Lecture 1a: The Internet

What You Will Learn Today

1. Understand the structure and purpose of the course
2. Locate course-related resources for independent learning
3. Describe the structure and function of the Internet
4. Describe available tools and services for Internet communication
5. Describe providers, networks, transport media, protocols and ways to connect.

Course Overview

• Course prerequisites
  • Introductory theoretical and practical knowledge of computer hardware and software.
  • Some programming experience may be helpful in learning HTML and related technologies.
• Coursework
  • weekly lab exercises, five short web projects, final website project
• Course schedule
  • See the calendar for course meeting dates and times. Note: no class next week.
• Lecturer
  • Mr. G. Vogl, 077-606404, gvogl@umu.ac.ug (Nkozi Wed.-Fri.), GregVogl@yahoo.com (Kampala Sat.-Tue.)

Course Goals and Content

1. Describe the hardware, software, tools, services, data and people used to create the Internet and the web.
2. Use software to navigate the Internet, find and download useful information and communicate with others.
3. Author web pages and sites, create and modify images for use in web pages, publish web pages to a server and test in browsers.
4. Discuss advanced technologies for creating and managing dynamic web content.
5. Create and use plans, procedures and processes for organising and developing large web sites.
6. Discuss techniques for designing effective web sites and evaluating effectiveness.
7. Discuss social impacts and ethical issues of Internet use and web design for individuals and managerial policies.

Key Resources

• Primary library textbook
  • Internet Literacy, Hofstetter, McGraw Hill, 1998, 004.678 HOF
• Photocopies
  • QuickStudy Guides: Internet, HTML, Unix
• Major electronic resources
  • Computers in Your Future, Interactive Edition, Chapters 7 and 8, Meyer et al., Addison Wesley, 1999
  • 100 Do's and Dont's in Web Design, Kampherbeek, SpiderPro, 2001
• Primary Intranet resource
  • course web site: http://home.umu.ac.ug/web/
  • also see the Data Communications and Networks course web site: http://home.umu.ac.ug/dcn/

What is the Internet?

• a global network of computer networks
• connection of millions of computers and thousands of networks
• based on a research network created by the US Department of Defense (military)
• used for communication and information exchange throughout the world
• all computers on the Internet must use the Internet Protocol to communicate

Internet Services and Programs

• electronic mail: sending and receiving messages and attached files; people are assigned e-mail addresses
• electronic mailing lists: everyone subscribed to the list gets a message sent to the list, e.g. listservs
• USENET newsgroups: electronic bulletin board service with text conferencing/discussion features
• real-time communication: chat, messengers, videoconferencing, whiteboards, streaming audio and video
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP): sending and receiving files to and from a file server
• Telnet, ssh: remote login to other computers on the Internet, possibly anonymously
• Gopher: older menu-driven document system, mostly replaced by the web
• World Wide Web (WWW): documents and files of various types which
  • are connected using hypertext links to create a web-like structure
  • are accessed through the Internet by addresses called URLs

Internet Uses

• telecommuting (working from home or anywhere)
• business, advertising and online shopping (e.g. Dell.com computers, Amazon.com books)
• government services, politics and national defense
• electronic publishing (magazines, newspapers and news services)
• entertainment (television, radio, videos, audio mp3s)
• teaching and learning (course websites, conferencing, simulation, visualization)
• scholarly research (searchable databases of journal articles; individual web publishing)

Internet Users

• initially government defense specialists, scientists and researchers; young adult, wealthy, highly educated Americans
• now people of all ages in all professions including business; from all countries (but still mostly the wealthy and educated)

Internet Service Providers

• Organizations that provide an Internet connection
• Internet traffic goes through their network
• Charge can be hourly or monthly and depends on the bandwidth (data rate) you need
• American/International examples include America Online and Microsoft Network (MSN)
• Ugandan examples include UTL and MTN (which provides a connection for UMU)

Networks

• types: LAN, MAN, WAN; Internet, Intranet
• topologies: bus, ring, star, tree, mesh
• servers: computers which make hardware, software and data resources available
• clients: user computers which request services from servers
• client-server network: a LAN with at least one dedicated server
• peer-to-peer network: a LAN without a dedicated server; "peers" share resources

Transport Media

• something to carry the communication signal between computers on the network
• wired or wireless, conducted or radiated
• analog phone lines (copper wire)
• category 5 Ethernet cable
• microwaves (via towers)
• radio waves (via satellites)

Protocols

• a set of rules computers use to communicate with other computers on a network; e.g.:
• Ethernet: used to transfer information on a LAN, e.g. the UMU Intranet
• Internet Protocol (IP): the basic protocol of the Internet; identifies computers by IP addresses
• Transport Control Protocol (TCP): breaks large messages into packets; reliably transports and reassembles them
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP): used to send and receive files from a FTP server
• Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP): used to retrieve web pages from a web server

Ways to Connect

• through a connected local area network (LAN) using a network card, e.g. UMU computer labs
• dial-up using a modem and point-to-point protocol (PPP), e.g. from home
• integrated services digital network (ISDN) - digital phone system
• cable modems (digital signals using co-axial cable like for cable TV)

To Do After Class

• Fill in the student survey form and return it to the lecturer.
• Locate Internet books in the library and briefly compare their format and contents.
• Circle any words in these notes that you do not understand, look them up in a book, and write down their definitions using your own words.
• Read the following chapters in Hofstetter:
  • Part One (ch. 1-2) and ch. 3 to review today
  • Part Three (ch. 5-10) to prepare for tomorrow and Friday (Internet communication tools)
  • Ch. 4 and Part Four (ch. 11 to 14) to prepare for next week (the World Wide Web)
• Read Computers in Your Future, module 7a: Understanding the Internet.
• View Lecture 3 from the MIS1 course.
• Get photocopies of course materials from the photocopy office near the reception.
• Log into a computer running Linux and explore its programs, files and features.
• Browse and become familiar with the course web site (available soon at http://home.umu.ac.ug/web/).