Chapter One.

                Upon entering this class, I have pretty good general knowledge about the Internet and its uses. Reading through chapter one of “Discovering the Internet” I have learned how the Internet was created, and some of the different kinds of technologies that are used along with the Internet.

                The first part of the chapter is pretty much a general summarization of the Internet and its uses; which include browsing the web, communicating with other, downloading and uploading files, and making business transactions. It goes on to talk about how web pages and sites are created with HTML or XHTML, or programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Expression Web. It also tells how the Internet communicates and recieves data with TCP/IP.

                The ‘History of the Internet’ part of the chapter talks about the first example of the internet, ARPANET. E-mails, packet switching, circuit switching, and other types of computer communication came along with the creation of ARPANET, allowing bits of information to be sent from one computer to another. ARPANET eventually let to the development of Transmisson Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) which are the main protocols that are used today.

                ‘The Beginnings and Rise of the Web’ was the most peculiar part of the chapter to me. It explains the rise and mainstream success of the internet, the addition of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTML (URLs and such)) and the formation of different kinds of web browsers (Mosaic, Netscape Navigator).  The last part of the chapter talks about different kinds of internet connections (Dial-up, DSL, Cable, T1, T2, Wi-fi) and how they are currently used in todays world.

                Overall chapter one was very insightful to me. I learned a lot about how, and why Internet was created, how web pages were made, and different ways computers use the Internet to transfer information. I can’t wait to see what the next chapter brings.