HARAMBEE UNIVERSITY

WEB DEVELOPMENT AND

DATABASE ADMINISTRATION
Level II
Unit of Competence: Configure and Use Internet
Module Title: Configuring and Use Internet
TTLM Code: EIS WDDBA2 TTLM05 1221

LO1: Manage Internet

Compiled by Israel K.

June/2014 E.C
Ethiopian TVET System
Training, Teaching and Learning Materials Development

Instruction Introduction to Internet

INTERNET
Definition, use, and basic terminologies of Internet
The Internet, sometimes called simply "the Net," is a worldwide system of computer networks - a network
of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other
computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers).
The internet is computer based global information system. It is composed of many interconnected
computer networks. Each network may link thousands of computers enabling them to share information.
The internet has brought a transformation in many aspects of life. It is one of the biggest contributors in
making the world into a global village. Use of internet has grown tremendously since it was introduced. It is
mostly because of its flexibility. Nowadays one can access the internet easily. Most people have computers in
their homes but even the ones who don’t they can always go to cyber cafes where this service is provided.
The internet developed from software called the ARPANET which the U.S military had developed. It was
only restrict to military personnel and the people who developed it. Only after it was privatized was it allowed to
be used commercially.
The internet has developed to give many benefits to mankind. The access to information is one of the most
important. Students can now have access to libraries around the world. Some charge a fee but most provide free
services. Before students had to spend hours and hours in the libraries but now at the touch of a button students
have a huge database in front of them

Basic Internet Terms and Terminology

Here is a look at the buzzwords of the world of Internet.

ARPANET: The acronym stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. ARPA of the United
States Department of Defense developed ARPANET, which became the world’s first packet switching network.
Internet is the successor of ARPANET.

Internet Service Provider (ISP): A company, which provides users with an access to the Internet, is
known as an Internet service provider or Internet access provider. ISP, as it is called, offers email accounts and
other services like remote storage of files for its customers. Here is a word about choosing a cheap ISP.
IP Address: It is a way of numerically identifying an entity on a computer network. The original
addressing system known as IPv4, used 32 bit addresses. With the growth of the Internet, IPv6 came to be used
wherein the addresses are composed of 128 bits.

Cyberspace: This term coined by William Gibson, is used to refer to the computer networks connected
to each other and the content they host. It is often used to refer to the Internet.
WWW (World Wide Web): It is a collection of interlinked documents that are accessible over the
Internet. It consists of millions of web pages that contain text, images, voice and videos. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a
British scientist working at CERN, created the World Wide Web.

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Website: A website is a set of web pages consisting of text, audio and video. Web servers host websites.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator): It specifies the location of a resource on the Internet. It consists of
the basic address and path.
Web Page: Web pages are resources of information. They are generally created in the HTML format and
provide the web users with navigational abilities through hyperlinks to other web pages on the web.
Home Page: The term home page is used to refer to the page that is the default page of any website. It is
the main page of a complex website.
Web Browser: A web browser is a software application that facilitates user interaction with the text,
audio, video and other information that is located on the web.
Cache: Web browsers maintain a cache of recently visited web pages. Some of them use an external proxy
web cache, which is a server program through which web requests pass. This enables the browsers to cache
frequently visited pages. Even search engines make available already indexed web pages through their caches.
HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol, abbreviated as HTTP, is a communications protocol used for the
transfer of information over the Internet. A client makes an HTTP request using a web browser to which an HTTP
response is sent from the server.
Web Cookie: Also known as an HTTP cookie, it is piece of text that is exchanged between the web client
and the web server. It is sent by the web server to the web client and returned unchanged by the client each time
it accesses the server.
Session: It is an exchange of information between a computer and its user. It is established for a certain
period of time after which it ends.
Hyperlink: A reference in a document to another section of the document or to another document is
termed as a hyperlink. Hyperlinks are used to redirect the user from one section of a page content to another.
Internet Security: It is one of the major concerns today. As the Internet acts as a communication platform
that can be accessed by millions of users around the world, it becomes
necessary that proper measures be implemented. Issues like Internet Safety that deal with the content that is made
accessible over the Internet are equally important. Internet Privacy relates to safeguarding the privacy of the web
users and the sensitive information on the web from hackers and stalkers.
Internet – A Communication Platform: Internet serves as one of the most efficient means of
communication. Computers from different parts of the world can be connected to each other to exchange
information, thanks to the Internet. Emails and chats are excellent means of communication over the Internet.
Blogs and online forums give the Internet users a platform to reach out to the masses. Here is a list of the basic
Internet terms associated with the Internet as a communication platform. Also look at some Internet terms related
to the security threats to network communication.
Email: It is a store-and-forward method of writing, sending and receiving written messages. Electronic
mail is an Internet e-mail system that uses network-based protocols to exchange messages between network
subsystems.
Email Address: It identifies the network location to which an email can be delivered. An email address
is a combination of the username of the mail user and the host name of the mailing system. It is of the form,
‘username@domain-name’. An email alias is a forwarding email address. It simply forwards emails to specific
email addresses.

