LO5. Using Basic Functions of a WWW-Browser to Locate Information

Information Sheet 5.1: Basic Internet Operation

The internet delivers different types of information and media across networked devices. It operates using an internet protocol (IP) and a transport control protocol (TCP) packet routing network. Whenever you visit a website, your computer or mobile device requests the server using such protocols. 

A server is where web pages are stored, and it functions similarly to the hard drive of a computer, except with far greater processing power. The server accesses the web page and delivers the right information to your computer whenever the request arrives. This is broadly the end-to-end user experience. Let us now look at the more technical details of how the internet works. 

1. Connecting computers

The basic foundation of the internet is an interconnected network of computers. When two computers interact, they must be physically (often via an Ethernet connection) or wirelessly connected (via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth). All modern systems can support any of these connections to establish a core network.

2. Scaling computer networks

The computer network, as described above, is not restricted to two PCs. One can link several computers. However, as you expand, it may get more complex. Every machine on a network is connected to a tiny computing device known as a router to address this problem. This router’s only function is to operate as a signaler. It ensures that a message transmitted from a particular computer reaches its intended recipient. With the addition of a router, a system of 10 computers needs merely ten wires instead of 10 × 10 = 100 connections.

3. Enabling infinite scaling

Let us now discuss interconnecting hundreds of thousands to billions of machines. A single router cannot scale to that extent; nonetheless, a router is an independently programmable computer unit. This implies that two or more routers may be connected, enabling infinite scaling.

4. Utilizing ubiquitous public infrastructure via a modem

By now, we have constructed a network identical to the internet, although it is only intended for individual use and cannot connect with the outside world. This is where public infrastructure comes in. The telephone system links an office to everyone worldwide, making it the ideal wiring configuration for the internet. A modem is necessary for connecting networks to the telephone system. This modem converts data from a network into data that can be managed by the telephony architecture and vice versa.

5. Sending messages from one network to another

The following step is to transmit the information from your network to the target network. To accomplish this, the network must establish a connection with an internet service provider (ISP). An ISP is a service that administers specified routers that are interconnected and also have access to the routers of other ISPs. Therefore, the data from the host network is delivered to the target network via the web of ISP networks.

To deliver a message to a system, it is important to identify which computer it should be sent to. Therefore, every machine connected to a network has a unique identifying address known as an “IP address” (here, IP refers to internet protocol). It is an address consisting of four integers separated by periods, such as 192.168.2.10. There are several versions of IP; currently, we are in IPv4 and IPv6 iterations, depending on the region.

6. Assigning domain name to IP addresses

IP addresses are intended for computers, but in an infinitely extensible internet, it would be difficult for people to keep count of an ever-growing number of addresses. To simplify matters, one may designate an IP address with a domain name, a human-readable name. Google.com is an excellent example of this — the domain name is used in conjunction with the IP address 142.250.190.78. Therefore, typing the domain name is the simplest way to access a computer online.

7. Connected the internet to the web

The internet is a network architecture that enables millions of machines to communicate with one another. Several of these machines (web servers) can feed web browsers intelligible messages. The web is an application constructed on top of the internet’s infrastructure. It is important to note that additional services, like email, have been developed on top of the internet.

8. Connecting the internet to a private intranet or extranet

Intranets are personal and bespoke networks confined to an organization’s members. They offer participants a secure gateway to access shared information, collaborate, and communicate.

Extranets are quite similar to intranets, except that they enable collaboration and sharing with other businesses. Typically, they are employed to safely and confidentially transmit information to customers and other enterprise stakeholders. Frequently, their functions resemble those of an intranet: file and information sharing, collaboration tools, message boards, etc.

Intranets and extranets operate on the same infrastructure and adhere to the same protocols as the internet.

How does the web work?

When we discuss the internet in common parlance, we typically refer to the web – although the two terms are not interchangeable. If the internet can be understood as a network of highways, then the web will be the network of restaurants, toll booths, gas stations, etc., built along it. The main job of the internet is to access the web. However, it can perform other tasks like supporting cloud storage on computers, keeping the software as a service (SaaS) apps online, automatically updating the computer’s time, etc.

On the other hand, the web comprises multiple computers connected to the internet called clients and servers.

• Clients are internet-connected devices of a web user (such as a computer linked to Wi-Fi or a mobile phone) and the online-accessing software installed on such systems (generally a web browser).
• Servers store websites, applications, and their associated data and activities. When a client device requests access to a website, a replica of the webpage is received from the server to the client’s computer. The webpage is then exhibited in the client’s web browser.

When a user inputs a domain name or uniform resource locator (URL) in the browser, the domain name system (DNS server) is contacted to get the actual IP address of the website’s server.

