The Internet. The World Wide Web. What is it?
Well, that question actually has to be “What are they?”, because contrary to popular belief and usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are two conceptually different entities. Simply put, the internet is the ‘hardware’, and the web, you guessed right, is the ‘software’ that helps the internet to work and function.
Now let’s get into the details. The internet is a GIGANTIC network of computers, connected by wires, cables, wireless routers and even satellites! Huge, complex and powerful computers called ‘Servers’, control the way the other computers on the network interact with each other. Like most things big, servers are ugly to the eye of the layman unless, of course, you have an eye like many techno enthusiasts for the ‘inner beauty’ of the system. Incidentally, this happens to be the great power, speed, and reliability that server computers are endowed with. They run a different flavor of Operating Systems, which are designed and configured to take advantage of the large horse-power and the heavy workload that they are supplied with. I’ll be doing an injustice if I don’t mention that the name ‘Server’ actually refers to the ‘Server Operating System’ that we are talking about, and the system itself is called the ‘Server Computer’, but usage has changed it all. Server Operating Systems (let’s call them SOS for short…) and their applications run usually on command line windows or consoles, meaning they look like the insipid DOS you see in Microsoft Windows. That’s because, servers are never attended to with the same regularity as desktop PC’s, unless there’s a failure. So they don’t need all the cute frills, laces, and jingles that home and office computer operating systems are festooned with. All of those consume precious System Memory (RAM) and CPU power, which are better saved for executing a file some website user may request…
What do servers look like? Well, you can see some images if you click on this link: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=server&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
You may like to know what exactly happens behind the scenes when you surf the Web. As an example, we shall look at a basic scenario...When a user opens his browser and types in a URL (wait a second, what’s a URL? It stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and it’s typically an “address” for a Web Page or an executable file residing in a Server), his computer tries to communicate with the server that has the Web Page he wants, and upon successfully carrying out this task, it ‘downloads’, or copies, the text file that was requested by the user. His browser then implements the text in the file it downloaded, which consists of special code called HTML, and renders it to the user.
Over the next few posts, we will have a look at what HTML is, how browsers work, what exactly the Web is, and the variety of functions that Servers carry out every minute, before moving on to more advanced concepts…