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Hacking: Hacking is the activity of programmatically gaining access to a computer application that is
otherwise inaccessible. The act of gaining an unauthorized access to a computer is known as hacking. Hacking of
passwords that leads to breach of email privacy is a threat to communication over the Internet. Internet crimes
refer to all the criminal activities that are carried over the Internet.
Email Scams: With the increase in the use of email systems, its security needs also rose. Fraudulent users
started tampering with the email systems to breach security.
Email Virus: It is a computer code that is transmitted through an email in the form of an attachment. The
email attachment causes the destruction of some of the files on the receiver computer’s hard disk and is
programmatically emailed to the contacts in the address book of the receiver.
Internet Bookmark: The Internet browsers of the modern times aim at enabling the users to organize the
web pages they access. Links once visited can be saved in the favorites or preferences categories. Bookmarks are
usually integrated into browsers. Social bookmarking is a method used by the Internet users to store and manage
web pages.
Web Directories: It is a directory, which links to other websites and organizes those links. They should not be
mistaken as being search engines.

Makeup and structure of web addresses

Web Sites and URLs

A Web site is simply data that is stored on a WWW server and which can be freely accessed by people
'surfing the Net'. For instance Microsoft has their own Web site from which you can download information and
software. The trouble is that you have to know the address of the Web site; in much the same way as if you want
to phone someone you have to know his or her phone number. The address of a Web site is given by something
called its URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The structure of the URL is very precise.
Due to the very large number of organizations who now have Web sites, you can also use a search engine,
in which you can enter a word or phrase connected with what you wish to find and it will then display sites that
match the information that you have entered. The results can be overwhelming however. A recent search using
the search words "PC courseware" displayed a list of 4.5 million sites containing these words!

What is a hyperlink?

A hyperlink is simply part of the text (or graphic) on a Web page, that when clicked on will automatically:
• Take you to a different part of the same page
• Take you to a different page within the Web site
• Take you to a page in a different Web site
• Enable you to download a file
• Launch an application, video or sound

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Information Sheet – 2 Internet Browsers Review
Internet Browsers
There were several web browsers that we can use to search from the web. Let’s take a look at some of it.
Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. The Netscape
Navigator web browser was succeeded by Netscape Communicator. Netscape Communicator's 4.x source code
was the base for the Netscape-developed Mozilla Application Suite, which was later, renamed SeaMonkey.
Windows Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE)
is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line
of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that
year. Later versions were available as free downloads, or in service packs, and included in the OEM service
releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows.
Internet Explorer has been the most widely used web browser since 1999, attaining a peak of about
95% usage share during 2002 and 2003 with Internet Explorer 5 and Internet Explorer 6.
Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and
managed by Mozilla Corporation. As of August 2011, Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with
approximately 30% of worldwide usage share of web browsers. The browser has had particular success
in Germany and Poland, where it is the most popular browser with 55% usage and 47% respectively.
Firefox runs on various operating systems including Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS
X, FreeBSD, and many other platforms.

Galeon
Galeon is a web browser for GNOME based on Mozilla’s Gecko layout engine. Galeon’s self-declared
mission was to deliver “the web and only the web.” At the time of Galeon’s creation, the most popular web
browsers, including Netscape, Mozilla, and Internet Explorer, were large multi-functional programs.
Galeon was the first mainstream graphical web browser which specifically focused on the reduction of
peripheral functionality. Galeon is also notable for introducing “Smart Bookmarks,” bookmarks that take an
argument and can be used as toolbar buttons with a text field used to enter the value for the argument.
Opera
Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software. The browser handles
common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing
contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent, and reading web feeds. Opera is offered free of
charge for personal and mobile phones.
Opera does not come packaged with any desktop operating system. However, it is the most popular
desktop browser in some countries, such as Ukraine. Opera Mini, which is the most popular mobile web
browser as of May 2011, has been chosen as the default integrated web browser in several mobile handsets by
their respective manufacturers.

