Chapter 1

In 1960 US government agency DARPA (Defence of Advance Research Projects Agency) funded research on how to connect computers.

Objective : empower computers to exchange data amongst themselves.

Reason: in the event of a nuclear war the network should continue to relay information to other computers connected to it even if one of the links failed.

First Network was called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Administration Network). It was started by the Department of defense of the United States in 1969.

It started with four computers connecting military research centres.

By 1970 it grew to about 50 computers. By 1993 with the introduction of the World

Wide Web (WWW) the scenario changed completely.

In India Organisations i.e. Internet Service Provider (ISPs) provide their consumers Internet access.

Some popular ISPs are in India : Satyam Online, VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited), Mantra Online etc.

At the moment all the ISPs in India take their Internet access through VSNL.

Two ways : 1- LAN (Local Area Network) 2- through telephone line.

Fast gaining popularity for high-speed connections is via fibre-optic cables. ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network).

Using an ISDN connection, one can gain fast access to the World Wide Web to transmit and receive text, graphics, sound and video through the Net.

A personal computer A fast modem. A telephone line A special program called Web Browser. An integrated communications software

that controls the communication of data over the hardware

Note: Every computer on the internet exchanges information according to certain rules called protocols. IP/TCP.

World Wide Web (WWW) Web Servers Web Pages Web Sites Web Browsers Web Address

Internet Address E-mail Address Domain Name System

(.com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net, .org (nonprofit organisation), .in, .au, .ca, .uk, fr, .jp etc.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet

Protocol (TCP/IP) File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Telnet Gopher Wide Area Information Service (WAIS)

Orient BlackSwan The Internet