A. Computer and its main components

A computer is a machine, which helps us to calculate, simulate and store different scenarios. For example, in order to write an e-mail, instead of paper and pen first we use a software (or program) called word processor which helps us enter sentences through keyboard (Input), computer's screen (output) to read, and modem (output/input) to send it to a distant relative, friend, etc.

The mechanism to simulate a regular mail into e-mail, gave us a very fast and much cheaper medium to communicate (not a simulation anymore). Same way, using computers we can simulate other things over which we do not have any control, for example weather, behavior of atomic bomb, behavior of a deadly virus, earthquake, a innovative design for a new auto, airplane, machine, etc.

Any computer has five parts Input, Output, CPU, Memory, Disk (storage). Input is things like mouse, keyboard, and modem. Output is computer screen, printer. CPU or central processing is brain of the computer, which controls and executes all calculations, manipulations and output. Memory (RAM) is a temporary storage to be used by CPU when doing calculations, etc. Think of it as a scratch pad for CPU. Disk is permanent storage, on which all the software and data is stored.

B. Learning while you surf!

You've finally got that computer you were given for Christmas connected to the Internet and what did you discover? INFORMATION OVERLOAD!!!! Our purpose here will be to walk you through your beginning steps on the Internet, help show you how and where to find information that you can actually use instead of being overwhelmed by thousands of bits and pieces of information that you don't need. In effect, we will try to help you bring order to the chaos.

C. What is the Internet?

In essence the Internet is a term used to describe thousands of computers, spanning over 100 countries. Some people may liken this to a single entity, but this is not true. The Internet is transitory, ever changing, reshaping and remolding itself. Ordinarily a collection of thousands of computers worldwide might not attract so much attention. However people are using this new medium in ways that simply was not possible a mere six years ago.

People use the Internet and the Web for three primary functions:

· Get Information
· Communicate with others
· Buy or sell goods and services

Get Information
To find the information you're looking for from stock quotes and news updates to sports scores and celebrity gossip, start with VIP Channels, then use VIP Search to canvass the entire Web for the topics that interest you.

Communicate with Others
Once you start to use electronic mail, the postal service seems as slow and archaic as the Pony Express. "E-mail" makes it easy to keep in touch with friends and colleagues all over the world.

Buy or Sell Goods and Services
If you'd rather be shopping, the Web is the place for you. From the comfort of your home, you can use your credit card to buy what you want without having to find a parking spot or wait in long checkout lines. To shop online, start with VIP Shopping channel, where you can buy everything from gardening tools, books, and CDs to Domain names.

Just how were all these things made possible? The Internet. The single largest telecommunications system ever conceived by humankind.

There are four basic building blocks to the Internet: Hosts, Routers, Clients, and Connections. Hosts and Clients are explained later, but for now, be content to know that unless you have very special circumstances, in most cases your computer falls under the "Client" category. Data is sent from your computer in the form of a "packet". You can liken a packet to be similar to an envelope; it surrounds your data and contains both a return and destination address. Your computer handles the packets for you; it's all done in the background, without your knowledge.

A Router is a special device. Basically routers sit at key points on the Internet and act like traffic cops at an intersection of hundreds of streets. The Router basically reads the destination address on the packets being sent by your computer and then forwards the packet to the appropriate destination. In some cases your data will travel through several routers before reaching its ultimate destination.

Connection is a catch all term describing how you can connect from one point to another point. As an end user, your only concern is that the connection is good, but for a network engineer, this can mean several different types of technologies, including:
Dial-up Phone Lines
Fiber Optics
ISDN
Frame Relay
Satellite Links

D. Why Packets?

Since individual packets can find the best way to their destination, they can find their way around bottlenecks or breakages in the network and they aren't dependent on a central traffic cop to tell them how to travel. Also, if a packet gets lost, the receiving computer can ask the sending computer to resend the missing packet.

E. What is World Wide Web (WWW)?

The World Wide Web (or Web, or WWW) uses the Internet to create a vast network of information made up of millions of documents ("Web pages") containing text, sounds, pictures, movies, and more, all connected together electronically to form "hypertext." In a hypertext document, you get more information on a particular item by clicking on a hyperlink (usually underlined text or a picture), which takes you to a related document.