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Opera is known for originating many features later adopted by other web browsers. Opera runs on a variety
of personal computer operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD.
Phoenix
The Mozilla Firefox project was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as an experimental branch of
the Mozilla project. Hyatt, Ross, Hewitt and Chanial's browser was created to combat the perceived software
bloat of the Mozilla Suite (codenamed, internally referred to, and continued by the community as SeaMonkey),
which integrated features such as IRC, mail and news, and WYSIWYG HTML editing into one software suite.
Although the Mozilla Foundation had intended to make the Mozilla Suite obsolete and replace it with
Firefox, the Foundation continued to maintain the suite until April 12, 2006 because it had many corporate users
and was bundled with other software.
The project which became Firefox started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla Suite
called m/b (or mozilla/browser). After it had been sufficiently developed, binaries for public testing appeared in
September 2002 under the name Phoenix.

Lynx
Lynx is a text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals and is very
configurable. Browsing in Lynx consists of highlighting the chosen link using cursor keys, or having all links on
a page numbered and entering the chosen link's number. Current versions support SSL and many HTML features.
Tables are formatted using spaces, while frames are identified by name and can be explored as if they were
separate pages. Lynx cannot inherently display various types of non-text content on the web, such as images and
video, but it can launch external programs to handle it, such as an image viewer or a video player.

Because of its text-to-speech–friendly interface, Lynx was once popular with visually impaired users, but
better screen readers have reduced the appeal of this application. Lynx is also used to check for usability of
websites in older browsers. It is still included in a number of Unix products and Linux distributions, and is
particularly useful for reading documentation or downloading files when only a text-based environment is
available. It is also useful for accessing websites from a remotely connected system in which no graphical display
is available. Despite its text-only nature and age, it can still be used to effectively browse much of the modern
web, including performing interactive tasks such as editing Wikipedia. The speed benefits of text-only browsing
are most apparent when using low bandwidth internet connections, or older computer hardware that may be slow
to render image-heavy content.

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Information Sheet – 3 Basic Internet Settings and Configuration

Home page

The term home page is used to refer to the page that is the default page of any website. It is the main page
of a complex website.
Setting-up your home page means that when you open your web browser, the web page that you have set
will be immediately launched by your browser. The most common site that you often use will be your
consideration for setting-up your home page. So every time you will open your browser, it will automatically go
to your favorite site.

Location of Temporary Files

Web pages are stored in a temporary Internet files folder the first time you view them in your web browser.
This speeds up the display of pages you frequently visit or have already seen, because Internet Explorer can open
them from your hard disk instead of from the Internet.
Privacy Level
Internet Explorer offers a number of features to help protect your security and privacy when you browse
the web.
Under Settings, there were several privacy level options you can choose:

• Block All Cookies. Internet Explorer prevents all Web sites from storing cookies on your computer, and
Web sites cannot read existing cookies on your computer. Per-site privacy actions do not override these
settings.
• High. Internet Explorer prevents Web sites from storing cookies that do not have a compact privacy
policy—a condensed computer-readable P3P privacy statement. The browser prevents Web sites from
storing cookies that use personally identifiable information without your explicit consent. Per-site privacy
actions override these settings.
• Medium High. Internet Explorer prevents Web sites from storing third-party cookies that do not have a
compact privacy policy or that use personally identifiable information without your explicit consent. The
browser prevents Web sites from storing first-party cookies that use personally identifiable information
without your implicit consent. The browser also restricts access to first-party cookies that do not have a
compact privacy policy so that they can only be read in the first-party context. Per-site privacy actions
override these settings.
• Medium (default). Internet Explorer prevents Web sites from storing third-party cookies that do not have
a compact privacy policy or that use personally identifiable information without your implicit consent.
The browser allows first-party cookies that use personally identifiable information without your implicit
consent but deletes these cookies from your computer when you close the browser. The browser also
restricts access to first-party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy so that they can only be
read in the first-party context. Per-site privacy actions override these settings.

