Internet/Intranet

The Internet is a grouping of many individual networks into one single logical network all sharing a common protocol(s). In principle all of the PC’s on the school’s LAN can access (and be accessed by) any other PC connected to the Internet.

To access the Internet you need a mixture of hardware and software. The hardware is something that is going to convert the digital signals from the computer into analogue ones that travel down the telephone line. Normally a modem provides this facility but it could also be an ISDN card or broadband router. The software required is connection software (normally found in the operating system) and a browser (Internet Explorer and Netscape/Mozilla are the main ones). The browser then converts the HTML codes into the mixture of text and graphics that we see on the page.

An Intranet is basically an internal version of the Internet specific to an organization and normally found on one site or building.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

Also sometimes called a “Universal” Resource Locator. It gives more memorable names to the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses that really govern the Internet. For instance the URL http://www.microsoft.com is much easier to remember than the IP address 207.46.197.102. The first part of the URL (in this case “http”) refers to the hypertext transfer protocol that is to be used. The “www” refers to the “World Wide Web”. Everything on the “world wide web” is linked or referred to by means of “hypertext”. These are the rules that govern the production of web pages. Next we see the organization name and finally the type of organization. In this case it is a company (probably American based). Alternative endings include “.NET”, “.EDU”, “.CO.UK”, etc.

The HTTP at the beginning of the URL is the protocol or “rules” that are obeyed when transferring web pages around the Internet. These common standards are needed if we are to connect different types of network and/or computers together.

The last two portions of the URL define the “domain name”. This needs to be registered (and paid for) and then the domain name added to various “Domain Name System” servers. These servers translate the convenient URL into the correct IP address ready for routing around the Internet