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Internet : the « office of the future »
A computers network is the interconnection of many individual computers, much as the road is the link between the homes and the buildings of a city. Having many separate computers linked on a network provides many advantages to organizations such as business and universities. People may quickly and easily share files; modify databases; send memos called E-mails, or electronic mail; run programs on remote mainframes; and get access to information in databases that are more fit on a small computer’s hard drive. Networks provide an essential tool for the routing, managing, and storing of huge amounts of rapidly changing data. The
Internet is a network of networks: the international linking of
thousands of business, universities, and research organizations with millions of
individual users. It is what united states vice president Al Gore first publicly
referred to as the information superhighway. What is known as the Internet was
originally formed in 1970 as a military network called ARPANet
(Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) as part of the department of
defence. The network opened to non-military users in the1970s, when universities
and companies doing defence-related research where given access, and flourished
in the late 1980s as most universities and many businesses around the world came
on-line. In 1993, when commercial providers were first permitted to sell
Internet connections to individuals, usage of the network exploded. Millions of
new users came on within months,
and a new era of computer communications began.
Most
networks on the Internet make certain files available to other networks.
These common files can be databases, programs, or E-mail from the individuals
from the network. With hundreds of thousands of internationals sites each
providing thousands of pieces of data, it’s
easy to imagine the mass of raw data available to users. The
Internet is by no means the only way in which computer users can communicate
with others.
(why Internet?) There
basically four activities you can do on the Internet: ·
Communication ·
Document and
file transfer ·
Reading and
posting to topic specific bulletin boards ·
Interactive
browsing and searching And,
there are a number of tools or technologies that support these activities,
including:
·
E-mail:
electronic message exchange ·
FTP( File
Transfer Protocol) : moving electronic documents, images, sounds, etc… ·
Telnet :
accessing another computer system’s database or archives ·
Usenet : global
bulletin board messaging system ·
Archie : a
simple but effective mechanism for searching FTP archives ·
Gopher : an
information browser that lets you retrieve what you find ·
Veronica : an
enhancement to gopher that researches many gopher databases ·
WAIS : a
powerful tool for searching some large databases ·
World Wide Web
(WWW) : a hypertext interface to information on the Internet.
Various federal, regional and campus Networks all over the world, using the IP protocol, provide Internet services to their clientele. So they developed methods of connected these networks ( e.g., BITNET, DECnet, etc.) to the Internet. At
first these connections, called gateways, merely served to transfer electronic
mail between the two networks as well. These networks are part of the Internet .
The Internet has no president, chief operating officer, or Pope. The constituent networks may have presidents, but that’s a different issue; there’s no single authority figure for the Internet as a whole. The
ultimate authority for where the Internet is going rests with the Internet
society, or ISOC. ISOC is a voluntary membership organization whose purpose is
to promote global information exchange through Internet technology . It appoints
a council of elders, which has the responsibility for the technical managements
and direction of the Internet. The
council of elders is a group of invited volunteers called the Internet
architecture board, or the IAB. The
IAB meets regularly to “ bless” standards and allocate resources, such
addresses. The Internet works because there are standard ways for computers and
software applications to talk to each others. This allows computers from
different vendors to communicate without problems. It’s not an IBM-only or
SUN-only or MACHINTOSH-only network. The IAB is responsible for these standards;
it decides when a standard is necessary when it should be.
Several
commercial on-line services provide
connections to members who pay a monthly connect-time fee . CompuServe , America
online, Prodigy , Genie, and several others
provide a tremendous range of information and services, including on-line
conferencing , electronic mail transfer, program downloading, current weather
and stock market information, travel and entertainment information, access to
encyclopaedias and other reference works, and electronic forum’s for specific
users groups such as PC users, sports fans, musicians, and so on.
No one pays for “it”; there is no Internet Inc. that collects fees from all Internet networks or users. Instead, every one pays for their part. The NSF pays for the NSFNET. NASA pays for the NASA science Internet. Networks get together and decide how to connect themselves together and fund these interconnections. A college or corporation pays for its connection to a regional network, which in turn pays a national provider for its access.( e.g. ELKHAWARISMI,ATI). There is that the Internet is free. It’s not; because many users pay monthly or hourly charges for Internet access from home.
The internet offers a wide range of services. To get the complete set of services you must have a TCP/IP style connection. Your computer is part of the network: your computer know how to contact every computer service on the Internet, though it may need some special software to use some of them. Anything which can happen between networked computers can occur. For example, if you want a file you can move it directly to your workstation, as in figure 1. If you are only interested in some limited services, you don’t necessarily need a full connection to the Internet . That is you can beg, borrow, or buy an account on a computer that is connected to the Internet. Then you can use a terminal emulator to dial in form your computer to the Internet machine; log in; read mail; fetch files; and do what ever you want. As figure 2.
You use the Internet with a computer. You don’t have to be a computer scientist to use it. You do need to be able to operate one, run existing programs and understand what files are. Some computer jargon might help( bit, byte, kb, etc.). Finally access to the Internet is obtained only subscription, and an Internet address is need to receive a message or to send a message to another Internet user. Such addresses have a specific format that specifies the names of the user, the machine they are working on, and where that machine is located.
Need to know the latest supreme court opinions? Or geographic, economic, and political data about JAPAN? Or news about the latest space shuttle flights, direct from NASA? All of this, and much more, is available on the Internet , the world’s largest computer network The Internet has brought an information revolution. Megabytes of data, on almost any imaginable, are at your fingertips. In addition to searching online databases, you can carry on discussions with colleagues worldwide, participate in discussions with colleagues worldwide, participate in discussion groups, subscribe to electronic journals, collect free software. Whether you’re lawyer, a businessman, a scientist, or a farmer, you’ll find that the Internet is an invaluable resource. Not too long ago, we would have called this the “office of the future”. Well, it’s available now.
Bel Hadj Sami ZooM Magazine |
