Short Guide About Internet and its Components,Email

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About Internet

The Internet is a computer network made up of thousands of networks worldwide. No one knows exactly how many computers are connected to the Internet. It is certain, however, that these number in the millions.

No one is in charge of the Internet. There are organizations which develop technical aspects of this network and set standards for creating applications on it, but no governing body is in control. The Internet backbone, through which Internet traffic flows, is owned by private companies.

All computers on the Internet communicate with one another using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol suite, abbreviated to TCP/IP. Computers on the Internet use a client/server architecture. This means that the remote server machine provides files and services to the user's local client machine. Software can be installed on a client computer to take advantage of the latest access technology.

An Internet user has access to a wide variety of services: electronic mail, file transfer, vast information resources, interest group membership, interactive collaboration, multimedia displays, real-time broadcasting, shopping opportunities, breaking news, and much more.

The Internet consists primarily of a variety of access protocols. Many of these protocols feature programs that allow users to search for and retrieve material made available by the protocol.


COMPONENTS OF THE INTERNET


WORLD WIDE WEB

The World Wide Web (abbreviated as the Web or WWW) is a system of Internet servers that supports hypertext to access several Internet protocols on a single interface. Almost every protocol type available on the Internet is accessible on the Web. This includes e-mail, FTP, Telnet, and Usenet News. In addition to these, the World Wide Web has its own protocol: HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP. These protocols will be explained later in this document.

The World Wide Web provides a single interface for accessing all these protocols. This creates a convenient and user-friendly environment. It is no longer necessary to be conversant in these protocols within separate, command-level environments. The Web gathers together these protocols into a single system. Because of this feature, and because of the Web's ability to work with multimedia and advanced programming languages, the Web is the fastest-growing component of the Internet.

The operation of the Web relies primarily on hypertext as its means of information retrieval. HyperText is a document containing words that connect to other documents. These words are called links and are selectable by the user. A single hypertext document can contain links to many documents. In the context of the Web, words or graphics may serve as links to other documents, images, video, and sound. Links may or may not follow a logical path, as each connection is programmed by the creator of the source document. Overall, the Web contains a complex virtual web of connections among a vast number of documents, graphics, videos, and sounds.

Producing hypertext for the Web is accomplished by creating documents with a language called HyperText Markup Language, or HTML. With HTML, tags are placed within the text to accomplish document formatting, visual features such as font size, italics and bold, and the creation of hypertext links. Graphics and multimedia may also be incorporated into an HTML document. HTML is an evolving language, with new tags being added as each upgrade of the language is developed and released. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), led by Web founder Tim Berners-Lee, coordinates the efforts of standardizing HTML. The W3C now calls the language XHTML and considers it to be an application of the XML language standard.

The World Wide Web consists of files, called pages or home pages, containing links to documents and resources throughout the Internet.

The Web provides a vast array of experiences including multimedia presentations, real-time collaboration, interactive pages, radio and television broadcasts, and the automatic "push" of information to a client computer. Programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Cold Fusion and XML are extending the capabilities of the Web. A growing amount of information on the Web is served dynamically from content stored in databases. The Web is therefore not a fixed entity, but one that is in a constant state of development and flux.

E-MAIL

Electronic mail, or e-mail, allows computer users locally and worldwide to exchange messages. Each user of e-mail has a mailbox address to which messages are sent. Messages sent through e-mail can arrive within a matter of seconds.

A powerful aspect of e-mail is the option to send electronic files to a person's e-mail address. Non-ASCII files, known as binary files, may be attached to e-mail messages. These files are referred to as MIME attachments.MIME stands for Multimedia Internet Mail Extension, and was developed to help e-mail software handle a variety of file types. For example, a document created in Microsoft Word can be attached to an e-mail message and retrieved by the recipient with the appropriate e-mail program. Many e-mail programs, including Eudora, Netscape Messenger, and Microsoft Outlook, offer the ability to read files written in HTML, which is itself a MIME type.

