Structure of the Web

Watch this video. It goes over a bit of what we discussed last time and prepares us for what we will discuss today.

"History of the internet" is an animated documentary by Melih Bilgil explaining the inventions from time-sharing to file-sharing, from arpanet to internet.

Information in article form

Brief History of the Internet
Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, Stephen Wolff
The Internet Society

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To frame your thinking about the web structures in which information may be found, read the following

Easley, David, and Jon Kleinberg. "The Structure of the Web." In Networks, crowds, and markets: reasoning about a highly connected world, 375–395. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Then, returning to How Things Work, glance over How Internet Infrastructure Works

by Jeff Tyson in How Stuff Works [they are short]

  1. Introduction to How Internet Infrastructure Works
  2. A Hierarchy of Networks
  3. A Network Example
  4. Bridging The Divide
  5. Backbones
  6. Internet Protocol: IP Addresses
  7. Internet Protocol: Domain Name System
  8. Uniform Resource Locators
  9. A DNS Example
  10. Clients and Servers
  11. Ports

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Things to think about

  • Can you simply explain the structure of the internet to someone else?
  • How do you sense the structure of the internet? Is it a physical reality? Is it a virtual reality? Is it everywhere, for everyone?
  • Is there a difference in your mind between the internet and the world wide web? If yes, explain. If no, what is the difference.

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