The browser then transmits an HTTP or HTTPS request message back to the server, asking the server to transmit a copy of the web page to the client. This message and all other data transferred between the client and server are sent via the TCP/IP protocol across your internet connection.

Types of Internet Services

1. Communication services

To exchange data/information among individuals or organizations, the internet enables communication services. This mainly includes VoIP and video conferencing.

Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) enables users to place voice calls over the internet compared to a conventional (or analog) phone connection. Other VoIP services allow you to contact anybody with a mobile number, encompassing long-distance, cellular, and even local/international connections.

Video conferencing technology enables two or more individuals in separate locations to connect visually and in real time. It includes persons in different places using video-enabled devices and broadcasting real-time speech, video, texts, and slideshows via the internet.

Other communication services based on the internet include email, internet relay chat (IRC), and list server (LISTSERV) used for asynchronous text communication, instant messaging, and group announcements, respectively.

2. File transfer services

We utilize file transfer to exchange, transmit, or send a document or logical data item among many individuals or computers, both locally and remotely. Data files may comprise documents, videos, photos, text, or PDFs. They may be shared via internet downloading and uploading. File transfer protocol (FTP) is one of the most common internet protocols used for this purpose.

3. Directory services

A directory service is a collection of software that maintains information about the organization, its customers, or both. Directory services are responsible for mapping network resource names to network addresses. It offers administrators and users transparent access to all network computers, printers, servers, and other devices. It is also an important backend service provider for and by the internet.

Domain number system (DNS) and lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) are the most commonly used directory services. A DNS server stores a map of computer hostnames and other domain names to IP addresses. LDAP is a collection of open protocols to obtain centralized network access to stored data. It is also a mechanism for cross-platform authentication.

4. Ecommerce and online transactions

Ecommerce allows the customer to purchase a service or product directly from the vendor, at any time or anywhere on the planet. When IBM started offering hardware and software for computers over the internet, it was one of the first instances of ecommerce. Since then, this service has grown in use tremendously. Ecommerce uses the web to enable financial exchanges so that data packets can translate into their real-world monetary equivalents.

5. Services for network management

Network management services are some of the most critical and valuable internet services for IT administrators. They assist in avoiding, monitoring, diagnosing, and resolving network-related issues. Two services are mainly used for this purpose – ping and trace route.

The ping utility checks the host machine’s availability and the time required to react to any and all internet control message protocol (ICMP) transmissions. It guarantees that all requests issued by a computer reach the web server without packet loss. In the meantime, the trace route identifies and displays all potential paths from query to response, as well as the turnaround time for each route.

6. Time services

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Coordinated Universal Time synchronizes computer clocks (UTC). Network time protocol (NTP) is an established internet time service that syncs and adjusts the computer clock accurately to all these standards. All Windows time variants released after Windows 2000 synchronize with an NTP server. NTPsec is primarily a secured version of NTP.

7. Search engine services on the web

When users search for a web page through a search engine rather than the domain name, the search engine examines the web crawler’s index of all pages. It will study the search phrase and compare it to the database, including how often the search terms appear on a webpage, where they appear on the site, whether they appear together, etc. It analyzes this information to determine which websites best fit your search query.

The results are then shown in order, with those that best fit the search keyword appearing initially. It is important to note that search engines can accept funds from commercial entities to prioritize their websites in the results of a particular query. This is an advert, and the search engine results will be labeled as such. The internet is one of the critical pillars of modern civilization. It has helped in globalization, fast-tracked digital transformation in education and healthcare, and made information access truly universal. However, global internet penetration is yet to reach 100% and to deliver its benefits worldwide, companies and governments must focus on expanding internet infrastructure. 

Information Sheet 5.2: Web Address

What is a Web Address?

The web address contains information about the location of the webpage. It is also known as the URL (uniform resource locator). Like the address for your home, a web address organizes information about a webpage’s location in a predictable way.

This is how to break down the information using the following URL as an example:

Components of a web address

Every web address follows the same format.

Example:

https://www.wix.com/encyclopedia/web-address/

Scheme: According to IBM, the scheme “identifies the protocol to be used to access the resource on the Internet.” The two most common schemes are http and https. This page uses https, meaning it has a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate.

https://www.wix.com/encyclopedia/web-address/

Domain name: A domain name is the website name correlating with its internet protocol (IP) address. The domain name indicates which connecting server the internet must use to locate the webpage. It also acts as the website’s primary name.

https://www.wix.com/encyclopedia/web-address/

Domain extension: Also referred to as a top-level domain, a domain extension is the letters that follow the domain name. In our case, the domain extension is .com—the most common extension. The domain extension helps servers understand how to translate the web address into an IP address. Other common domain extensions include: .edu, .org, .gov and .net.

https://www.wix.com/encyclopedia/web-address/

Path: The path follows the domain extension. This information specifies which webpage of the primary website the user wants to visit.

https://www.wix.com/encyclopedia/web-address/

Subdomain: If you want to divide your website to improve navigation, you can create a subdomain—an addition to your web address that precedes the domain name.