TELNET

Telnet is a program that allows you to log into computers on the Internet and use online databases, library catalogs, chat services, and more. There are no graphics in Telnet sessions, just text. To Telnet to a computer, you must know its address. This can consist of words (locis.loc.gov) or numbers (140.147.254.3). Some services require you to connect to a specific port on the remote computer. In this case, type the port number after the Internet address. Example: telnet nri.reston.va.us 185.

Telnet is available on the World Wide Web. Probably the most common Web-based resources available through Telnet have been library catalogs, though most catalogs have since migrated to the Web. A link to a Telnet resource may look like any other link, but it will launch a Telnet session to make the connection. A Telnet program must be installed on your local computer and configured to your Web browser in order to work.

With the increasing popularity of the Web, Telnet has become less frequently used as a means of access to information on the Internet.

FTP

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. This is both a program and the method used to transfer files between computers. Anonymous FTP is an option that allows users to transfer files from thousands of host computers on the Internet to their personal computer account. FTP sites contain books, articles, software, games, images, sounds, multimedia, course work, data sets, and more.

If your computer is directly connected to the Internet via an Ethernet cable, you can use one of several PC software programs, such as WS_FTP for Windows, to conduct a file transfer.

FTP transfers can be performed on the World Wide Web without the need for special software. In this case, the Web browser will suffice. Whenever you download software from a Web site to your local machine, you are using FTP. You can also retrieve FTP files via search engines such as FtpFind, located at /http://www.ftpfind.com/. This option is easiest because you do not need to know FTP program commands.

E-MAIL DISCUSSION GROUPS

One of the benefits of the Internet is the opportunity it offers to people worldwide to communicate via e-mail. The Internet is home to a large community of individuals who carry out active discussions organized around topic-oriented forums distributed by e-mail. These are administered by software programs. Probably the most common program is the listserv.

A great variety of topics are covered by listservs, many of them academic in nature. When you subscribe to a listserv, messages from other subscribers are automatically sent to your electronic mailbox. You subscribe to a listserv by sending an e-mail message to a computer program called a listserver. Listservers are located on computer networks throughout the world. This program handles subscription information and distributes messages to and from subscribers. You must have a e-mail account to participate in a listserv discussion group. Visit Tile.net at /http://tile.net/ to see an example of a site that offers a searchablecollection of e-mail discussion groups.

Majordomo and Listproc are two other programs that administer e-mail discussion groups. The commands for subscribing to and managing your list memberships are similar to those of listserv.

USENET NEWS

Usenet News is a global electronic bulletin board system in which millions of computer users exchange information on a vast range of topics. The major difference between Usenet News and e-mail discussion groups is the fact that Usenet messages are stored on central computers, and users must connect to these computers to read or download the messages posted to these groups. This is distinct from e-mail distribution, in which messages arrive in the electronic mailboxes of each list member.

Usenet itself is a set of machines that exchanges messages, or articles, from Usenet discussion forums, called newsgroups. Usenet administrators control their own sites, and decide which (if any) newsgroups to sponsor and which remote newsgroups to allow into the system.

There are thousands of Usenet newsgroups in existence. While many are academic in nature, numerous newsgroups are organized around recreational topics. Much serious computer-related work takes place in Usenet discussions. A small number of e-mail discussion groups also exist as Usenet newsgroups.

The Usenet newsfeed can be read by a variety of newsreader software programs. For example, the Netscape suite comes with a newsreader program called Messenger. Newsreaders are also available as standalone products.

CHAT & INSTANT MESSAGING

Chat programs allow users on the Internet to communicate with each other by typing in real time. They are sometimes included as a feature of a Web site, where users can log into the "chat room" to exchange comments and information about the topics addressed on the site. Chat may take other, more wide-ranging forms. For example, America Online is well known for sponsoring a number of topical chat rooms.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a service through which participants can communicate to each other on hundreds of channels. These channels are usually based on specific topics. While many topics are frivolous, substantive conversations are also taking place. To access IRC, you must use an IRC software program.

A variation of chat is the phenomenon of instant massaging. With instant messaging, a user on the Web can contact another user currently logged in and type a conversation. Most famous is America On line’s Instant Messenger. ICQ, MSN and Yahoo are other commonly-used chat programs.

