What is the Internet?

What is the Interent?

The Internet is a network that allows computers to connect and communicate through protocols called TCP/IP.

The Internet is a network of computers and electronic devices that are interconnected to share information.

A computer network, or data communications is: the interconnection of a number of computer systems through telecommunications devices and a physical medium (wired or wireless).

Its function is sharing information in data packets. They are transmitted by electrical pulses, electromagnetic waves or other means, using special coding. To do this, the system translates the processes of the different computers into the same language, through a series of communication standards also called protocols (TCP/IP protocol).

Computer networks are no different from other communication processes: they have a sender, a receiver and a message, a channel through which to transmit the message and a series of codes or protocols to guarantee its correct understanding. In this case, those sending and receiving messages are computers.

The concept of the Internet is made up of the word inter (meaning between) and net (from network, meaning electronic network). It is a term that should always be written in capital letters since it refers to "The Network" (which connects computers worldwide through the TCP/IP protocol) and without an accompanying article (the) to refer to it.

Internet services.

Thanks precisely to the Internet, to the use of the WWW (World Wide Web), we have the possibility of accessing an endless number of services, where we have the opportunity to discover, learn, publish, entertain ourselves, communicate, some of the services it offers are:

World Wide Web, web pages.
Electronic mail. Emails
Web forums.
Weblogs, blogs.
FTP (File Transmission Protocol) file transfer.
P2P file sharing
Chats, audio and video conferencing, instant messaging and telephone calls via the Internet.
Social networking.
Working platforms.
Wikis.
Games and videogames.
Music, audio, films players.
Online file management.
Dissemination of projects.

How did the Internet start?

The beginnings of the Internet was in the 1960s. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States defense program created an exclusively military project so that, in the hypothetical case of a Russian attack, military information could be accessed from anywhere in the country.

This network was created in 1969 and was called ARPANET Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). Initially, the network consisted of four computers distributed among different universities in the country. Two years later, about 40 computers were connected.

The network grew so much that its communication system became obsolete. Two researchers then created the TCP/IP protocol, which became the standard communications protocol for computer networks (we still use this protocol today).

In 1983, it was decided to change the protocol used by the ARPANET (NCP protocol) for the TCP/IP protocol with the intention of achieving communication with machines or networks outside the ARPANET, i.e. external. This fact marks what we know today as the Internet.

However, developments continued. In 1989 Tim Berners Lee gave rise to the World Wide Web by means of a hypertext transfer protocol, what we know as links.

How does Internet work?

WWW (World, Wide, Web)

It is a worldwide computer network, a functioning system, through which various types of data can be transmitted via the HyperText Transfer Protocol or HTTP to access any site:

This link is the address where the document is hosted/saved. This Internet address is called URL (Uniform, Resource, Locator). These documents are hosted on servers, and are used to locate/find them.

Web servers are computers that store Internet content and make it constantly and securely available. When you visit a website from your browser, it is the web server that sends the individual components of the website directly to your computer. For a website to be accessible at any time, the web server must be permanently connected and switched on.

Once the URL is written in the browser searching bar. The browser, is the computer programme in charge of carrying out a series of communications to obtain the data of the requested page and, assemble it in the correct way, to visualise it.

The first step consists of transforming the name of the URL server (domain) into an IP address, using the database known as DNS (Domain Name System). The IP address allows the web server to be contacted and the data packets to be transferred.

The IP address: (Internet Protocol) is a series of numbers that identify a computer inside a network. It is unique and unrepeatable address to each device on the Internet. It consists in four numerical blocks. Each block is a number from 0 to 255 and separated by a dot ("."). For example, 192.168.0.11.

Imagine, it would be crazy to have to point to or remember every IP address for every resource! This is why the domain names were created.

Domain name. It is what we know as the web name, it is the name linked to the IP address of a web. It can be typed directly in the browser searching bar.

Domain extensions are those letters (or endings) that you find after the dot and at the end of the address of a website, such as .com, .mx or .net, and that help to define either the geographical location: .cn (China), .de (Germany), .es (Spain) or the nature of those sites: .net (network), .org (non-profit organisations) or .com (commercial). It is the most common extension on the internet and therefore the most trusted.

The DNS returns the IP information, our computer establishes the connection to the server where the website is located.

An HTTP request is then sent to the server in order to get access to the resource. First the HTML text is requested and then the browser make operations such, making other requests reserved for the graphics and the rest of the files that form part of the page. When these data packets arrive, our browser reassemble them and displays them on the screen.

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is nothing more than the full address of a resource within a web server connected to the internet. Generally, the format of a URL is protocol://domain/directory/addresswithinserver/page

https://www.recursoseducativosdesecundaria.blogspot.com/2020/02/comunidades-autonomas-y-provincias.html

http/https:// indicates which protocol the browser should use. A protocol is an established method of exchanging or transferring data around a computer network. "ftp": handle file transfer.
www.dominio.com/: The host name or address. "www.recursoseducativosdesecundaria.blogspot.com" is the domain name. It indicates which web server is requested.
The location of the file or resource/. Resources are usually located in a host directory or folder. For example, some websites may have a resource such as "/2020/02/comunidades-autonomas-y-provincias" to organise content by dates, categories.
.html is the document type extension.

Many web browsers do not require the user to enter http:// to go to a web page, usually not specifying www. Usually only a partial URL is entered.

How to connect to the Internet.

There are different types of Internet connection, i.e. different means and devices by which one can obtain a connection to the network of networks, the main elements necessary to establish an Internet connection are:

Internet Service Provider. (ISP) Internet Server Provider. These are the companies and organisations that provide Internet access and services to users. They manage the access and physical networks such as telecommunication antennas, cabling, etc. Examples are Orange, Vodafone, O2, Movistar, Lowi...

Modem/Router: The modem is the element that establishes the connection between the terminal and the telephone line or transmission line that is managed by the provider. This device connects and manages the connections of all the terminals in a local network.

Servers: are computer with large storage capacity and they are constantly connected to the internet. They are called that because they “serve” another computer, device, or program called “client” to which they provide functionality.

Terminal. The terminal is the element that serves the user to receive and send information. It is a desktop or laptop personal computer, or it can also be a television with a keyboard or a mobile phone. These devices must have hardware components enabled to establish the connection: network card, wifi receiver, telephone signal receiver. The internet connection is the means by which a terminal has access to the internet. It can be wired or wireless: Wifi, ADSL, fibre optic, 3G, 4G, 5G (LTE) connectivity.

Browser: Finally, we will need a program that is able to read the information on the internet servers, which is usually written in HTML language, and display it on the screen. They are also able to collect the information. Some examples are: Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari...

Difference between browser and search engine.

Browser and search engine are words that are widely used on the Internet. Here are some points that will help you to clarify the differences between these two things.

A browser is a software program installed on a computer, mobile phone or any other electronic device that can easily access the Internet; Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Edge, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, etc. are the names of the most popular web browsers.

Search engine is a website that allows users to look up at many web pages to find matches to the user's search inputs. . After searching with one or more free words or keywords, search engines display a list of links results. The ranking of this list is done according to a series of algorithms. Google, Yahoo, Bing, NATE, DuckDuckGo, etc. are the most popular search engines.

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