The Internet

About the Internet

The Internet is a sprawling network of networks which covers the globe. A network within an institution such as the University of Brighton is connected via a gateway to an external network such as JANET, the Joint Academic Network linking educational institutions in the UK. JANET then provides gateways to other networks within the UK and abroad, until eventually it all looks like one big world-wide network.

If you have a modem, you can use the dialup services provided by the University of Brighton to get access to the Internet from home, or you can sign up with a commercial Internet service provider (ISP) such as Pavilion Internet.

In one sense, the Internet is an anarchy. There is no central control, and if any part of the network fails, information simply gets re-routed via a different set of gateways. No-one has the power to shut the Internet down or prevent the flow of information across it. It's a bit like a road network: if there are roadworks on the M1, traffic simply goes via a different route. Some of the political and journalistic hysteria about "controlling the Internet" ignores this simple fact; "controlling" the Internet is like trying to prevent people travelling from London to Edinburgh.

In another sense, the Internet is highly centralised. There has to be a set of standard protocols that machines on the net can use to communicate with each other. These standards are ratified and documented by volunteer bodies (the Internet Architecture Board, IAB, and the Internet Engineering Task Force, IETF). The documents they produce (known as RFCs) are of course available via the Internet, and this CD contains a selection of them. There is also a lot of software for using the Internet available on the net, much of it free, and this CD contains a representative sample of what's available.

Contents:

  • Introductory material about the Internet: what it is, where it came from and so on. Have a look here if you if you don't know what RTFM means, if you can't tell a FAQ from an RFC, if you think TCP/IP is good for killing germs or if you think that the Internet is a superhighway full of people on surfboards (or if you don't know what ":-)" means...)
  • Information about Usenet: Usenet is the Internet news service, and it's the real powerhouse of the Internet (IMHO); it gives you the power to write something that will be read by thousands of people worldwide before you've finished breakfast. It also gives you the power to make a complete fool of yourself in front of a global audience. Read about it here first, and try not to have the egg you had for breakfast end up all over your face.
  • The World-Wide Web: pedants argue about whether there's a hyphen in "World-Wide" or not, but meanwhile the journalists have decided that this is one part of the Internet they can actually understand (and de facto, they've decided that the web is the Internet). Find out what's behind the journalistic hype; is it really just pornography and paedophile gossip?
  • Internet software: lots of software packages to let you experience the Internet from home (if you have a modem and you can afford the phone bill). No, you don't need a surfboard, a modem is more useful!