WELCOME TO WEB FAQ

A guide to frequently asked questions about the Internet, E-mail and the Web.

WEB

INTERNET

EMAIL

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World Wide Web

What is the Web?

The 'Web' is an abbreviated word referring to 'World Wide Web'. The Web is a collection of documents linked together through hypertext. The Web can only be accessed by connecting to the Internet. The 'Web' and the 'Internet' are sometimes thought to be the same thing, they are not. The Internet is a network of computers whereas the Web is a network of documents. The Web is a system which works on the Internet. Note, it was called the WorldWideWeb, without spaces, until that was discarded in 1990. The official spelling now is 'World Wide Web', with a space between each word and each word capitalised.

What are these documents called?

The documents are usually referred to as 'Web Pages'. They are created by a number of different markup languages, such as Scribe, GML, SGML and HTML for creating these pages. The dominant language is 'HyperText Markup Language' or HTML for short. The Web pages are linked together through the use of 'hyperlinks' or 'links' for short. Hyperlinks are therefore an essential part of the Web, which could not exist as a 'spiders web' or 'web of nodes' if not for the connecting links.

Do I need special software to view Web pages?

Yes you do, they are called 'Web browsers'. It is a task of the browser to retrieve and display the data available on the Web. It does this by finding the address of Web pages through the URI 'Uniform Resource Identifier'system. This system works by the user typing in or clicking on a URL 'Uniform Resource Locator'. Which is basically an address, 'http://www.webfaq.co.uk' is the URL or address of this Web page. A modern browser is now capable of displaying video and images, alongside textual data. They can also be used in private networks, if you wish to share documents to a select number of users.

Which ways can I access Web pages?

There are two ways to view a Web page. The first one is by simple typing the URL address of the page into the Web browser. The second option is by clicking on a hyperlink. A hyperlink is embedded into a Web page. Most Web pages will contains hyperlinks to related content. When a browser first loads up it will usually start at a search engine or directory. These are Web pages which provide a service for finding Web pages on any given subject.

Are Search Engines and Directories different?

Yes they are. A Web Directory is a hierarchy structure of Web pages. Each Web page will contain a list of hyperlinks to pages on a specific subject. Dmoz.org is the best example of a functioning directory. A Search Engine is a Web page with a search box. A user will input a query into the search box, and a script will search a database to find Web pages which are the most relevant to the query. Due to the improved results Search Engines are providing, they have become the most popular way to find content on the Web. A Search Engine uses a crawler to fill it's database. A crawler will start at a designated Web page, and then follow any hyperlink to find new pages. An algorism is used by a Search Engine to rank Web pages for their quality of content. Directories on the other hand tend to use humans to pick and list the hyperlinks on their pages. This can help improve relevancy, but can lead to dead links, spam links and link rot over time, which is hard to keep on top of for very large directories.

What is the DNS?

DNS is abbreviated for 'Domain Name System'. It's an integral part of the Web. The DNS system works by resolving a server name URL, such as 'http://www.webfaq.co.uk' into an IP address. This unique IP address is then used by the domain name system to contact and locate a Web server. A web browser is capable making requests to DNS and parsing data for the user to view. The browser is also responsible for rendering Web languages into a visual format.

What are 'page views' and 'hits'?

Well, the term 'page views' should be fairly self explanatory. There are statistical programs which can record every visitor to a Web page. Page views refers to the number of visits to a Web page. Hits is something different. Hits refers to the amount of file requests. For one page view there may be nine hits, if a page contains eight pictures embedded into it.

Is the WWW prefix required for a URL?

No it is not. It's just a handy way to indicate that the URL is a Web server rather a FTP server. Many sites prefer to remove the www prefix, such as 'http://microsoft.com'. Some sites contain server side scripts to add or remove the www prefix from their address. Microsoft, for example, add the www prefix to their address if you type the address without it.

Who invented the Web?

It's generally credited to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, although he was assisted in the design of some parts. Mr. Berners-Lee is an English physicist. The date of the Web's creation was 1989, and occurred while Berners-Lee was working in Geneva for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). In began with a humble beginning, simple titled 'Information Management: a Proposal', it took only one year to come to fruition, once Tim had handed to proposal to his boss, Mike Sendall.Berners-Lee has placed an active role in composing the Web standards for it's address system and markup language.

Was the Web inspired by similar projects?

Indeed it was. Most notable the Hypertext Editing System (HES) from the 1960's. The HES system was created at Brown University, just like EBT and Dynatext SGML was. Both of these systems helped Berners-Lee create the Web. Therefore Brown University can lay claim to alot of the spade work involved in birthing the modern World Wide Web. The crucial contribution that Berners-Lee made was in combining hypertext and the Internet through the URI address system. The system Berners-Lee created was far more dynamic and simpler than previous attempts. Due to the system only requiring one way links to a server. The only disadvantage was in keeping address data up to date.

Was the Web always free?

