1. Along came
a Spider!
The Web
and
Websites
Fall 2012
2. 2 2
First: What is the Internet?
For one thing, it‟s not really
“the net”, it‟s the “nets”:
– ―the Internet: a cooperatively-run
collection of computer networks that
span the globe.‖
3. 3 3
Is it the same as the Web?
Internet ≠ World Wide Web
– The Internet is a massive network of
networks, a networking infrastructure.
– The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a
way of accessing information over the
medium of the Internet. It is an
information-sharing model that is built on
top of the Internet.
– The Internet, not the Web, is also used for
e-mail, which relies on SMTP, Usenet news
groups, instant messaging and FTP.
• The Difference Between the Internet and the
World Wide Web
4. 4
Cold War Technology?
Originally designed by the U.S. Department of
Defense so that a communication signal could
withstand nuclear war and serve military institutions
worldwide, the Internet was first known as the
ARPANet, the most robust communication
technology. It is a system of linked computer
networks, international in scope, that facilitates data
transfer and communication services, such as remote
login, file transfer (FTP), electronic mail (e-
mail), newsgroups, and the World Wide Web. The
Internet greatly extends the reach of each connected
computer network (see: network effect, IP).
– Internet
5. 5
Before ARPANet
Before ARPANET, most computer systems
consisted of a massive computer -- sometimes the
size of an entire room -- with user terminals
hardwired to it. A terminal was some form of user
interface, often consisting of a keyboard or punch
card reader. Multiple users could access the
computer simultaneously, in a technique called
timesharing. Other early networks required a direct
connection between host computers, meaning that
there was only one path for information to flow
through. The direct connections limited the size of
these computer networks, which became known as
local area networks (LANs).
– How ARPANET Works
6. 6
Phone-linked networks
―In the 1960s, as many as a few hundred
users could have accounts on a single large
computer using terminals, and exchange
messages and files between them. But each
of those little communities was an
island, isolated from others. By reliably
connecting different kinds of computers to
each other, the ARPANET took a crucial
step toward the online world that links
nearly a third of the world's population
today.‖
– Marc Weber, founding curator of the Computer History
Museum’s Internet History Program
On October 29, 2009, SRI celebrated the
40th anniversary of the first ARPANET
connection.
7. 7
From mainframes to minicomputers
Before ARPANET, most computer systems
consisted of a massive computer -- sometimes the
size of an entire room -- with user terminals
hardwired to it.
What is a
―Mainframe‖?
8. 8
Minicomputers?
Minicomputers are a largely obsolete class of
multi-user computers which made up the
middle range of the computing spectrum, in
between the largest multi-user systems
(mainframe computers) and the smallest
single-user systems (microcomputers or
personal computers)
9. 9
When did ARPAnet become the Internet?
―. . . Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing
email in 1972. . . . He picked the @ symbol from
the computer keyboard to denote sending
messages from one computer to another. So
then, for anyone using Internet standards, it was
simply a matter of nominating name-of-the-
user@name-of-the-computer.
―. . . 1975 seems to be the definitive year in
which, for the first time, networks connected to
each other.‖
– Ian Peter’s History of the Internet
10. 10
1975, the net goes commercial
Telenet
– One of the first value-added, packet
switching networks that enabled
terminals and computers to exchange
data. Established in 1975 by Dr.
Lawrence Roberts, who helped to
develop ARPANET, Telenet was
acquired by GTE in 1979. After it
was acquired by Sprint in 1986, it
was renamed SprintNet
13. 13
1980s
Main uses scholarly or military
– Libraries use networks like Telenet and
Tymnet for remote searching of databases
– Scientists and scholars communicate by email
The Silent 700 was a line of portable computer
terminals manufactured by Texas Instruments
in the 1970s and 1980s. Silent 700s printed
with a dot-matrix heating element onto a roll
of heat-sensitive paper. They were equipped
with an integrated acoustic coupler and
modem that could receive data at 30
characters per second.
15. 15
What, no fun things?
Enter the BBS!
– Bulletin Board System
• A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer
system running software that allows users to connect
and log in to the system using a terminal program.
Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as
uploading and downloading software and
data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging
messages with other users, either through electronic
mail or in public message boards. Many BBSes also
offer on-line games, in which users can compete with
each other, and BBSes with multiple phone lines often
provide chat rooms, allowing users to interact with
each other.
16. 16
BBS all text, very little graphics
Monochrome BBS, known to users as ―Mono‖, was originally a student bulletin board
system at [London’s] City University in the early 1990s. The BBS is still in existence
with a web presence at http://www.mono.org/ from where you can connect to the real
thing by telnet. See also Monochrome BBS – Definition.
17. 17
Related to BBS
Gopher
– The Gopher Protocol is a distributed document search
and retrieval protocol that was developed at the
University of Minnesota in the late 1980s. Resources are
stored on Gopher servers, which organize information
using a hierarchical directory structure. Gopher clients
access servers to retrieve directory listings of available
resources, which are presented to the user as a menu
from which an item may be selected for retrieval.
• Gopher Protocol (Gopher) (Page 4 of 4)
18. 18
A Gopher menu
From a Finnish History of the Internet (click on 1991 to get the page
where this is reproduced)
To navigate the menus, you used the arrow keys (no mouse, of course!) to
move the arrow up or down the menu and then hit Enter to select the item
you want. Current browsers no longer support Gopher.
19. Veronica, Jughead and 19
Archie (but not Betty)!
Rodent companions!
– Veronica: ―Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to
Computerized Archives‖
– Jughead: ―Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation
and Display‖
– Archie: a popular FTP [―File Transfer Protocol‖] search
program of the time. Though the legend of Archie being
named for the cartoon, the name in fact is shorthand for
―Archives.‖
• A Pre-Web Search Engine, Gopher Turns Ten
By Chris Sherman, Search Engine Watch, Feb 6, 2002
20. 20
Experience Gopherspace
Floodgap Public Gopher Proxy
– To allow Gopherspace to continue to be
usefully accessible in the coming years, since
it’s still definitely a viable and useful (not to
mention lightweight and efficient) information
distribution protocol, the Public Proxy offers a
standards-based, effective Gopher<->HTTP
gateway to facilitate access even when your web
browser doesn’t.
– Connect to the Public Proxy here:
• Standard Version
• ―Lite‖ Version
• http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/
21. Finally, The Web is spun: 21
1991
Tim Berners-Lee:
– ―. . . in 1989, while working at the European Particle
Physics Laboratory, I proposed that a global
hypertext space be created in which any network-
accessible information could be refered to by a single
"Universal Document Identifier". Given the go-ahead
to experiment by my boss, Mike Sendall, I wrote in
1990 a program called "WorldWideWeb", a point
and click hypertext editor which ran on the "NeXT"
He almost called
it the ―Mesh‖!
machine. This, together with the first Web server, I
Sir Tim Berners- released to the High Energy Physics community at
Lee on the Web first, and to the hypertext and NeXT communities in
(past, present the summer of 1991.
and future)
• The World Wide Web: A very short personal history
22. The first “real” browser
22
NCSA Mosaic
NCSA's Mosaic™ wasn't
the first Web browser. But
it was the first to make a
major splash. In
November 1993, Mosaic v
1.0 broke away from the
small pack of existing
browsers by including
features—like
icons, bookmarks, a more
attractive interface, and
pictures—that made the
software easy to use and
appealing to ―non-geeks.‖
About NCSA Mosaic
24. 24
Alphabet soup of the Web
URL
– Uniform Resource Locator
HTTP
– HyperText Transfer Protocol
HTML
– Hypertext Markup Language
– Now being complemented by
XML
• EXtensible Markup Language
– See What is XML?
26. 26
A free site to create your own
What is Weebly?
– Weebly is a San
Francisco, California based
company that was founded in
2006 with the mission to help
people put their information
online quickly and easily. We
now enable 3 million people to
easily create personal sites and
blogs or establish web
presences for
businesses, weddings, classroom
s, churches, artistic
portfolios, and more.