Other types of real-time communication are addressed in the tutorial Understanding the World Wide Web.

FAQ, RFC, FYI

FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. These are periodic postings to Usenet newsgroups that contain a wealth of information related to the topic of the newsgroup. Many FAQs are quite extensive. FAQs are available by subscribing to individual Usenet newsgroups. 

RFC stands for Request for Comments. These are documents created by and distributed to the Internet community to help define the nuts and bolts of the Internet. They contain both technical specifications and general information.

FYI stands for For Your Information. These notes are a subset of RFCs and contain information of interest to new Internet users.

MUD/MUSH/MOO/MUCK/DUM/MUSE

MUD stands for Multi User Dimension. MUDs, and their variations listed above, are multi-user virtual reality games based on simulated worlds. Traditionally text based, graphical MUDs now exist. There are MUDs of all kinds on the Internet, and many can be joined free of charge.

Tips and Software to Find Storage Space on Hard Disk

Sometimes if you’re hard drive storage capacity becomes full and you like to discover which folder is holding up the largest part space. Then you need to run such types of programs that will let you to find out the most occupy space and control it on your hard drives. Actually this type of problem considers like serious topic for a hard drive. It often gets full in no time and you are left surprising where are entire space gone. If you don’t sure where entire your space gone, then you need to run powerful software that will sniff out any space on your hard drive and describe you accurately how much storage space every folder takes.

Clean stored temp files first

If you don’t find out the where the Temp folder is stored, navigate to C:\Users<your_user>\AppData\Local\Temp and delete the content of the folder.

System tools for finding hidden space on your hard drive

There are a many freeware or license based software or tools that are designed for the reason of letting users to know what folders on their hard drives are occupying the most space. This software’s not only monitors your hard drive but also always find where all that space hides. At the bottom we are going to provides brief examples about such programs or tools that can let you locate space hogs on your hard drive.

TREESIZE FREE 

This software is the simplest and user-friendly that you can use simply.TreeSize Free is a simple tool that will evaluate your partitions and show you a sign of how much every folder takes up. It is a simple interface that permits users to speedily browse folder and its sub-folders from any partition.

Selecting the partition from the menu at the top of the window and scan it. The whole process is completed in just seconds. The size of every folder is shown in MB and for multipart folder trees.

SPACESNIFFER

SpaceSniffer is small-weight software to find space hogs on your hard drive. It will permit you to scan any partition on hard drive and show a graphical look at how your folders are organized.

After the procedure completed, you will get all your folders in box-shapes, viewing the name and its size. By clicking on it, you will go one level down and see it’s containing folders.

Other Useful Software to find out Hard disk Space Hogs

WINDIRSTAT

SPACEMONGER

DISKSPACEFAN

FOLDERSIZE

Conclusion

With the help of above tools or software, you will always be capable to point out for big files that occupy a large quantity space on your hard drive. In additions, make sure that your hard drive’s is working properly.

10 Security Tips to Protect Your Computer and Network

Whether you like it or not, hackers and virus coders have always been a few steps ahead of us. They devise new ways to take control of our devices and bank accounts. In an edifying 

To check how secure your computer really is (and fixes, if it is not), take it out for a spin and undertake the following measures.

Plant a virus

This will sound absurd, and it probably is, but to check how effective your Anti-Virus suite is, you need to download a virus into your system. This is not any regular virus, but a very specific one. This is a part of the test called EICAR (European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research), which offers you a virus, and the catch is that if your Anti-Virus is efficient enough it will be able to detect that virus. Some Anti-Virus, like the one I am using (AVG) didn’t let the download to proceed. If your Anti-Virus does the same, it is a good thing, don’t sweat on it.

Remove saved passwords

Problem with so many great services available on the web is that you have to remember the username and password of all the accounts. To make things easier, most of us don’t mind letting our web-browsers save the login credentials. As convenient as it is, it arises some critical security concerns. Anyone locally or remotely can know your log-in credentials. It is that easy.

To remove your password from Chrome browser, go to the Settings, scroll down and from the Passwords and forms option, click on “Manage saved passwords.”. Delete all the entries.

