What is Internet?
Is the Worldwide collection of networks that connects millions of computers. OR
Is a global network in which million of computers are connected together worldwide to facilitate communication among users. E.g. sending and receiving e-mails, online talking, instant message, teleconferencing, video conferencing etc. OR
Is the network of the networks that connect government, people, business etc all over the world Internet can also be defined as World wide network of computer making information available to everyone
These Computers are connected through
1. Telephone lines: telephone lines internet signals from one place to another and the signals are translated by modems.
2. Cables in the ground: the use of optical cables which are laid in the ground then they connect different devices. optical cables transmit signals with a speed of light.(3x108m/s)
3. Satellite in space: satellite dishes capture signals from satellites in space and transmits them to their required destinations.
Modem
A modem is used to translate information transferred through telephone lines or cable and from satellite dishes. The term stands for modulate and demodulate which changes the signal from digital, which computers use, to analog, which telephones use and then back again.
A high speed connection also requires a modem but because the information is transferred digitally it isn't required to change the signal from digital to analog but is used to create the connection between your computer and the computer you are connecting with.
Protocol
Set of rules that determine how data are exchanged between different computers.
Example of internet
advantage of using internet
The Internet is one of the greatest creations and provides people with instant access to an endless supply of knowledge and entertainment. Below is a complete list of all of the advantages of the Internet.
1. Information, knowledge, and learning
As mentioned earlier, the Internet contains an endless supply of knowledge and information that allows you to learn about almost any topic or question you may have. Using a search engine like Google, you can ask virtually any question and find a web page with an answer to and information about that question. There are also millions of videos on sites like YouTube explaining various topics, and even online courses to help teach you about many different subjects.
2. Connectivity, communication, and sharing
In the past, it would take days and sometimes even months to receive a letter from someone else. Today, with the Internet, you can send an e-mail to anyone in the world and often have it delivered in less than a minute. Other forms of communication, such as chat and VOIP, also allow you to have instant communication with anyone in the world.
3. Address, mapping, and contact information
With the help of GPS technology, the Internet helps map and direct you to almost every place in the world. You can quickly route to your location or find businesses in your area that may sell or provide you with a service you need. Today's search engines are also smart enough to know your location and help give you the most relevant searches for your area. For example, if you need a plumber and search for "plumber," you'll get a list of local plumbers in your area.
4. Banking, bills, and shopping
The Internet provides access to your bank account to view the balance, make transactions, and send money. Also, many services enable you to view and pay bills electronically.
Online shopping is another huge advantage of the Internet, giving people the ability to find products of interest and buy them without having to visit a store. The Internet provides easy access to compare prices between companies, and even see what others think about a product through online reviews to help make better purchasing decisions.
5, Selling and making money
If you are a business or want to sell products and services, the Internet is a perfect place to sell most goods. Because anyone in the world with Internet access can find your website, you have access to more potential customers than you ever could with a local retail store. The Internet is always on and always available, which means you have the potential of selling goods every day at all times. The Internet also gives businesses the ability to advertise their product or service to everyone in the world or specify an exact demographic they want to reach.
6. Collaboration, work from home, and access to a global workforce
The Internet is the perfect place to work with other people from around the world. Several online services help you work with people around the world, and with an almost instant communication, it can even make producing new products and services faster.
7. Donations and funding
With access to a much wider audience, anyone with an Internet connection can quickly donate to their favorite charity or help fund projects and ideas that interest them. Also, those looking for charity can find many online services that help make it easier to help donate or support their causes.
8. Entertainment
The Internet gives everyone access to an endless supply of entertainment, with access to watch videos, watch movies, listen to music, and even play games online.
9. Internet of Things
The Internet helps make devices in your home connected and smarter by giving them access to the Internet. For example, the Nest thermostat can connects to the Internet to help control the heating and cooling in your home. Also, once these devices are connected, they can be controlled remotely using your computer or smartphone. By connecting IoT (Internet of Things) devices to your home, it can become smarter and more efficient and help save energy, money, and time.
10. Cloud computing and cloud storage
The Internet connects your computers and Internet-enabled devices to cloud services, like cloud computing and cloud storage. With cloud computing, a device can have access to more powerful computers and even supercomputers to perform complex tasks while you or your business work on other tasks.
Disadvantages of using Internet
1. Viruses threat
Today, Internet is the most popular source of spreading viruses. Most of the viruses transfer from one computer to another through e-mail or when information is downloaded on the Internet. These viruses create different problems in your computer. For example, they can affect the performance of your computer and damage valuable data and software stored in your computer.
2. Security Problems
The valuable websites can be damaged by hackers and your valuable data may be deleted. Similarly, confidential data may be accessed by unauthorized persons.
3. Immorality
Some websites contains immoral materials in the form of text, pictures or movies etc. These websites damage the character of new generation.
