail address, but may not necessarily be connected to the Internet at that moment.
PPP
An acronym for Point-to-Point-Protocol, an advanced serial packet protocol similar to SLIP.
Ping
A network program which sends UDP packets to a host, and listens for responses. Used to check if a machine on the Internet is alive and reachable, and measure the Round Trip Time (RTT) between the local
and remote host.
POP mail
A program used to remotely read e-mail across a network, often used in conjunction with SLIP. Uses the POP protocol.
Protocol
A set of rules that lets computers agree on how to communicate over the Internet. Any standard for the exchange of information, a protocol defines the specific wording and control flow for communications between two or more programs, devices, or systems.
Proxy
A proxy is somebody you delegate to do something for you. In the Internet, a "proxy web server" is often used for hosts behind firewalls. The firewalled host sends a http request to the proxy server, which forwards it to the real web server outside, collects the response, and passes it back to the internal host.
Router
A router is a special type of Internet host that gateways (transfers) packets between two or more networks.
Site
A place on the Internet. Every web page has a location where it resides which is called it's site. And every site has an address usually beginning with "http://"
Spam (or Spamming)
The Internet version of junk mail. Spamming is sending the same message to a large number of mailing lists or newsgroups, usually to advertise something.
Surfing
The process of "looking around" the Internet. You're doing it now.
URL
An acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. It's the address of each web site. It usually begins with "http://"
Usenet
A collection of so-called newsgroups. (See newsgroups.)
User ID
This is the unique identifier (like your login name) that you use to identify yourself on a computer. You probably typed your User ID (and password) when you logged onto the Internet today.
Virus
Your computer can get a virus just like your body can be invaded with a virus making you (or your computer) sick. A virus can wipe out information on your computer and create major havoc. Viruses usually originate from malicious people. You can unintentionally download a virus from a web site or get it from a disk that someone has lent you. There are virus-checking programs, but there are new viruses popping up every day. So the best defense against a virus is to be very careful not to download programs or data from a site you're not familiar with. Better yet, scan the downloaded file/s before opening or installing it on your hard disk.
Web Browser
The tool (program) that allows you to surf the web. You probably used your web browser to locate this page. The most popular web browsers right now are Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.
Web Page
Every time you are on the Internet, you are looking at a web page. Yes, that includes this page.
World Wide Web (WWW)
A full-color, multimedia database of information on the Internet. Like the name implies, the World Wide Web is a universal mass of web pages connected together through links. Theoretically, if you clicked on every link on every web page you would eventually visit every corner of the world without ever having to leave your computer chair. Of course, you would also have to live until you were about a million years old and computers were antiquated technology.