In fact, the World Wide Web has its origins as a way for researches at CERN, a particle physics lab in Switzerland, to share electronic text documents over a network. To view documents on the Web, people would use a computer program called a Web browser. The first Web browsers could only display text. Soon afterwards, graphical Web browsers were created (including the hugely popular Mosaic graphical Web browser, created at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). From there, it was a short step to multimedia Web browsers with sounds, pictures, text, movies and more.

F. Elements of a Web Page

First of all, make sure you understand which parts of the screen represent the controls for your web browser, and which parts are the actual Web page you are seeing. The Web browser controls include: toolbars and menus near the top of the screen (with buttons like Back, Forward, Stop, and Reload), a space to enter Web addresses directly, scroll bars at the right and bottom edges of the browser (for revealing parts of the screen that aren't in view right now), and perhaps a status bar at the bottom to show you the progress of a page download.

Also, at the very top of the Web browser window, there is usually a Maximize button (in Windows, it's in the upper right corner, next to the Close button, which looks like an "X"). If you click the Maximize button, your Web browser will take advantage of your full screen size. Think of the maximized view as the difference between "full screen" and "picture-in-picture."

The Web page itself takes up the biggest space of the browser, and it's what you're after. A Web page can have text and pictures (like all this stuff here). Hyperlinks, which you click to go to another page, are usually blue underlined text. But pictures and buttons can also be hyperlinks. When in doubt, look at the pointer on your screen. When it's above something you can click, it should change from an arrow to a pointing finger.

Besides text and pictures, a Web page may contain everything from movies playing in little windows, to scrolling stock-tickers, places to type in search words, order forms, surveys, and more.

G. Understanding Web Addresses

Web sites, called Web addresses or URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), can be confusing and intimidating if you're not used to them. However, once you break down Web addresses, they're actually quite simple.

Web addresses start with http, which is the protocol that says "I am a Web address." (Protocols may include ftp, file, gopher, mailto, news, and others.)
Next you'll see a separator made up of a colon and two forward slashes :// .
Next comes the name of a specific computer on the network. Many, but not all Web addresses start with "www." Then comes another separator, this time a period or dot. Next is the domain name, followed by another dot, then the top-level domain, which depends on the organization that maintains the Web site. (The main top-level domains are: com, net, edu, org, gov, and mil, though you'll see countries other than the US and Canada with their own special domains, like uk for Great Britain or se for Sweden.) So far, we've got something that looks like http://www.yahoo.com/.

That will take you to the very top page of the Web site, usually known as the main page or home page. If you're looking for a specific page below that, you'll see the names of directories and files. These are separated by slashes and usually end with a filename.html.

An example of a full Web address is http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/
Remember, computers are very fussy when it comes to addresses. So if you're trying to get to a particular Web page, make sure you type it in exactly -- including making sure that the capitalization matches.

(Hint: If you don't specify a particular page, most Web sites will assume you are looking for a file named index.html or home.html. Also, certain computer systems only allow three letters after the dot. So instead of ending in .html, these Web pages end in .htm).

From those humble origins (around 1993), the Web has grown exponentially to become the fastest growing part of the Internet today.

Complex, and unbelievably intricate, the Internet is so vast most governments are still struggling to figure out how to integrate it into their lives. But how did it all start?

H. History of the Internet

In response to a need for secure computer-to-computer communications, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, commissioned a study in computer-to-computer technologies back in the early 1970's. From this beginning the Internet was born. During the next 20 years the Internet was used solely as a combination of military and academic network, linking computers first nationwide, then ultimately world wide.

The idea behind the Internet is really very simple and can be conceptualized thusly:

Two computers are connected via a single wire. In order for one computer to talk to the other, it sends a signal requesting permission to speak. If the other computer is busy, it replies with the equivalent of a "Please wait, I am busy" otherwise it replies, granting permission. Since both computers know what the other one is talking about, by virtue of the fact they are running similar software, the data can be passed from computer to computer.

In the previous example this is very straightforward and trivial. Now however, instead of a single wire, we replace the connection with the Internet, which can be many dozens of computers between the two computers wishing to talk.

Now the situation appears to be more complex, or is it? Computer A and Computer B wish to talk to each other, but there is nearly 3000 miles between them. Using the Internet, the number of places through which the data has to travel is really transparent to the user.

In effect, the link between Computer A and Computer B can take many paths. It can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles out of the way in order to reach the other computer. All you need to know is that it will get there.

As the 1980's progressed the face of computing changed significantly, and with it, the Internet. More and more commercial and personal computers were going on-line, until, they exceeded the number of the original users.