• Low. Internet Explorer allows Web sites to store cookies on your computer, including third-party cookies
that do not have a compact privacy policy or that use personally identifiable information without your
implicit consent. When you close the browser, though, it deletes these third-party cookies from your
computer. The browser also restricts access to first-party cookies that do not have a compact privacy
policy so that they can only be read in the first-party context. Per-site privacy actions override these
settings.

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• Accept All Cookies. Internet Explorer allows all Web sites to store cookies on your computer, and Web
sites that create cookies on your computer can read them. Per-site privacy actions do not override these
settings.
Security Level
Why are security settings for web browsers important?
Your web browser is your primary connection to the rest of the internet, and multiple applications may
rely on your browser, or elements within your browser, to function. This makes the security settings within your
browser even more important. Many web applications try to enhance your browsing experience by enabling
different types of functionality, but this functionality might be unnecessary and may leave you susceptible to
being attacked. The safest policy is to disable the majority of those features unless you decide they are necessary.
If you determine that a site is trustworthy, you can choose to enable the functionality temporarily and then disable
it once you are finished visiting the site.
Setting Browsing History
As you browse the Internet, each of the items you view was saved locally on your hard disk drive. This
helps web pages you visit frequently load faster by loading the files from youhard disk drive instead of having to
downloading the web page again. To conserve hard disk drive space or to help keep their Internet browsing
private, users may find it necessary to delete their Internet History, below is how to do this.
Adjusting display/view modes
In recent versions, Windows Internet Explorer has dramatically improved support for established and
emerging industry standards, such as HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Level 3 (CSS3), and Scalable
Vector Graphics (SVG). By default, Internet Explorer properly displays webpages designed to support these
standards. Because some of these standards are still evolving, older websites may not fully support them. In
addition, later versions of certain standards specify different behaviors than earlier versions of the same standard.
Customize the Internet Explorer toolbars
This information applies to Windows Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Internet Explorer 8.
Internet Explorer has several toolbars, including the Menu bar, the Favorites or Links bar, and the Command bar.
There is also the Address bar, where you can type a web address, and the status bar, which displays messages
such as a webpage's download progress. All of these toolbars can be customized in one way or another.
Assessing and Retrieving Site Data
What Are Cookies?
Cookies are small files which are stored on a user's computer. They are designed to hold a modest amount
of data specific to a particular client and website, and can be accessed either by the web server or the client
computer. This allows the server to deliver a page tailored to a particular user, or the page itself can contain some
script which is aware of the data in the cookie and so is able to carry information from one visit to the website (or
related site) to the next.
What's in a Cookie?
Each cookie is effectively a small lookup table containing pairs of (key, data) values - for example
(firstname, John) (lastname, Smith). Once the cookie has been read by the code on the server or client computer,
the data can be retrieved and used to customize the web page appropriately.

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When are Cookies Created?
Writing data to a cookie is usually done when a new webpage is loaded - for example after a 'submit'
button is pressed the data handling page would be responsible for storing the values in a cookie. If the user has
elected to disable cookies then the write operation will fail, and subsequent sites which rely on the cookie will
either have to take a default action, or prompt the user to re-enter the information that would have been stored in
the cookie.
Why are Cookies Used?

Cookies are a convenient way to carry information from one session on a website to another, or between
sessions on related websites, without having to burden a server machine with massive amounts of data storage.
Storing the data on the server without using cookies would also be problematic because it would be difficult to
retrieve a particular user's information without requiring a login on each visit to the website.

Loading Images

Images on a web page often make the page load more slowly, especially if you have a relatively slow
connection (e.g., a dial-up connection). To decrease the time it takes to load a page by preventing images from
loading you would need to disable loading of images. But for many instances, you would need to load images to
your browser.
Opening URL
Each time that you type a URL in the address bar or click on a link in Internet Explorer browser, the URL
address is automatically added to the history index file. When you type a sequence of characters in the address
bar, Internet Explorer automatically suggests you all URLs that begin with characters sequence that you typed
(unless AutoComplete feature for Web addresses is turned off). However, Internet Explorer doesn’t allow you to
view and edit the entire URL list that it stores inside the history file.
Deleting Cookies and Browsing History

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website
to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin
site. The state information can be used for authentication, identification of a user session, user's preferences,
shopping cart contents, or anything else that can be accomplished through storing text data.

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