History of the Internet

1. History of the Internet • Result of thinking by people in the early 1960s who saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields. • Lawrence Roberts of MIT moved over to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA) in 1966 and developed his plan for APRANET. • What was once known as ARPANET, became the internet and was brought online in 1969 under a contract led by the Advanced Research Projects Agency(ARPA). • The early internet was used by computer experts, engineers, scientists, and librarians. There was nothing friendly about it. There were no home or office computers at this time. • In 1991, the first really friendly interface to the internet was developed at the University of Minnesota. • Delphi was the first national commercial online service to offer Internet access to its subscribers. It opened up an email connection in July of 1992 and full Internet service in November of 1992. • Microsoft’s full scale entry into the browser, server, and Internet Service Provider market completed the major shift over to a commercially based Internet.

2. URL’S • URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. • URL consists of three parts: • Network protocol • Host name or address • File or resource location These are separated as follows: Protocol://host/location Urls are resources that can be Web pages, text documents, graphics, or programs. Basically, if the URL is typed in, the computer will take you to that location.

3. Navigation Techniques Many websites that we access have navigation bars available for accessing the information on that site. These bars may be at the top, at the bottom, on the side, or positioned most anywhere on the page. The homepage of most browsers have a menu available for quick access to certain points within the search. There is usually a home page icon, a print icon, a favorites icon, and a tools icon, just to name a few. Depending on the search engine you are using, there may be more or less quick button icons for navigation. Usually, you can open more than one home page and search more than one thing at the time. This can be done usually by clicking on the – in the top corner to shrink down one of the pages. Also there is usually an x to exit the page, as well as an icon in the corner to make the screen be full or shrink the view down to a small screen. Also, there is usually a row of icons at the bottom of the page for easy access to various places or tools.

4. Bookmarks, Favorites, and Online Organizers • A Bookmark or Favorite is a way to mark a particular website or document. This allows you to find it later rather than having to type the address out later. Basically, you are saving the URL to your computer for later use. These Bookmark or Favorites locations can later be accessed with a single click. Internet Explorer calls the bookmarks Favorites instead of bookmarks. Sites such as Netscape and Firefox call them Bookmarks.

5. Search Engine There are many search engines out there available to Internet users. The two most popular are Yahoo and Google. A search engine is our gateway to access our websites, images, videos, and any other source you may want to access. Basically, you type what you are looking for in the search bar and the computer accesses what you are looking for. This is a search using your search engine .

6. Evaluation of Websites Many virus programs will evaluate websites for you. This option will tell you if the site is known to be safe to access or not. When a site is not a verified site through your virus protection, such as McAfee, it will tell you that the site is not verified and entering the site may be a risk. This risk is mostly a risk of a virus entering your computer. Another evaluation one can make on a site is the known accuracy of the site. Not all information found on the internet is accurate. Another thing to consider when accessing a website is the necessary software, hardware, or multimedia requirements to access the website.

7. Troubleshooting Some troubleshooting techniques for your computer before calling a technician: • Reboot your computer • If you can’t access your network, power everything off and turn them back on, one thing at the time. • Run an Anti-Virus program • Defrag your computer • Run a registry cleanup Always have a back-up for your system

8. Problems and Pitfalls There are several problems or pitfalls to using the internet, especially in the classroom with students having access to the internet. Some things to be aware of are in the following list. • Accessing sites that may have inappropriate materials for students to view. • Safety risks of online predators or people that will access children’s sites and take advantage of them. • A lot of fraud takes place on the internet. Hackers will access your important information, such as credit card information or personal information like social security numbers, and will use them fraudulently. • Computer viruses and hacking are a huge problem these days.

9. References Howe, Walt (2012, September 13). A brief history of the internet. Creative Commons Attribution. Retrieved August 14, 2013 from http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html Mitchell, Bradley. Url. About.com. Retrieved August 14,2013 from http://compnetworking.about.com/od/internetaccessbestuses/g/bldef-url.htm