The Internet

Ok, if you are reading this blog, then you’d probably be the same as me, a student in the midst of his or her studies in the module on the internet. If you are not, then.........What the Hell are you doing here!? ..............Just kidding! But seriously, if you are interested, carry on.

In a nutshell, this blog is dedicated to solely my reflections on what I have learnt so far in the module. Specifically, something new about the internet I had no knowledge about. For starters, some statistics on a day on the internet, blogposts that are posted, the number of people visiting facebook, emails sent, these all number in the millions. Ok, that is nothing new but just looking at the numbers, makes me go ‘wow’ nonetheless.

Moving on to the subject of the internet, I always thought of the internet as a vast collection of information stored in some virtual library. While I am not entirely wrong, it appears that the internet is also a gateway to connect us to other people in one intricate network. People call the internet the Web. I used to follow suite just because it’s a common word...but after hearing this new definition of the internet and putting a little thought into it, I realised how apt it is.

Imagine this, the centre of a spider’s web is the virtual storage that I mentioned earlier and the intersections of the web that expands from the centre represents individual computers located all around the globe. Each line is a connection from computer to computer and it shows that there are many ways for the connection and information to be passed down. As we scale down further, the internet refers to a network on a global scale but in the case of a network comprising solely of computers within an organization that is not connected to the outside, we use the term intranet.

One of the main reasons for such a closed network is to prevent important information from flowing out. So I believe that most people know the great advantages of the internet, but how many know its history? I didn’t, and while I am no fan of history, it is a fancy bit of information to keep in mind. For starters, the internet began as a small idea, who knew that it would grow to such a size?

Abandon your posts! Flee! Flee for your lives! A monster is on the loose! So calling the internet a monster is kind of exaggerating but looking its history, it sure has the growth rate of a monster. I won’t bore you with the technical terms but the Internet started with ARPANET which started really small by connecting only 3 networks together. Later, it was changed to the Internet that we know today and its growth from just 3 networks to over 50,000 networks this day is nothing short of monstrous.

In fact, many people use the internet for communication these days. One of the more prominent form is teleconferencing or in a more familiar context, talking face to face on the web. Nowadays, with voice recognition as part of voice technology, using your voice to transfer funds or even paying the bills have been made possible. In time, bankers are going to lose their jobs due to this. Next up is the IP address. It is also known as a host number unique to one computer to differentiate it from another.

This I can understand, it’s akin to a fingerprint or something. So in terms of the number, its actually strings of 32bits. For the layman, its basically a whole bunch of numbers that when converted, becomes a string of 0s and 1s. Think the matrix, its the best example off the shelf. Now, it does not make sense for people to simply remember a random string of numbers right? So we have the host name which we type in to browse the net. The computer will then link the host name to the IP address by itself and open the page up for us. So then, there is the URL – Uniform Resource Locator, which is a form of address that we type that specifies the location of a certain object or page in a website.

Well that’s all have for this post. Till next time!