Some Key Terms - The Internet and Web Design

1) A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications. Protocols may involve signaling, authentication, and error detection and correction capabilities. A type of protocol is an Internet Protocol (IP).The Internet Protocol (IP) is a network-layer (Layer 3) protocol that contains addressing information and some control information that enables packets to be routed.IP has two primary responsibilities: providing connectionless, best-effort delivery of datagrams through an
internetwork; and providing fragmentation and reassembly of datagrams to support data links with different maximum-transmission unit (MTU) sizes.

2) TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. IP has two primary responsibilities: providing connectionless, best-effort delivery of datagrams through aninternetwork; and providing fragmentation and reassembly of datagrams to support data links with different maximum-transmission unit (MTU) sizes.
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP's use is to exchange or transfer hypertext in distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems (ie. websites). HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. When the URL is entered in the browser, it sends an HTTP command to the web server 'telling' it to retrieve and transmit the information on the web page. This is why 'http://' is found at the beginning of a URL. Essentially, it is a method by which computers communicate webpages to one another. It is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web.
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. SMTP is an Internet standard for email transmissions (sending) across IP networks. It is used by most e-mail systems that send mail over the Internet to send messages from one server to another. Essentially, it is a protocol used for sending e-mail messages between servers.
POP stands for Post Office Protocol. POP is an Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a server (ie. SMTP) over a TCP/IP connection. Essentially, POP is a protocol used to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. It is used by most e-mail applications/clients, along with IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol).
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP is a standard network protocol used to transfer friles from one host to another over a TCP-based network (ie. the Internet). Essentially, FTP is the protocol used for exchanging files over the Internet. It works the same way as:
HTTP - for transferring web pages from a server to a user's browser
SMTP - for transferring e-mails across the Internet.
Essentially, FTP is used to download a file from a server using the Internet or to upload a file to a server.

3) GUI represents Graphic User Interface, before GUI, PUI (PARC User Interface) had been used.

4) Serial Data Transmission is the process of sending data one bit at a time, in a sequence, over a communication channel.
Parallel Data Transmission is the process of sending several data signals simultaneously over several parallel channels.
The difference between a parallel and a serial data transmission is that serial transmission sends data one bit/data at a time, while parallel transmission sends multiple bits/data in the same time. Also, serial transmission uses only one communication channel while parallel transmission uses multiple communication channels.

5) URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. URL is the global address of documents and resources on the World Wide Web (WWW). It is a specific character string which is a reference to an Internet source. An example of URL one of the most common websites used: http://google.com
http: the first part of the URL is a protocol identifier, which indicates which protocol to use (eg. HTTP, FTP, etc.).
google.com: the second part of the URL is a resource name, which specifies the IP address or the domain name (ie. google.com) where the resource is located.
These two parts (protocol identifier and resource name) are separated by a colon and two forward slashes. ://

6) Error detection is the detection of errors caused by noise or other impairments during transmission from the transmitter to the receiver.

7) Error detection is important in the cases of internet, as it warns in addition to protects our transmitter by alerting us of the errors catalysed by the noise. It's simply protecting your transmitter and receiver.

8) HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is used to make webpages. It is known as the backbone to all web designs. Every webpage has at least some HTML on it. HTML is used in conjunction with JavaScript and CSS to make the page that you view. It is used to format the text, layout, images, links, everything you see on the page. The combination of these three elements are known as XHTML. The importance of HTML is indescribable as without it, there would be no such thing as websits or pages.

History of the Internet

1) The internet had originated in the United Kingdom by Tim Berners Lee. He developed software for the World Wide Web and it officially became available from 1991. The internet initially began in the late 60s and 70s through the military. It wasn't until during the late 80s that the World Wide Web as we know came to popularity.The Internet was created as a project in 1958 by the United States Government ARPA (The Advanced Research Projects Agency) to network computers in order to gain a technological and potentially military advantage during the cold war.

2) During the creating of the internet, many people in addition to countries were responsible. There are several amounts of people who put alot of work and determination into creating the Internet. One could say the people responsible for its creation was the United States who funded programs to create military computer networks. Although another very important as well as important person who contributed in the creation of the internet, is Tim Berners Lee, who developed software for the World Wide Web and introduced it from 1991.    

3) Tim Berners Lee had initially begun networking computers before the devolopment of the PC, with the project Community Memory project in the late 1970s. Although this system had terminals for instance screens with keyboards connected to one large computer that did the actual processing). These were placed in laundromats, the Whole Earth Access store, and community centres in San Francisco, USA. This network used permanent links over a small geographical area rather than telephone lines and modems.

4) IP packet is the simplest data chunk that can be sent via the internet. All the data is partitioned into IP packets on the computer which is sending and reassembled on the receiving computer. Each IP packet contains header information that includes the type of traffic it is for instance FTP or UDP and where it originated from.

5) TCP represents Transmission Control Protocol over Internet Protocol. These are two transmission protocols of which work together to help the servers, clients and devices on the network talk to one another.

6) Computer people like everything in letters as they often prefer it due to the efficiency and ease remembering acronyms in addition to it's shorter to type and refer to.