Getting Started: Concepts You Need To Know To Understand How The Internet Works
- IN 1957, timesharing, sharing the processing power of a computer with multiple users, made computing more feasible
- Military Network by Rand Network
- Packet-switching: files were divided into packets to send, then put together again for the receiver.
- Decentralized network architecture: if one node of the network went down, the whole system would not be shut down because it would not longer be centralized
- Cyclades: Inter-network communication, creating the idea of “internet”
- X.25: enabled communication through phone company servers for a monthly fee
- IMP (Interface Message Processor): In Arpanet, the computer that controlled network activities for a mainframe computer.
- Open System Interconnection: Standardize and layer the network in a standard layout
- Network Control protocol
- Server
- ISP: Internet Service Provider
- Personal Computers do not connect directly to the internet because they do not (typically) have their own servers; they are called clients because they are connected to the internet through ISP.
- Packets: pieces of a message that were broken down to send and then are put back together for the receiver to read.
- IP Adress: Unique code of each computing device that connects to a server
- Routers: direct packets around the internet
- The internet is a wire, and servers connected to the wire can communicate.
In class, we discussed the course agenda, going in-depth into the final project, which involves looking into the life of a civil war soldier. The first activity was to search the Professor online, and the second activity was to search ourself online; I was unable to find anything related to me on the first few pages when I googled myself, but like the professor says, each computer will have different Google results. This relates to the reading “Creating Your Web Presence” from the week one reading list. We were also introduced briefly to Zotero and Omeka, but only to say that we would be using them eventually. We also watched two introductory videos about the internet that taught me, essentially, everything I now know about the internet.