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Academic Computing Center > Resources > Internet & Web > Internet FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about
the Internet and the Web

 What is the Internet? Who owns the Internet?

 What is the World Wide Web?

 What is a Web browser?

 What is a Web server?

 What is a Web page?

 What is a Web site?

 What is a home page?

 What is an URL?

 What is HTML?

 What is an Intranet?

 What happens when I open a Web browser and type in a URL?

 What do I do to read the Daily Star newspaper on the Web?
 

  The Internet

The Internet is a worldwide network of computers, using a common protocol (TCP/IP or Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) to communicate with each other.  These computers possess software to provide or "serve" information and/or to request and see information.   Academic, commercial, governmental, and military networks are part of the Internet. 
No one owns the Internet.  Each person 'owns' the part of the Internet s/he uploads data to.  When you connect your computer to the Internet you are a part of the Internet.
The Internet offers a variety of services, mainly:
      Electronic mail (E-mail) - allows the online exchange of mail.
      FTP - allows you to access network locations of FTP resources and
      save them into your computer.
      Telnet - allows your computer connect to another computer and
      access its files.
      World Wide Web - is the graphical portion of the Internet.
 

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The World Wide Web, the WWW, or the Web,  is the largest, the fastest growing, and the most popular Internet service.  Why? Because in addition to text, it can display images, animations, sounds, and videos.  To access the Web information you need:
(1) a connection to the Internet and
(2) a Web browser such as Netscape or Explorer. 

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A Web browser is a software program that allows you to view or "browse" individual pages on the Web.  The computer running a Web browser is called a client machine (because it just requests and receives data) while the computer called server provides the data it stores.    
 

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A Web server is a powerful computer connected to the Internet in which you can  store Web pages so they can be retrieved by Web clients.   
The Web is a client-server information system.  That simply means: a client computer contacts a server computer and asks for information. The server then sends the information to the client.

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  Web page

A Web page is a single electronic document written in HTML.  Web pages vary in content, design, and size, depending on the purpose. 
You need to save (or upload) your HTML documents (or Web pages) to a Web server, so they can be viewed by users on the Web. 

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  HTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and it is the standard computer language used on the World Wide Web.  The HTML code tells browsers (such as Explorer and Netscape) how Web pages should be presented.  Web browsers then let you see the Web pages content. 

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  Web site

A Web site may have one or more related Web pages.  The first page one sees in a Web site is called the home page.  This page usually provides an overview of what you will find in the Web site and offers a list of items, which link to other pages on the site or to other Web sites.

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  URL

Each Web page has its own address, or URL (Uniform Resource Locator).  The URL identifies the location of each file on the WWW, as well as the protocol (or the transmission format) by which to access it.  There are several types of protocols. 
The most popular is the http: (hyper text transfer protocol) used in  Web pages.  Other protocols:
gopher:, ftp:, telnet:, and news: (used in addresses of newsgroups).
A URL can be seen as an electronic postal address of a particular file and is made of several parts:

type of site:(//)server name.subdomain.domain.suffixes/file identification

http://staff.aub.edu.lb/~acc/HomePage/feedback.htm

http - tells it is a Web page.
staff.aub.edu.lb - is the identification of the server connected to the Internet.  This identification includes:
      staff - the name of the server
      aub - the location where the server resides, or the subdomain.
      edu - the domain is the type of location of the server (edu=
                educational institution)
      lb - the sufix of the country where the server is located.

      acc - is the folder or directory where the file is located.  It is followed by the file location and name (HomePage/feedback.htm).

     

After the[ / ] starts the pathname to the file you want to access.   In the example above, the file is called feedback.htm, and it is part of a folder called Services, which in its turn is part of the acc Web site.

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  The Intranet

The Intranet is a private network of an organization or a company.  Intranets are created for internal use only. 

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  What happens when I open a Web browser and type in
  an URL?

The browser sends a request (the URL) for that page over the Internet.  The Internet uses the URL to find the server that has the page and asks it for a copy of the file.  The contacted server finds the page and sends a copy of it over the Internet and back to your computer.  When the data arrive at your computer, the browser shows the page in the browser window. 

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  What do I do to read the Daily Star newspaper online?

First, you open a Web browser, and type the URL (or address) of this newspaper [http://www.dailystar.com.lb/].   The browser uses the Internet, to locate the server that hosts the Daily Star Web site.  The Daily Star’s server sends the data over the Internet to your computer browser.  Your browser interprets the data (written in HTML), and shows them on your computer screen. 

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