4. Filtration of Information
When a keyword is given to a search engine to search information of a specific topic, a large number of related links a displayed. In this case, it becomes difficult to filter out the required information.
5. Accuracy of Information
A lot of information about a particular topic is stored on the websites. Some information may be incorrect or not authentic. So, it becomes difficult to select the correct information. Sometimes you may be confused.
6. Wastage of times
A lot of time is wasted to collect the information on the Internet. Some people waste a lot of time in chatting or to play games. At home and offices, most of the people use Internet without any positive purpose.
7. English language problems
Most of the information on the Internet is available in English language. So, some people cannot avail the facility of Internet
Internet terminology
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
The coding language used to create documents for use on the World Wide Web.
HTTP (Hyper Text Transport Protocol)
The set of rules for exchanging files (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) on the World Wide Web.
Http is termed as the protocol that facilitate exchanges of electronic files in the World Wide Web
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
The Internet address. The prefix of a URL indicates which area of the Internet will be accessed.
URLs look differently depending on the Internet resource you are seeking.
Examples. http.www.google.com , www.tpsc.ac.tz
Webpage
A web page is a document created with HTML that is part of a group of hypertext documents or resources available on the World Wide Web. Collectively, these documents and resources form a web site. Every Web page is identified by a unique URL.
Website
A Web site is a related collection of related Webpages files (World Wide Web (WWW) files) that includes a beginning file called a home page.
For Example https://www.udom.ac.tz
- http - stands for the hypertext transport protocol
- www- world wide web
- udom- website name ac- academic( this means, com- commercial, mil-military etc.)(organization name)
- tz- Tanzania(country name, so for Kenya .ke, Uganda .ug etc.)
The beginning "page" of any site. The first page that a Web site presents Often provides connections to other Web pages
World Wide Web (WWW)
Is a system of Internet servers that supports hypertext to access several Internet protocols on a single interface. The World Wide Web has its own protocol called Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
WWW: is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them via hyperlinks.
Internet resources
Apart from the www, the internet ca be used to send electronic mail ( e-mail) and to transfer files between computers.
File transfer Protocol( FTP)
Is a program the allow you to transfer files between computers on the internet as distinct from transferring files for immediate viewing
Download
To copy data from a remote computer (internet) to a local computer. Or Transferring a file from a remote computer to your own computer
Upload
To send data from a local computer to a remote computer (internet).or Sending a file to a remote computer
Other facilities available on the internet include NEWS GROUPS for the dissemination of information to interested groups, and Internet Relay Chat which allows people to communicate with each other instantly
Web Browser
Is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web.
- A web browser isa software that allows you to view, navigate and interact with the World Wide Web.
- A Browser is a program that allows a person to view pages over the Internet and to navigate/move from one page to another by the use of links found in the WebPages
- Examples of browsers are such as:
- Mozilla Firefox
- Opera
- Safari
- Netscape Navigator
- Microsoft Internet Explorer
- Google chrome, etc.
Uniform Resource Locators (URLS)
A web address is a collection of pages on the web owned by an individual or organization.
- The first page of a website is the home page
- Every web page has a unique address. This is known as a URL
- These are addresses of website that you are visiting .
- The URL or address is often shown beginning with http; this stands for Hypertext transfer protocol which is assumed, so it is not necessary to type it, i.e. http://www.esb.co.tz
- The URL/address is usually made up of the following parts;
- WWW (World Wide Web)
- Some letters or characters which indicate the organization e.g. www.tpsc.ac.tz
- Some letters which describe the type of the organization eg. www.udom.ac.tz(ac stands for academic) www.ucc.co.tz(co and com stands for commercial Organization www.elct.org, www.mwakasege.org (org stands for non profit - making organization)
- Some letters which describes the country e.g. www.bbc.co.uk NOTE: The parts are separated by full stops and never include space
- Most modern browsers have http://‘ stored so you can start at www‘. Some URLs include:
- http://www.bbc.co.uk
- http://www.bargainholdays.com
- http://www.nhm.ac.uk
- http://www.isvgroup.co/ittest
- The text after the www shows the domain name, the organization's name- e.g. BBC, bargainholdays and nhm (Natural History Museum) the type of site, - e.g. .co and .com are commercial companies; ac is an academic community, and the country, - e.g.uk is United Kingdom.
- Is a means of searching for information that can be found on the internet.
- For example when accessing a search engine you might specify that you want to search for information about ‗Polar Bears‘ then search engine would return all the URLs (addresses) it knows about i
- Allows you to search for relevant information on the Web
- Crawler Based - Crawler-based search engines compile their listings automatically.
- They "crawl" or "spider" the web, and people search through their listings.
- These listings are what make up the search engine's index or catalogue.