Firefox users need to go the options, and under the security tab, they can remove all log-in credentials. You can use password management tools like KeePass and LastPass to save your time.

Check your browser plugins

There have been numerous cases in the past where the hacker got access to the victim’s computer through a malicious plug-in. Although there are many software, such as WinPatrol, Glary Utilities and many other which we have extensively covered in our weekly downloads articles, finding which extension is the crook can’t be done by them. To do that you will need to use BrowserCheck. It scans your browser and looks for the plug-ins you have installed on it. Additionally it will inform you if any of the installed plug-in is outdated.

Find who is on your WiFi network

If you don’t secure your WiFi network and make it password protected, you are simply inviting people to use your internet. Besides eating your data, with the help of many tools, the intruder can hop your WiFI network, if not get into your computer. Hence it is very important that you make your network password protected. To check who is on your WiFi network, download the tool Who is On My Wifi and the software will tell you all about it.

Don’t let anyone change your router’s settings

Many routers let any device which is connected to it configure its settings. All you need is the default IP address of your router, and the default password – both of which can be found very easily online. To stop anyone from changing your router’s settings, you will need to disable the port which is responsible for it and other remote management features. Depending on the manufacturer of your router, the step required to perform this will be listed in the router’s manual guide. While you are at it, also change the default password of your router’s page.

Disable data sharing through USB ports

Notably, some routers come with support for USB keys, which at times come handy, but mostly it is just another door for intruders to come in and plant and leave a virus inside it. If your router has a USB port too, you need to disable it. Depending on the manufacturer, you might see that option in the router’s webpage. Again, you need to check your router’s manual guide. 

Check your Firewall

Windows has a built-in Firewall. But unfortunately it is not as strong as it should be. Take your firewall for a spin test. ShieldsUP is a nifty service that reviews your system’s firewall. With your consent it checks if your computer and router are vulnerable. If your PC is working fine, all its ports should be closed – which is the job of your firewall. If the website doesn’t find any vulnerable port, it means that your firewall is working fine.

Keep all the security modules up-to-date

Many non-Microsoft programs leave security vulnerabilities in your computer. To find such patches, and fix for it, Secunia PSI is the probably the best tool for this very task. Besides the aforementioned task, the software also checks if your Windows OS is up to date and has all the required security patches or not.

Reroute your DNS

If you want a simple solution to make all your browsing secure and well administered, you need to change the DNS settings of your network. OpenDNS is a very trusted service which offers you the same. The procedure to set it up is very easy and depends on the OS you are using. I can’t stress enough how much useful this service is. Once you have made the transition, which should take less than 10 minutes, you won’t have to worry about phishing and other common internet scams.

10 Tips to Make Internet Explorer a Better Web Browser

The latest version of Internet Web browser (Internet Explorer) has come with new useful features. This browser has added a tons of changes and proved as the top-rated world browser than chrome and Firefox The new version shows few important improvements over its previous versions.

if you install latest version like Internet Explorer 11 in your computer then you may tweak a few settings and a group of third party apps in order to make it as an adorable and user-friendly browser.

Bring back the Content Advisor

In Internet Explorer 8 and 9 version, we had this great utility that let us curate lists of sites that we don’t want Internet Explorer to access. This option was however disabled in IE 10 and IE 11. To reinstate it, you need to go to the start menu, search for “group policy” and select “Edit group policy” from the result. You will now see a window appearing on your screen, double click on Administrative Templates, then follow this string: Windows Components | Internet Explorer | Internet Control Panel | Content Page. Double click on Show Content Advisor and inside the window, click on the radio button that says “Enabled”.

Once you have done that, open Internet Explorer, click on the settings, go to the “Content” tab, and from there you can set parental controls to other user accounts of your computer.