This page does not sit under a subdomain. However, if the encyclopedia was a subdomain, it might look like this:

https://www.encyclopedia.wix.com/web-address/

Types of web address

• Absolute URL: An absolute URL contains all web address components, including the scheme, domain name, domain extension and path. It provides the webpage’s location information so when you type it into a search bar, you will arrive at the exact page correlated with the URL.
• Relative URL: A relative URL contains only the path of a web address. Closed networks (like a company’s intranet) use relative URLs when the domain name can be assumed. Users only need to convey the path to find their destination. For example, if this page was hosted on Wix’s internal servers, the relative URL might be: /encyclopedia/web-address/.

Linking to individual articles

Unlike most webpages on the Internet, the web addresses of individual articles may not be stable. This means that you may not be able to bookmark an individual article. Instead, look for a persistent link.

Persistent link: a web address that is stable over time; also known as permalink. Use the persistent link to reopen an individual article.

Information Sheet 5.3: Types and Functions of Search Engines

What is a Search Engine?

The purpose of a search engine is to extract requested information from the huge database of resources available on the internet. Search engines become an important day to day tool for finding the required information without knowing where exactly it is stored. Internet usage has been tremendously increased in recent days with the easy to use search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! There are different types of search engines to get the information you are looking for. In this article, we will explain different types of search engines and purpose of them.

Different Types of Search Engines

Search engines are classified into the following three categories based on how it works.

1. Crawler Based Search Engines. All crawler based search engines use a crawler or bot or spider for crawling and indexing new content to the search database. There are four basic steps, every crawler based search engines follow before displaying any sites in the search results.
   • a. Crawling – Search engines crawl the whole web to fetch the web pages available. A piece of software called crawler or bot or spider, performs the crawling of the entire web. The crawling frequency depends on the search engine and it may take few days between crawls. This is the reason sometimes you can see your old or deleted page content is showing in the search results. The search results will show the new updated content, once the search engines crawl your site again.
   • b. Indexing – is next step after crawling which is a process of identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page. The identified words are referred as keywords and the page is assigned to the identified keywords. Sometimes when the crawler does not understand the meaning of your page, your site may rank lower on the search results. Here you need to optimize your pages for search engine crawlers to make sure the content is easily understandable. Once the crawlers pickup correct keywords your page will be assigned to those keywords and rank high on search results.
   • c. Calculating Relevancy – Search engine compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages from the database. Since it is likely that more than one page contains the search string, search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index with the search string.
     • There are various algorithms to calculate relevancy. Each of these algorithms has different relative weights for common factors like keyword density, links, or meta tags. That is why different search engines give different search results pages for the same search string. It is a known fact that all major search engines periodically change their algorithms. If you want to keep your site at the top, you also need to adapt your pages to the latest changes. This is one reason to devote permanent efforts to SEO, if you like to be at the top.
   • d. Retrieving Results – The last step in search engines’ activity is retrieving the results. Basically, it is simply displaying them in the browser in an order. Search engines sort the endless pages of search results in the order of most relevant to the least relevant sites.

Examples of Crawler Based Search Engines

Most of the popular search engines are crawler based search engines and use the above technology to display search results. Example of crawler based search engines:

• Google
• Bing
• Yahoo!
• Baidu
• Yandex

2. Human Powered Directories. Human powered directories also referred as open directory system depends on human based activities for listings. Below is how the indexing in human powered directories work:
   • Site owner submits a short description of the site to the directory along with category it is to be listed.
   • Submitted site is then manually reviewed and added in the appropriate category or rejected for listing.
   • Keywords entered in a search box will be matched with the description of the sites. This means the changes made to the content of web pages are not taken into consideration as it is only the description that matters.
   • A good site with good content is more likely to be reviewed for free compared to a site with poor content.

Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ were perfect examples of human powered directories. Unfortunately, automated search engines like Google, wiped out all those human powered directory style search engines out of the web.

3. Hybrid Search Engines. Hybrid Search Engines use both crawler based and manual indexing for listing the sites in search results. Most of the crawler based search engines like Google basically uses crawlers as a primary mechanism and human powered directories as secondary mechanism. For example, Google may take the description of a webpage from human powered directories and show in the search results. As human powered directories are disappearing, hybrid types are becoming more and more crawler based search engines.

But still there are manual filtering of search result happens to remove the copied and spammy sites. When a site is being identified for spammy activities, the website owner needs to take corrective action and resubmit the site to search engines. The experts do manual review of the submitted site before including it again in the search results. In this manner though the crawlers control the processes, the control is manual to monitor and show the search results naturally.

