Chapter 3:

Making the Connection: The Basics of Networking

Fluency with Information Technology

Third Edition

by
Lawrence Snyder

Copyright 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley

 Networked Computers
Changed (almost) Everything
The Information Age has brought
profound changes
Nowhere is remote
People are interconnected
Social relationships are changing (e.g., facebook
friend is a new type of soc. relationship)
English is becoming a universal language
Freedom of speech and assembly have expanded

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 Nowhere Is Remote

Internet is a complete information resource

no matter where you are
Some differences remain because older
sources are not yet all online
Homes are not remote from work
Information workers can telecommute and live
long distances from their offices

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 People Are More Interconnected

Family and friends stay in closer, more

frequent contact via Internet than via
telephone or "snail mail"
WWW lets us meet people passively
People with similar interests find each other
online
Associations can form rapidly

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 Social Interactions Are Changing

Time spent online displaces other in-

person social activities (displacement
effect)
The effects are complicated (pros/cons)
The Internet is changing social
interactions, but we don't fully understand
how
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 English Is Becoming
a Universal Language

Influence of American pop culture since

World War II
Dominance of science and technology in
English-speaking countries
Much software is available only in English
Most web pages are in English

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 Freedom of Speech and of Assembly
Have Expanded
Internet use is unmediated
No editorial oversight or significant restrictions
Wikis

Allows for political and artistic expression

Blogs record personal thoughts for public viewing
Like-minded people can communicate, even on
private topics

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 Communication Types

General Communication
Synchronous: sender and receiver are active at the
same time
e.g., telephone call, instant messaging (IM)
Asynchronous: sending and receiving occur at
different times
e.g., e-mail
Broadcast communication (or multicast): single sender
and many receivers
Point-to-point communication: single sender and
single receiver
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 The Internet's
Communication Properties
Internet provides a general
communication "fabric" linking all
computers connected to it
Can be applied in many ways:
Point-to-point asynchronous
E-mail is alternative to standard mail
Point-to-point synchronous
IM is alternative to telephone
Multicasting
Chat rooms are alternatives to magazines
Broadcasting
Web pages are alternatives to radio and television 1-10

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 The Client/Server Structure
Server is the computer that stores the web page
Web server, file server, mail server
Client is the computer that accesses the web page
When you click a link, your computer enters a
client/server relationship with a web server
Once the page is sent to you, the client/server
relationship ends
Many clients may be connected to the same server at the
same time
A client may connect to multiple servers at the same time

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 The Medium of the Message

The Name Game of Computer Addresses

IP addresses: Each computer connected to the
Internet is given a unique numerical address
For example: 128.95.1.207

Hostnames: Human-readable symbolic names, based

on domain hierarchy
Easier to read and remember
For example: eecs.utk.edu

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 DNS Servers

The Domain Name System (DNS) translates the human-

readable hostnames into IP addresses
Internet host knows the IP address of its nearest DNS
server, a computer that keeps a list of host/domain
names and corresponding IP addresses
When you use a hostname to send information, your
computer asks the DNS server to look up
the IP address
If the DNS server doesn't know the IP address, it asks a
Root name server, which keeps the master list of name-
to-address relationships
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 Top-level Domains

Domain is a related group of networked

computers
Top-level domains appear in the last part of
domain name:
.edu educational institutions
.org organizations
.net networks
.mil military
.gov government agencies
Mnemonic two-letter country designators such as .ca (Canada)

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 Following Protocol

A protocol describes how the information is actually sent

TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
Information is broken into a sequence of small fixed-size units
called IP packets
Each packet has space for the unit of data, the source and
destination IP addresses, and a sequence number
The packets are sent over the Internet one at a time using
whatever route is available
Because each packet can take a different route, congestion and
service interruptions do not delay transmissions (much)

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 Moving Packets: Wires and More

Internet uses electrical, electronic, and optical

communication means
Telephone lines, dedicated fiber optic lines, etc.
The technology used to move the packet is
independent from the protocol; transmission of a
single file may use multiple technologies

