The Internet and the Web

Its a series of tubes - Senator Ted Stevens

Communication Protocols
Standards which enable different machines with different connections to exchange
information
Protocols available for different levels of communication
A combination of protocols on different levels must be used for each particular type
Some protocols same for all levels
The internet brief history
Original a late 60s DoD project to connect 4 computers
DoD = Department of Defense
Expanded to include other sites doing DoD research
By mid 80s all colleges and universities sought access, mostly for email and file
transfer
The 90s brought the development of the Web, privatization and explosive growth
Distributed Network
The internet is distributed, not centralized
No hubs which control entire regions
Each computer is linked to several others
Failure of one (or even several) computer or connection cannot disable entire
network
Packet Switching
All data is broken up into numbered packets before transmission
Special machines called routers direct each packet on a path toward its destination
Packets are independent and may arrive at their destination by different paths and
out of their original order
Packets are reassembled in the correct order by destination computer
Post card analogy
Advantages Packet Switching
Allows equitable sharing of internet connections
Network automatically adapts to failures or heavy traffic
Failure of some packets to reach destination does not require entire message to be
retransmitted
Internet Backbone
A global, distributed network of routers
Each router has a set of dedicated connections to several other routers
Connections can be wires, fiber optic cable, satellite link, etc
TCP/IP
Format of packets is specified by this pair of protocols
Each packet contains a destination address consisting of 4 numbers (0-255)
separated by dots IP address
Every machine on the Internet must be assigned a unique IP address
How message is divided into packets TCP

Allows packet to be routed IP

Domain Name System (DNS)
Using IP addresses directly is difficult so IP addresses can be assigned easy to
remember names
Names are hierarchical begin with machine name and end with top level domain
Names are translated into IP addresses by a hierarchy of DNS servers
13 root name servers maintain the master list of names and addresses
LANs & Ethernet
Most computers connected to the internet are part of a local area network (LAN)
Nearly all LANs use the Ethernet protocol
All computers in an Ethernet LAN share a single set of transmission wires
Therefore only one machine at a time can transmit
Ethernet Protocol
Computers transmit frames as required
If two computers transmit simultaneously, collision is detected
Each computer pauses for a random time and then retransmits
Simple and efficient for small number of machines, not complex scheduling system
required
Distance between machines is limited
Dinner party analogy
Gateways
A special router that sits between the LAN and an internet router
Reads frames, determines if they contain TCP/IP packets for the internet
If so, removes Ethernet information and repackages packets in whatever low level
protocol appropriate for its connection to the Internet router
Client/Server Model
Most interactions on the Internet use this model
One machine (client) requests information from another (server)
Connections are brief client sends request, server sends response
Very efficient server can handle many clients at a time
Servers can be clients of other servers
World Wide Web
Subset of the internet, uses the client/server model
Web servers send html files (web pages) to clients
Browsers on clients read and display the html files
HTTP
Hypertext transmission protocol specifies the format of the requests and responses
High level protocol (level 7) only used for WWW traffic
Default browser protocol
Latency & Bandwidth
Latency is the time it takes to transmit 1 bit of data from source to destination
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transmitted per unit time

Applies to any data process not just transmission