4. Other Types of Search Engines. Besides the above three major types, search engines can be classified into many other categories depending upon the usage. Below are some of the examples:
   • Search engines have different types of bots for exclusively displaying images, videos, news, products and local listings. For example, Google News page can be used to search only news from different newspapers.
   • Some of the search engines like Dogpile collects Meta information of the pages from other search engines and directories to display in the search results. These type of search engines are called metasearch engines.
   • Semantic search engines like Swoogle provide accurate search results on specific area by understanding the contextual meaning of the search queries.

Information Sheet 5.4: How to Follow Relevant Links

How to search the Web

There are many different search engines you can use, but some of the most popular include Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. To perform a search, you’ll need to navigate to a search engine in your web browser, type one or more keywords—also known as search terms—then press Enter on your keyboard. In this example, we’ll search for recipes.

After you run a search, you’ll see a list of relevant websites that match your search terms. These are commonly known as search results. If you see a site that looks interesting, you can click a link to open it. If the site doesn’t have what you need, you can simply return to the results page to look for more options.

Most browsers also allow you to perform a web search directly from your address bar, although some have a separate search bar next to the address bar. Simply type your search terms and press Enter to run the search.

Search suggestions

If you don’t find what you’re looking for on the first try, don’t worry! Search engines are good at finding things online, but they’re not perfect. You’ll often need to try different search terms to find what you’re looking for.

If you’re having trouble thinking of new search terms, you can use search suggestions instead. These will usually appear as you’re typing, and they’re a great way to find new keywords you might not have tried otherwise. To use a search suggestion, you can click it with your mouse, or select it with the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Refining your search

If you’re still having trouble finding exactly what you need, you can use some special characters to help refine your search. For example, if you want to exclude a word from a search, you can type a hyphen (–) at the beginning of a word. So if you wanted to find cookie recipes that don’t include chocolate, you could search for recipes cookies -chocolate.

You can also search for exact words or phrases to narrow down your results even more. All you need to do is place quotation marks (” “) around the desired search terms. For example, if you search for recipes “sugar cookies”, your search results will only include recipes for sugar cookies, instead of any cookies that happen to use sugar as an ingredient.

These techniques may come in handy in certain cases, but you probably won’t need to use them with most searches. Search engines can usually figure out what you’re looking for without these extra characters. We recommend trying a few different search suggestions before using this method.

Content-specific searches

There may be times when you’re looking for something more specific, like a news article, picture, or video. Most search engines have links at the top of the page that allow you to perform these unique searches.

In the example below, we’ve used the same search terms to look for images instead of websites. If you see an image you like, you can click to visit the website it originally came from.

You can use the extra search tools to narrow down your results even more. These tools will change based on the type of content you’re looking for, but in this example we can filter our images by size, color, image type, and more. So if you wanted to find cookies with pink frosting, you could search for images that are mostly pink.

Advertisements

One final thing to note: Most search engines include advertisements with search results. For example, you can see advertisements at the top of the search results below. These ads are based on your search terms, and they often look similar to other search results. While they may be useful in some cases, it’s usually more helpful to focus on the actual search results.

These ads are based on your search terms, and they often look similar to other search results. While they may be useful in some cases, it’s usually more helpful to focus on the actual search results.

Information Sheet 5.5: Different Web Browser Security Features and Maintenance

Your browser’s security features

Your computer faces different threats whenever you browse the Web, including viruses, malware, and spyware. The good news is your web browser has a lot of built-in security features to help protect your computer. Let’s take a look at some of the most important features you should know about, as well as some simple tips you can use to stay safe online.

Check the web address

Malicious websites often use deceptive web addresses to trick users. For example, www.wellfargo.com looks similar to www.wellsfargo.com, but it’s missing the s in the middle.

Double-checking the domain name is a good way to ensure you’re going to the real, trusted site—not a phony site with a similar web address. Some web browsers will even try to make the domain name easier to read. In the example below, you can see that wellsfargo.com uses a darker color in the address bar.

Look at the security symbol

Some websites will display a lock symbol in the address bar. This is most commonly seen with certain types of websites, like online stores and banking sites. This means the website is using an HTTPS connection, which makes it safe to enter your personal information. You’ll also see https at the beginning of the URL.

You won’t see this symbol on all websites, and that’s OK—not all websites need this extra layer of security. However, you should avoid entering any sensitive information, such as your credit card number, if you don’t see this symbol in the address bar.

Update your browser regularly

New viruses and malware are created all the time, so it’s important to update your browser regularly. Your browser will usually notify you when it has an update available, but you always have the option to update manually. In this example, we’re updating Google Chrome to the most recent version, but the exact update procedure will vary depending on your browser.