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 Far and Near: WAN and LAN

Internet is a collection of Wide Area Networks

(WAN), designed to send information between
widely separated locations
Multiple hops
ping, traceroute

Local Area Networks (LAN) connect computers

close enough to be linked by a single cable or
wire pair
Ethernet is the main technology for LAN
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 Ethernet

Channel (wire, wire pair, or optical fiber) that winds past a

set of computers
Each computer is connected to the channel, allowing it to
send a signal that can be detected by all computers
connected to the channel
Decentralized scheme: Each computer listens to
the channel, and if it's quiet, it's free. The computer
transmits unless another starts at the same time.
In that case, both stop for a random time and then
try again.

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 Connecting a Computer
to the Internet

By ISP:
Internet Service Providers sell connections to
Internet (like AOL and Comcast)
User connects to ISP (DSL, cable, wireless)
Home computer talks to ISP's server
ISP's server is connected to Internet, and
relays information for its customers

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 Connecting a Computer
to the Internet (cont'd)
By Enterprise Network Connections (LAN):
Large networked organizations such as schools,
businesses, or governmental units
The organization creates a LAN or intranet
The intranet connects to the Internet by a gateway
Information from a Web computer is sent across
Internet, through gateway, across LAN to
user's computer

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 Wireless Networks

A variation on the LAN connection

A computer (called the access point or hub) is physically
connected to the Internet (wired)
The hub broadcasts and receives radio frequency (rf) signals
(wireless)
Mobile computers also send and receive signals wirelessly
Access point hands out temporary IP addresses
The hub relays Internet requests for the connected
wireless computers

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 The World Wide Web

Web servers: Computers programmed to send

files to browsers running on other computers
connected to the Internet
Web servers and their files make up the World
Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a subset of the
Internet

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 Requesting a Web Page

Web request creates a client/server interaction

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) has three main parts
http://www.widgets.com/hardware/support/faq.html
1. Protocol:
http:// ftp://
Hypertext Transfer Protocol File Transfer Protocol
Tells the computer how to handle the file
2. Server computer's name:
Server's IP address given by the domain hierarchy
3. Page's pathname:
Tells the server which file (page) is requested and where to
find it.
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 Describing a Web Page

Pages are stored as a description of how

they should appear on the screen
Web browser created the image from the
description file
Browser can adapt the source image more
easily

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 Hypertext
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
Markup languages describe the layout of a
document
Margin width
Font
Text style
Image placement
Etc.
Much more on HTML in Chapter 4
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 The Internet and the Web

When is the "www" required and when is it optional?

WWW is just a name; web servers do not have to use it
In order for DNS to work, user must give the exact
hostname
To help users reach them, organizations do two things:
1. Redirection: server inserts the "www" or redirects to a different
server
2. Registering multiple domain names
Museum of Modern Art has registered both "moma.org" and
"www.moma.org" to the same IP address

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 File Structure

Directory, or folder, is a named collection of files,

other directories, or both
Directory Hierarchy: Directories can contain other
directories, which can contain other directories,
etc.
Down, or lower in the hierarchy, means moving into
subdirectories
Up, or higher in the hierarchy, means into enclosing
(parent) directories

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 File Structure (cont'd)

Part of the directory hierarchy is shown in the

pathnames of URL's.
http://www.nasm.si.edu/galleries/ga1100/pioneer.html

Page is given by pathname:

/galleries/ga1100/pioneer.html

Each time we pass a slash (/), we move into a

subdirectory or into the file (lower in the
hierarchy)

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 Organizing the Directory

When a URL ends in a slash, the browser looks for a

file called index.html in that directory
http://www.widget.com/ and
http://www.widget.com/index.html are the same
If the browser does not find an index.html file, the
browser automatically tries to display a directory
listing (index) of the files there
Why are hierarchies important?
People use them to organize their thinking and work
Directories are free; there is no reason not to use them

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