Computing and the Web

1
Computing and the Web

• The Internet and the WEB
• Worldwide Transformation

2
Overview

• Why is the WEB so powerful
• Evolution of the Internet / WWW
• Internet Tools
• Creation of the WEB
• Navigating the WEB
• URLs
• Search Engines

3
Why is the WEB so powerful

• World Wide Communication
• Anyone can access it
• From anywhere
• At anytime
• Freedom From Censorship
• Too dispersed and pervasive to police
• Immediacy of Information
• Information is available the second it is
  published on the WEB
• Digital Soap Box
• Can be used to garner support for a cause

4
Evolution of the Internet / WWW

• 1969  The original Department of Defense ARPANET
  contract. The first node (a node is a computer
  workstation or file server or bridge, or any
  other device that has an address on a network.)
  at UCLA, and after that nodes were established at
  the Stanford Research Institute, UCSB, and the
  University of Utah. These are the first four
  computers on the InterNet. Three are linked at 50
  Kbps circuits (UCLA, SRI and UCSB). UNIX is born.
  
• 1971  The InterNet has 15 nodes (23 hosts
  central computer, usually attached to the
  InterNet) UCLA, SRI, UCSB, U of Utah, BBN, MIT,
  RAND, SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford,
  UIU(C), CWRU, CMU, and NASA/Ames. Ray Tomlinson
  sends first e-mail message.
• 1981  In August, there are 231 hosts (linked
  computers) on the InterNet, almost all of them
  belong to either the U.S. military or major U.S.
  universities.

5
Evolution of the Internet / WWW

• 1982  Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and
  InterNet Protocol (IP) are established.
• 1983  On January 1st the crossover from NCP to
  TCP/IP takes place--The InterNet is now a
  distinct place.  Name server is developed at the
  University of Wisconsin.
• 1984  Domain Name Server (DNS) is introduced, no
  longer requiring users to know the exact path to
  other computer systems. The number of hosts is
  about 1,000.
• 1986  The NSFNET backbone is created and it
  moves data at 56 Kbps.
• 1988  November - An InterNet "worm" (small
  computer program) burrows through the Net,
  affecting about 6,000 of the 60,000 hosts on the
  InterNet. The NSFNET backbone upgraded to T1
  (1.544Mbps) speed, and CERFnet (California
  Education and Research Federation network) is
  founded by Susan Estrada.   InterNet Relay Chat
  (IRC) is developed by Jarkko Oikarinen.

6
Evolution of the Internet / WWW

• 1990  In October there are 313,000 InterNet
  hosts mostly using telnet and ftp.   Tim
  Berners-Lee writes the first GUI browser, and
  called it "WorldWideWeb."   1991  The NSFNET
  backbone is upgraded to 44.736 Mbps and the
  World-Wide Web (WWW) is created.
• 1992  In December, there are 7,000 domain names
  (.com, .net, and .org) registered with InterNic.
• 1993  NCSA releases Mosaic (first widely used
  browser) and it takes the InterNet by storm as
  WWW traffic grows 341,634 in one year.
• 1996  MCI upgrades the InterNet backbone to 622
  Mbps.
• 1997  March 6 at 120751 p.m., the InterNic
  registers the one millionth active domain name.  
  By the end of 1997 there will be 1,541,000.
• 1998  September 11 is the InterNet's busiest day
  (Starr report) at 340,000 hits / minute.

7
Evolution of the Internet / WWW

• 1999  On May 29th, the InterNet had reached 5
  million active domain names, about 85 of which
  were .com sites.   In addition, there are about
  6,000 .edu domain names.
• 2000  Seventy-eight percent of the online fraud
  is associated with Online Auctions, followed by
  General Merchandise Sales (10), and Internet
  Access Services (3).
• 2001  Nielsen/NetRatings "estimated that more
  than 176 million Americans, or 62 percent of the
  population, had access to the World Wide Web.
  That's a jump from 156 million, or 57 percent, a
  year ago."
• 2002  As of May, NUA estimates that there are
  580.78 million people world wide on the Internet.

8
Internet Tools

• Originally designed for resource sharing
• CPU telnet or remote login
• Files FTP or File Transfer Protocol
• Had to know what to look for and where to look
  for it
• It wasnt easy to find information
• University of Minnesota creates GOPHER
• Menu driven access to information
• Allows different sites to be linked together

9
Internet Tools

• VERONICA was created to search GOPHERS
• Scanned all known Gophers twice a week and build
  indexes or catalogs about the information
  contained on them
• This was a model for todays Search Engine
• ARCHIE searched FTP archives
• Still used today
• All information on the Internet is not contained
  in the WEB

10
Internet Tools

• EMAIL was primary use for the Internet
• Bulletin Boards provided community forum type
  information exchange
• IRCs provide users with the ability to talk
  directly to each other

11
Creation of the WEB

• Tim Berners-Lee is credited with having created
  the World Wide Web while he was a researcher at
  the European High-Energy Particle Physics lab
• Berners-Lee wrote a proposal which was the
  solution to the technologies that would enable
  collaboration in the high energy physics
  community
• The proposal was an extension of the gopher idea
  but incorporated many new ideas and features. It
  was also inspired, in part, by the concept of
  hypertext
• A line-mode user interface was completed in late
  1989
• In 1993 Marc Andreesen was an undergraduate
  student at the University of Illinois at
  Urbana-Champaigne when he led a team that
  developed the graphic interface browser called
  Mosaic

12
Creation of the WEB

• Popularity of the graphical user interface (GUI)
  browser was immediate. People without computer
  expertise were able to use the graphical
  interface and just point and click to navigate
  the World Wide Web.
• Number of Unique Web Sites
• The number of Web sites, adjusted to account for
  sites duplicated at multiple IP addresses.
• 1998 2,636,000
• 1999 4,662,000
• 2000 7,128,000
• 2001 8,443,000
• 2002 8,712,000

13
Navigating the WEB

• HTML Hyper Text Markup Language
• Mixture of text, graphics, audio, video, and
  links
• Browser interprets and displays the data stream
• Links are text that contain imbedded URLs
• Links point to related web pages
• The browser seamlessly switches from page to page

14
URLs

• http//www.somewhere.com/index.html
• http the protocol
• Somewhere.com the domain
• Index.html the file containing the web page
• https secure form of http
• Used for money / secure transactions
• Domain types
• Com Edu Mil Org
• Net Gov Tv

15
Search Engines

• Multiple parts to a search engine
• 1st part collects data
• Data must be indexed stored in a database
• Spiders or Bots scan through web pages for
  information
• Any links in the web page are followed and the
  process repeats
• 2nd part processes queries
• Accepts requests from user
• Looks through indexes for matching information