lets learn Internet Basics.
This post is for those who are still at the learning or beginning stage of the internet and are learning about the basics of this dynamic field. The post contains the definition and explanation of the basic internet terms and concepts along with factual examples for better understanding. So before I go ahead with these complex terms and concepts, I would first like you to understand what exactly is internet and how does this function.
What is Internet?
Internet is a global network that connects computers around the globe, using the internet protocol (IP) to communicate with each other. It uses existing public telephone lines, wireless networks, satellites networks to relay data between networks using routers.
Internet has different parts which includes www (World Wide Web), telnet, ftp and services. (We will discuss about all these terms in section coming up)
Internet can be categorized into different types depending on the size. The most commonly used categories are:
LAN, MAN, WAN, WLAN
LAN: LAN stands for Local Area Network. A LAN corresponds to a small network, a network inside an office, school or building.
MAN: MAN stands for metropolitan area network. It is a larger network that usually spans several buildings in the same city or town.
WAN: WAN stand for Wide Area Network. As its name suggests, WAN is a network involving a wide area. It has got no geographical limits. A WAN connects several LANs and MANs to give shape to a wide area network
WLAN: WLAN stand for wireless local area network. A LAN over a wireless network is often called as WLAN. However, it is popularly known as wifi in common language.
Now since you are well acquainted with the term internet, let’s jump to some basic internet terms to understand the whole thing better.
Intranet
An Intranet is a private network owned by an individual or organization. Intranet works on the standards of Internet to link together the resources of an organization from text documents to multimedia documents, databases, document management systems, workgroup, security systems, bulletin boards, search engines etc.
Example: A workgroup inside your office is an example of Intranet, it connects your desktops with each other, and so you can share your files, folders and take printouts.
Extranet
Extranet is although similar to the intranet, it runs beyond the boundaries of Intranet. Extranets enables access to vendors, suppliers, dealers and distributors of an organization, who can update the information for the delivery of their products from time to time by sitting at their own places, simply by connecting to the organization’s network over the Extranet.
Example: If an organization has a supplier in Newyork and company’s manufacturing unit is in San Francisco, the supplier can update the delivery information in the company database from his office at Newyork through Extranet.
WWW
www stand for world wide web . It’s a uniform method to access and retrieve information on the internet. The information is received by using the HTTP protocol (hyper text transfer protocol).
Protocol
Protocol is a set of rules to which two computers or systems agree to communicate. As we human beings use language which basically is a set of rules to communicate with each other, systems or computers use protocol for communication. Examples of internet protocol are http, https, ftp, TCP/IP
HTTP
HTTP stand for hyper text transfer protocol which is a set of rules for transferring hyper text and hyper media, which includes text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files over the world wide web.
HTTPS
Https stand for Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer. HTTPS encrypts and decrypts the web page requests and page information between the client browser and the web server using a secure Socket Layer (SSL).
FTP
FTP stand for file transfer protocol. It’s a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network. This protocol is use to upload/download files from web server or from a network computer using ftp clients like file zilla, cute ftp etc.
SMTP
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. This protocol is used to send and receive emails.
TCP/IP
TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. It’s a basic communication protocol of the Internet. TCP/IP protocol divides the data into small packets at one end of the communication channel and then transfer it on the network on the other end of the channel, which reconstructs the packets into data.
TCP/IP is composed of layers:
IP: – IP forwards each packet to its destination address which is the IP address or you can say a computer address.
TCP: – It is responsible for verifying the correct delivery of data between the computers. Data can be lost during data transmission. TCP adds support to detect errors or lost data and to trigger retransmission until the data is correctly and completely received.
Hypertext
Hypertext is a text with links to additional information about that text. Like color, font, size etc.
IP Address
IP Address stands for an Internet Protocol Address. It is a unique address that computing devices use to identify themselves and communicate with each other and other devices on the Internet. An IP Address is a 32 bit number, which is of 4 set separated by dotted decimal. Example of an IP Address 192.168.1.7
Domain
A domain is logical grouping of computers on a network. It defines to which domain a website belongs. We have got several domain like commercial domain, educational domain etc.
Example .com, .net, .org, .edu
Domain
A domain name is a name given to a website. Remembering an IP address is bit a difficult task and we can’t remember multiple IP address, so internet founders has came up with the concept of domain names, because remembering domain names is much easier. It’s same like remember your friend by his name rather than this house address.
Example www.google.com, www.yahoo.com
Sub domain name
Domain name can be further divided into sub names know as sub domain names.
Example mail.yahoo.com, account.google.com
DNS
DNS stands for Domain Name Server. It contains all corresponding IP Addresses of all domain names. When a request is made from a web browser for a web page the requested is forward to a DNS server from where the corresponding IP address of the web server is retrieved and request is forward to that particular web server and the web page is served.
Web server
A web server is a computer where a website resides. You can say it’s the home of a website. Web Server work on the client/server architecture. When a request is made for a web page it’s this server that delivers that web page to the requesting client over the http.
Browser
Browser is an application, which, retrieves information from a web page and displays it to the user.
More specifically it has the ability to display
- Hypertext and hypermedia documents.
- Text in different fonts, styles, colors, and sizes.
- Foreign language character sets conforming to the ISO 8859 standard.
- Forms composed of text fields, text widgets, buttons, checkboxes, etc.
- Graphics in different formats.
Website
A website is a collection of web pages which are linked to each other by hypertext.
Web page
A web page a collection of information, which is published by an author on the world wide web. A web page contains hyper text, images, videos, and other digital assets.
I am sure, by now, you all must be clear about the basic terminology of the internet and how these basic concepts work. Some of you must have got curious about these terms and would like to put this knowledge into action by creating your own website.
Well, creating a website is no rocket science and you too can create one on your own. So if you really want to learn how to create your own website, I will tell about the basics and other information required for hosting a website on the internet in my next blog post. Till then, good bye and good luck. Happy surfing!
Very nice and informative.
Even my certain doubts cleared!!! Thanks mate.