The Internet

To cover the content for this you will need to read Chapter 2 "The Internet and World Wide Web" from your text book, Discovering Computers 2006, and listen to about 1.5 hours worth of podcasts. The first podcast is called the Internet - click here for jargon, slides, video version and/or audio version. You can skip the first 30 minutes or so. Three other podcasts that are helpful include Web Servers (Quicktime format, Flash Format), TCP/IP (Quicktime format, Flash format) and HTTP (Quicktime format, Flash format)

These podcasts can be listened to at school. They also can be taken home or downloaded at home. You need to answer the following questions.

What is the Internet?
What are the different ways a person can connect to the Internet?
What is an access provider?
Describe three types of service providers.
Draw an annotated diagram showing how a student accesses a web page.
Define the following terms- IP Address, domain name, top-level domain
What is the DNS and why is it important?
Do the terms WWW and Internet mean the same thing?
What other services are available on the Internet besides the WWW?
Describe the difference between a peer-to-peer network and a client-server network architecture.
In using the WWW describe the client and the server relationship?
In using the WWW what software is commonly the client? What software is commonly the server?
What are the protocols for web page browsing, outgoing mail servers, incoming mail servers, web mail servers, uploading files,?
Is this a distributed or centralised processing environment? Support your answer.
Can ISPs or other servers read you Internet transmissions - email, instant messages, web pages viewed?
What is a LAN?
What is a WAN?
What is the major difference between them?
What is the difference between http and html?
Write an URL and identify the domain name, top-level domain, protocol, directory/ folders and resources/ file accessed.
What is FTP used for?
What is the difference betweeen http and https?
Find out the IP address of the GSC website - www.gsc.wa.edu.au
Go to the Traceroute tool and trace to the IP address of the school website from someplace in the US - what does each line represent?
If you run it again is it exactly the same?
Trace from someplace other than the US.