The Internet and the WWW

Derek Bridge

Department of Computer Science,
University College Cork

The Internet and the WWW

Aims:

• to learn some network, Internet and WWW terminology

LANs

Local Area Networks (LANs) connect together computers that are relatively close to each other, typically within the same room or building

WANs

Wide Area Networks (WANs) connect together devices or other networks over a greater distance than is practical for local area networking

An internet

A network of networks is an internet

The Internet

The Internet is a global internet that uses a particular set of communications protocols (the TCP/IP stack of protocols)

Protocols

• If different networks are to inter-operate, we need to specify and agree the rules by which two computers on different networks will exchange messages
• In computer networking, such a set of rules is called a communications protocol

The WWW

• WWW = hypermedia + the Internet
• The Internet is not the World Wide Web
  • The World Wide Web is an application of the Internet
  • Email is another application of the Internet

Web requests and responses

Next lectures

• HTML
• URL
• HTTP