- Examples are Google, Yahoo and Bing.
- Directory Based - A ‘directory’ uses human editors who decide what category the site belongs to; they place websites within specific categories in the ‘directories’ database.
- The human editors comprehensively check the website and rank it, based on the information they find, using a pre-defined set of rules.
- Example are Yahoo directory and open directory
- Hybrid - Hybrid search engines use a combination of both crawler-based results and directory results.
- More and more search engines these days are moving to a hybrid-based model.
- Meta Search Engines - Meta search engines take the results from all the other search engines results, and combine them into one large listing.
- Examples of Meta search engines include: Dogpile and Metacrawler
- www.google.com
- www.yahoo.com
- www.ask.co.uk
- www.altavista.com
- www.cycons.com
- www.mamma.com
- www.hotbot.com
- www.excite.co.uk
- http://www.Infoseek.com
- www.baidu.com
- www.bing.com
- www.msn.com
- Internet Banking
- E-government
- E-Learning
- E- commerce/E- business
- E-marketing
- Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
- Instant Messaging
- Video conferencing
- It is fast
- It simplify banking Activities because users can have access to their money anywhere in the world.
- Theft of money due to hacking etc.
- Expensive to run and difficult to manage
- It promote transparency to the government sector and encourages democratization
- It enforce accountability
- Speed, efficiency, and convenience
- It help to improve public services
- It is expensive to run and manage
- Difficult to implement
- Web-based learning,
- computer-based learning,
- virtual education opportunities and
- digital collaboration.
- Facilitate distance learning
- Simplify access to learning materials such as books, journals and articles
- A tutor can a teach many students at once
- Poor or No face to face communication between teacher and students
- It easy for students to cheat
- It requires expensive facilities and technology
- Buyer find seller
- Selection of goods
- Negotiation
- Sale
- Payment
- Delivery
- Post-sale activity
- It simplify buying and selling processes
- It promote customer relations through storing customer information and tracing customer buying history
- It enables start-up and small- and medium-sized enterprises to reach the global market.
- Computer hacking
- Computer theft; Fake websites that pretends to sell products while they don't
- Cheaper to make international calls than the traditional phone.
- Not all VoIP services connect directly to emergency services through 9-1-1.
- VoIP providers may or may not offer directory assistance/white page listings
- Some VoIP services don't work during power outages
- Hotmail (Microsoft)
- Gmail (Google)
- Yahoo Mail (Yahoo!)
- user name :- each is unique
- The @ sign
- Domain name :- mail provider’s name
- Extension:- e.g .com
- skillsink is the user name
- @ is at sign which serves as a divider between e-mail sections.
- gmail is the mail provider’s name
- .com is the extension
- Inbox – new messages as well as messages that have been read
- Outbox – messages not yet sent
- Sent items – messages that have been sent (moved here from outbox)
- Deleted items – messages deleted from any folder
- Custom folders – additional folders created by the user
- Email Protocols
- POP Client – Post Office Protocol
- Lets you work without being connected to mail server
- Upload to send mail - Download to read mail
- Allows almost any e-mail program to access e-mail from server
- IMAP – Internet Message Access Protocol
- Permits a "client" email program to access remote message stores as if they were local
- Enables user to access messages from more than one computer
- It's fast - Messages can be sent anywhere around the world in an instant
- It's cheap - Transmission usually costs nothing, or at the most, very little
- It's simple - Easy to use, after initial set-up
- It's efficient - Sending to a group can be done in one step
- It's versatile - Pictures, power points or other files can be sent too
- Email can become time consuming for answering complicated questions and misunderstandings can arise because cultural differences in the interpretation of certain words. The telephone is much better for providing detailed answers or if you feel that the question is not absolutely clear.
- Email can compromise the security of an organization because sensitive information can be easily distributed accidentally or deliberately. Email should be entrusted to well trained and trusted staff members. 3. Email can become impersonal or misunderstood.
- Using email for business -Email is a powerful, low-cost communications tool that businesses are using to market their goods, provide better customer service and work more efficiently.
- Marketing by email - Email can provide a cost-effective way of marketing. Customers can be targeted cheaply and instantly and, unlike other forms of marketing, emails can be easily and quickly forwarded to colleagues or friends. Encouraging the recipients of marketing emails to forward them on is known as viral marketing
- Improving customer service - Email can be used to improve customer service. Encouraging customers to contact you by email can benefit both parties - they do not have to hang on the phone or make contact in working hours and you do not have to respond immediately, which can free up staff from answering the phone.
- Communication with shareholders - Companies can send information to shareholders using email and other kinds of electronic communication, although they have to send information on paper if shareholders ask for it.
- Face book
- Telegram
- Whatsup
- jamii forum
- Instagram.com
- Marafiki.com
- hi5,etc