Kill that “View next page”

One thing that I completely dislike while reading articles on some websites is the need to click on “next page” to read the rest of the article. Many popular websites including the humor site – Cracked, and Technology publication – Forbes, have implemented this format. If you want to access the whole article in one go, IE10 and 11 have an option called “Flip Ahead” that lets you do just that. The website automatically detects if the article or slideshow has been partitioned and when you scroll down the page it gives an arrow icon to flip to the next page. This feature was first introduced in IE10 and was only available in the tile view of Windows 8. To make this option work in Desktop mode, you can go to the internet settings, and from the “Advanced” tab, click on ‘Enable flip ahead’.

Set Desktop Viewing as default

Windows 8 isn’t doing too well, one of the several reasons for this was the big change they introduced in the form of Tiles which replaced Desktop Viewing. People don’t like changes, I’m not going to quote any song lyrics to justify my point, but just trust me on that. Thankfully, Microsoft was gracious enough to provide option to switch back to the Desktop Viewing. However, it is not enabled by Default. To make this default, open Internet Explorer in Desktop View, then go to the settings and under thePrograms tab, click on the dropdown box and select ‘Choose how you open links’ and click ‘Always in Internet Explorer on the desktop’. Save the settings.

Quickly share things with friends

If you are using Windows 8, there is an option in IE10 and 11 to share things right from the browser itself. You need to select the part you want to share with your friends, right click on it and it will give you an option to email the selected content to your friends. Provide their email IDs, and this should do it.

Add support for WebM files

Backed by Google, WebM is the new video standard in town. Though pretty slowly, many websites, including YouTube is implementing this new format. While many browsers have in-built support for the current crowned and WebM’s competition H.264, the new codec isn’t yet friends with all popular web browsers, including and especially Internet Explorer. However, if you want to add WebM playback functionality to Internet Explorer, you need to install this tool.

The clutter free web

If you don’t like bogus distracting elements such as adverts, sharing buttons, etc., which the web comes along, IE11 has something nice to offer. The new version has this option called “Reading View” which essentially takes all the sidetracking elements out of the page and changes the orientation of the article to make the reading experience even better. However, it is only available in IE11.

For those of you who are running any lower version of IE, there is something for you too. You can use Readability, which more or less does the same thing, and in addition, allows you to save articles for offline viewing as well.

Block advertisers from tracking you

If you are running IE10 or beta version of IE11, the good news is that your browser is already blocking many types of trackers. Both the versions have Microsoft’s Do Not Track service enabled which disables many websites from tracking your online activities. However, Microsoft doesn’t curate any lists of blocked websites. You can check out the popular Tracking Protection lists where many trustworthy companies have complied lists of sites that usually track you. You can click on the “+” button at the right side of the lists to add the list to your IE’s database. If you are still using IE8 or 9, you can download Abine Do Not Track Me utility for Internet Explorer which also protects your from trackers.

Add password management tool on your browser

With so many services online, it has become hard to keep track of passwords of all the accounts we manage. This is where password management software come in handy. If you don’t want to use a separate application for managing passwords and would rather have something built in the browser itself, Dashlane is a pretty nice pick. The software has both desktop clients as well as add-on and extensions. It prompts you to put the credential of the sites you frequently visit, and once saved, it automagically fills all the forms and credentials from there after. The app has recently implemented two factor authentication which strengthens its security.

Update your browser

The latest version of the browser IE11 will be shipping with Windows 8.1 next month. If you can’t wait to get your hands on it, Microsoft has made its preview build available on their website. The new version is faster, more secure, and is bursting with tons of new features. The browser has full support for touch and responsive devices, it canlevitate and lets you check more than one tab side-by-side at once. Additionally, unlike all its previous versions, IE11 lets you open “unlimited” tabs.

If your computer is running on Windows 7, you can download the browser from itsdownload page.

IE on Chrome

There is no denying that there are many websites – mostly government and education portals that work best on Internet Explorer. But if you have made your mind that no matter what you are not going to switch from Chrome, perhaps the below Chrome extension will help you stick to your plan.

IE Tab uses the in-built IE engine of your Operating System to render pages on Chrome. To run any website in IE mode, click on its icon from the extension bar (right next to address bar) and it will fire up a separate page for it. Additionally, you can also go to its settings (by right clicking on its icon) and add the websites you always want to be run in IE mode.