The Internet and the World Wide Web

As I read, “The Internet and the World Wide Web,” I started to realize that I knew little about the internet. I never really thought too much about how it worked. The only time I thought about it was when it was not working. It is always so frustrating when you are watching something on TV, playing a video game, or watching a YouTube video when suddenly it stops working. I always do the same thing every time. I yell, “Dad, the internet is not working!” He always had to pull out the desk, unplug wires, and then test it until it was working. I never knew was he was doing, but Appendix A has helped me understand more about that now.

Very soon after I started reading, I was trying to make comparisons between the terms that I was reading and the computer equipment that we have in our house. The first thing I thought was our laptop and printer are network nodes, and we are connected to the local area network. Looking further into it we have many more network nodes. Every day, we look at our cell phones and surf the internet. In our house, we have five smart TVs that all run off wireless apps. Now that the weekend is approaching, I will go down to the basement and play on another node called PlayStation 5. I did not realize how many IP addresses we were using from our wireless network.

Everything is so much easier today with wireless internet, but it was not always this way. Our family has upgraded the internet over the last few years. My parents said that when they first moved into this house the internet came through the phone line. Then, the first upgrade was to a wireless network that connected to the TV through a coaxial cable and a desktop computer connected to a phone line. They said that they were only getting a three-internet connection for the longest time. Now I know that they are only getting three megabits per second which was bad cause you could not even play a game or watch a TV app at the same time. We have now upgraded to fiber optics, which has increased our bandwidth greatly. We are now pulling in up to five hundred megabits per second which allows us to watch and play on as many devices as we please. We can search on any of our node’s whichever domain that we please. It makes everything easier for us.

I do not know what it was like many years ago working with an evolving computer and internet. I am happy the DARPA scientists, Cerf, Kahn, Engelbart, Berners-Lee, Cailliau, Andreessen, and Clark together produced their ideas. Web browsing, hypertext, and GUI have made computer use more interesting and graphic. I am glad that computers have developed into what they are today, and I am excited at the chance to study them.

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