•
27. 27
Google Sites
Beginner‟s Guide
– With Google Sites, you can easily create
and update your own site. Google Sites
allows you display a variety of
information in one place—including
videos, slideshows, calendars, presentati
ons, attachments, and text—and share it
for viewing or editing with a small
group, an entire organization, or the
world. You always control who has
access to your site.
28. 28
Basic URL Structure
Parts
– A URL has three basic parts: the protocol (how to get the resource);
the server id (who to get the resource from); and the resource id (the
name of the resource and how to find it on the target machine). In its
most basic form, this looks like the following:
– The "http" indicates that this is a Web document. The
"www.fake.com" is the domain name of the (in this case, fictional)
machine on which the web server is running (we know it's a web
server because of the protocol). And, of course, "doc.html" is the
filename of the HTML document (notice the file extension ".html")
on that machine.
29. 29
Domain name?
What is a „Domain Name‟?
– Domain Name System, or DNS, is the most
recognized system for assigning addresses to
Internet web servers (aka ―Internet hosts‖).
Somewhat like international phone
numbers, the domain name system helps to
give every Internet server a memorable and
easy-to-spell address. Simultaneously, the
domain names keep the really technical IP
address invisible for most viewers.
• By Paul Gil, About.com Guide
30. 30
Structure of a Domain Name 1
What is a Top Level Domain (TLD)?
– A Top Level Domain (TLD) is the ―suffix‖
or the end of each domain name. (e.g., the
―.com‖ in yahoo.com is the TLD.) There
are two types of TLDs - global and country
code.
Generic Top Level Domain (gTLDs)
extensions include:
.com, .net, .org, .biz, .coop, .edu, .gov, .info,
.int, .mil, and .museum.
31. 31
Country code TLDs
– Country Code Top Level Domains
(ccTLDs) are TLDs created by a
country, such as .it, which is the
country code for Italy or .tv which is
the country code for Tuvalu, and of
course .us for the United States
• A complete list of ccTLDs (sorted by
ccTLD) can be found at
http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm.
o What is a Top Level Domain (TLD)?
32. 32
Structure of a Domain Name 2
Second-level domain
– In the Domain Name System
(DNS) hierarchy, it is the
highest level underneath the
top-level domains. It is that
portion of the domain name
that appears immediately to the
left of the top-level
domain, separated by a dot. For
example, the ―NetLingo‖ in
www.netlingo.com is a second-
level domain.
33. 33
Structure of a Domain Name 3
SubDomain - The Third Level Domain
– If you need to further distinguish your second-
level domain name, you can use a third-level
domain name, such as
―resources.hostway.com.‖ Typically a third-
level domain name is used to refer to different
servers within different departments of a
company.
• Creating third-level domains
34. 34
Success of the web?
Tim Berners-Lee:
– The success of the World Wide Web, itself built on the open Internet, has
depended on three critical factors: 1) unlimited links from any part of the
Web to any other; 2) open technical standards as the basis for continued
growth of innovation applications; and 3) separation of network
layers, enabling independent innovation for network transport, routing and
information applications. Today these characteristics of the Web are easily
overlooked as obvious, self-maintaining, or just unimportant. All who use
the Web to publish or access information take it for granted that any Web
page on the planet will be accessible to anyone who has an Internet
connection, regardless whether it is over a dialup modem or a high speed
multi-megabit per second digital access line. The last decade has seen so
many new ecommerce startups, some of which have formed the foundations
of the new economy, that we now expect that the next blockbuster Web site
or the new homepage for your kid's local soccer team will just appear on
the Web without any difficulty.
• Testimony of Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, Hearing on the ―Digital Future of the United
States: Part I -- The Future of the World Wide Web‖
35. The Internet is a far more speech-
enhancing medium than print, the village
green, or the mails.... The Internet may
fairly be regarded as a never-ending
worldwide conversation.[1]
Statement by a federal judge in American Civil
Liberties Union v. Reno, 929 F. Supp. 824, 844 (E.D. Pa.
1996) (Dalzell, J.). Quoted by Tim Berners-Lee in his
Testimony at Hearing on the ―Digital Future of the
United States: Part I -- The Future of the World Wide
Web‖
