Today internet is an integral part of our life. We all have started living dual life; one is our physical life and the other is the online one, where we exist as a virtual entity. In this virtual life we have different usernames, aliases, profile pictures, and what not in different places. We share our information intentionally and sometimes unintentionally in this virtual world of ours. If we ask ourselves how many websites we're registered on, most probably we won't be able to answer that question with an exact number. The definition of being social is changing from meeting people in person to doing Google hangout and being online on different social networking sites.
Let's start to understand the internet we all have been using for so long.
1. INTERNET
internet is a global network of the interlinked computers using dedicated routers and servers, which allows its end users to access the data scattered all over the world. These interconnected computers follow a particular set of rules to communicate, in this case IP or internet protocol (IP) for transmitting data.
2. WWW
WWW (or World Wide Web) is sub part of internet. It is basically a structure which consists of interlinked documents and is represented in the form of web pages. These web pages can contain different media types such as plain text, images, videos, etc. and are accessed using a client application, usually a web browser. It consists of a huge number of such interconnected pages.
3. Protocols
Protocol is a standard set of rules used in a communication between source and destination system. It specifies how to connect and exchange data with one another. Simply it is a set of rules being followed for communication between two entities over a medium.
4. IP
IP address is the virtual address of a computer or a network device that uniquely identifies that device in a network. If our device is connected to a network we can easily find out the device IP address.
It also known as internet Protocol.
5. HTTP and HTTPS
Http is a technical acronym that means 'hypertext transfer protocol', the language of web pages. When a web page has this prefix, then your links, text, and pictures should work in your web browser.
Https is 'hypertext transfer protocol SECURED'. This means that the web page has a special layer of encryption added to hide your personal information and passwords. Whenever you log into your online bank or your web email account, you should see https at the front of the page address.
6. HTML
Hypertext Mark-up Language is the programmatic language that web pages are based on. HTML commands your web browser to display text and graphics in orderly fashion.
7. Email
E-mail also known as Electronic Mail, it is one clicked solution to exchanging a digital massage to receiver from sender. Nowadays every organization which have website registered with a domain name also creates mail service to use. So if we work in a company with domain name "xyz.com" our company e-mail id must be "ourusername@ xyz.com". Some popular e-mail providers are Google, Yahoo, Rediff, AOL, and Outlook, etc.
8. DNS
Domain name system (DNS) as the name suggests is a naming system for the resources connected to the internet. It maintains a hierarchical structure of this naming scheme through a channel of various DNS servers scattered over the internet.
9. Server
A server is a computer program which provides a specific type of service to other programs. These other programs, known as clients can be running on the same system or in the same network. There are various kinds of servers and have different hardware requirements depending upon the factors like number of clients, bandwidth, etc.
Some of the kinds of server are:
- Web server: Used for serving websites.
- E-mail server: Used for hosting and managing e-mails
- File server: Used to host and manage file distribution
10. Search Engine
A web search engine is a software application which crawls the web to index it and provides the information based on the user search query. Some search engines go beyond that and also extract information from various open databases. Usually the search engines provide real-time results based upon the backend crawling and data analysis algorithm they use. The results of a search engine are usually represented in the form of URLs with an abstract.
Apart from usual web search engines, some search engines also index data from various forums, and other closed portals (require login). Some search engines also collect search results from various different search engines and provide it in a single interface.
11. Social Media
Social media is the broad term for any online tool that enables users to interact with thousands of other users. Instant messaging and chatting are common forms of social media, as are blogs with comments, discussion forums, video-sharing and photo-sharing websites. Facebook.com and MySpace.com are very large social media sites, as are YouTube.com and Digg.com.
12. Web Browser
A web browser is a client-side application which provided the end user the capability to interact with the web. A browser contains an address bar, where the user needs to enter the web address (URL), this request is further sent to the destination server and the contents are displayed within the browser interface. The response for the request sent by client contains of raw data with associated format for the data.
Earlier browsers had limited functionality, but nowadays with various features such as downloading content, bookmarking resources, saving credentials, etc. and new add-ons coming up every day, browsers are becoming very powerful. The advent of cloud-based applications has also hugely contributed in making browsers the most widely used software.
13. ISP
ISP is Internet Service Provider. That is the private company or government organization that plugs you into the vast Internet around the world. Your ISP will offer varying services for varying prices: web page access, email, hosting your own web page, hosting your own blog, and so on.
14. Malware
Malware, or malicious software, is any program or file that is harmful to a computer user. Malware includes computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses and spyware. These malicious programs can perform a variety of functions, including stealing, encrypting or deleting sensitive data, altering or hijacking core computing functions and monitoring users' computer activity without their permission.