The 1990's signaled the start of the "connected" era, with the end of the cold war, and improvements in military communications, the original military users of the Internet left for other communications systems. The Internet was left much as it is today, a collection of internationally based users and computers.

With improvements on the desktop, there arose a need for better graphics on the Internet. The Internet up to this point had been largely a text only system.

The graphics capabilities implemented were called HTML, and a means was invented to allow users to view these HTML files in their graphics format. With the Internet largely in place, all that was needed was to invent the transmission mechanism. That mechanism was dubbed the World Wide Web, or Web for short.

I. How Big is the Internet?

It's difficult to judge the size of the Internet. People and systems are being added daily. However, it is estimated that in the United States alone, more than 168 million people are connected to the Internet. There are over 33 million in the US alone. Some of the largest Internet Search Engines have over 1 billion web documents listed, with an annual growth rate exceeding 28%. In the newsgroups there are over 100,000 distinct and different groups in which to exchange ideas and conversation.

There are more than 150 countries currently connected to the Internet.

J. Getting Started

Getting connected to the Internet is fairly simple. You don't have to be a computer technician to get set up with Internet access. You just need a:

· Computer and a modem
· Telephone Line
· Account with an Internet Service Provider
· Web browser

a) The first requirement will be to buy a computer that is equipped with a modem.

b) Once you have your computer requirement, you will need to plug your modem into a telephone line.

K. What is modem?

The word "modem" stands for "Modulator-demodulator". The modem is a peripheral device for computers, which allows 2 computers to communicate over standard phone lines.
A modem's purpose is to convert digital information to analog signals (Modulation), and to convert analog signals back into useful digital information (demodulation).

You can't simply transmit bits directly across telephone lines. It first needs to be converted into sound waves.

If you've ever picked up your telephone while you were using your modem, you've no doubt heard a constant loud, screeching noise. This noise is the sound of digital information after it's been converted to analog sound waves.

Modems constantly transmit a carrier signal. The carrier signal's function is, basically, to "carry" information from one place to another.

Modems transmit information by varying, or modulating, this carrier signal.

c) The third requirement will be to locate an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in your area. This is a company through which you can access the Internet. Typically, your local ISP will offer you a monthly package that will include: email and web access, download/upload capabilities, and web space. Once you have found an ISP and signed their service agreement, next you will need to install some software on your computer. In many cases your ISP will help you with that installation.

d) The final element is a World Wide Web browser, which enables you to find and read the information on the Web. You browser is your window to the World Wide Web - it lets you find and view Web pages by simply typing a Web address or a "keyword." You can download the VIP PowerNet browser for free from the VIP PowerNet Web site.

With all this requirements taken care of, you will be ready to access the Internet.

Once you are ready, it's now time to connect to the Internet. How is this accomplished? Well it's simple really. You computer will dial a local number, which is provided by your ISP. Once you have logged into your ISP, you are connected to the Internet.

The above picture shows a typical connection scenario, with your personal or work computer connecting to the Internet via your ISP's server. Your ISP may go through several connections with other servers before reaching the "main backbone" of the Internet, the exact route is not information needed by the typical user.

There are two classes of computers on the Internet, HOSTS and CLIENTS. Unless you have a permanent link to the Internet and your machine is always connected and on-line, then you are probably a client and not a host. As a client to the Internet, you should have the following abilities.

• Send E-mail
• Upload/Download Files
• Access the World Wide Web

a) E-mail is the ability to write a message to someone, using a mail program, and use the Internet as a means of delivering that message. Email is not a free service. The cost of your email is covered in your service charge to your provider. Contrary to popular opinion, and to the opinion of some "so-called" experts that have received nationwide TV airtime, email is NOT instantaneous. When you send a message to someone it leaves your computer and travels first to your Service Provider, from there your email may travel through several other HOST computers until it reaches its final destination. The time it takes to transit from one host to another varies depending upon how busy the network is at the time you sent it.

b) Upload/Download are two different faces one the same coin. Basically it refers to moving a file, either from a host computer to your client computer or from your client computer to some host computer.

c) Representing the latest in Internet technology, the Web blends the best and not so best of the textual information with the graphical capabilities of today's desktop systems. On the Web you will find information relating to almost any conceivable topic. (This freedom of speech issues is what has sparked such controversy and resulted in the infamous Communications Decency Act, which was later overturned as unconstitutional by the courts.)