From 1993 CERN provided the Web free of charge. And since that date it always has been. This was a key feature in the Web becoming so popular. Up to that date 'Gopher' had been the most popular protocol for retrieving documents from the Internet. But the University of Minnesota catastrophically decided to charge a license fee, which shifted the majority of it's user base to the Web. However, it is fair to say that Gopher was a far less flexible protocol than HTML. And inevitable it may have lost the popularity battle, even if it was kept free.

Did the year 1993 represent a turning point for the Web?

It did. Not only did CERN announce the Web would be licensed for free. Alongside the fortunate news that it's main competitor would charge a fee at the same time. But also, the first graphical Web browser was created in 1993. Named Mosaic, it was developed by the NCSA 'National Center for Supercomputing Applications'. Mosaic founded many of the standard features you will see in today's browsers. Although Mosaic is no longer in development (it stopped in 1997), it's still available for download, and the present day Mozilla browser is based upon it's code. The Mosaic designers went on to develop Netscape Navigator, which was the world's most popular browser until Microsoft packaged Internet Explorer with Windows. Mosiac is credited as a key component of popularising the Web.

Did Berners-Lee found the World Wide Web Consortium?

He did. In 1994 Berners-Lee left CERN to join the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT. The task of the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, was to set standards for the Web. The immediate task of the W3C was to set a standard version of HTML, which was compatible with every vendor. W3C has since went on to create standards for CSS, SOAP, and XML amongst others. What the W3C decides to do is based upon what it's 380+ members tell it to do. There has been a suggestion, even a criticism, that the W3C panders to what big business and large software houses desire.

What is the Deep Web?

This refers to Web pages which are not indexed by search engines and directories. Many sites use scripts to generate new pages. These pages can have addresses search engines cannot read. Therefore this data is not crawled and indexed by a search engine.

Is the Web 2.0 a new World Wide Web?

No it is not. The technical specification of the World Wide Web has remained the same. Berners-Lee has called the term Web 2.0 'jargon'. The Web 2.0 tends to refer to the evolution of web sites from stand alone HTML documents to the mass community social sites like facebook and twitter.

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Internet

How would you define the Internet?

The Internet is a network of computers, which is now global, that uses a standard protocol (TCP/IP) to connect themselves together. The applications which work on top of the Internet, such as the World Wide Web or E-mail, should not be confused as the Internet itself.

When did the Internet begin?

By the mid 1960's a computer network was built in the United States, which was the genesis of the Internet. This network was solely to link military installations together, but the backbone of this system was soon opened for civilian design and funding. Packet switching was recommended for the system. And the first working example of the network was called ARPANET. During the 1970's E-mail was launched on ARPANET and International packing switching was developed. By 1988 commercial funding and interests were launched, and by the mid 1990's countless commercial ISPs were founded.

Who coined the term 'Internet'?

Jennifer Wimborne. The year she coined the term is generally thought to be 1986. Information Superhighway is another popular term for the Internet, and this term was coined by the US politician, and presidential candidate Al Gore.

Did any one person invent the Internet?

No. Unlike the World Wide Web which is credited to Tim Berners-Lee, the Internet did not have one founding father. The Internet was developed for over four decades, and by countless research facilities. However, there are a few persons who stand out in contributing major features to the Internet. Leonard Klienrock developed packet switching, Larry G. Roberts was chiefly responsible for starting ARPANET, and Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf created the TCP protocol. Some people like to credit Cerf and Kahn with creating the Internet. But neither they or most credible experts confirm this claim.

Could you name some of the applications available on the Internet?

There are too many to name. But some of the most popular applications must be the World Wide Web, E-mail, VoIP, file sharing, instant messaging, instant chat and network gaming.

Is the Internet nonproprietary?

Is it. The Internet has no copyright and it's protocols are open to anyone. Many people agree that this open development allowed the Internet to grow at a rate which most centrally administered concepts could never achieve. At it's peak during the late 1990's, the Internet was growing at over one hundred per cent per year.

Who is responsible for the technical infrastructure of the Internet?

Although many of the applications used on top of the Internet can vary in their scalability. The backbone of the Internet's architecture is rigorously set to a specific standard. The group which delegates this process of standardising the software and hardware of the Internet is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The standards for the Internet are set down in Request for Comment (RFC) publications, which can be read on the IETF's website.

Who governs the Internet?

Nobody does. There is no body which has ultimate control of the Internet. The reason for this is that the Internet is made up from voluntary connected networks. But the one corporation which has more control than any other is the ICANN. The job of the ICANN is to assign and control domain names and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The US government also has a role in controlling this system as well.

Is there a default language for the Internet?

No. But the most prevalent of any language is undoubtedly English. After English, Chinese closely follows it, with around 30% and 20% respectively. Other notable languages are French, Portugese, Spanish, Japanese and German (althoug none of these have a % share above 10%). The dominance of English is probably due to a combination of it being the current 'lingua franca'. And, that the creation of the first computer (England) and the Internet (United States of America) came from English speaking nations.

Can the Internet only be accessed from a computer?

This was the case for the majority of the time that the Internet existed. But, in the last decade mobile devices have advanced so far that they can also access the Internet as well. Whether mobile phones, PDAs, and mobile games consoles could be described as mini computers is a debatable fact however.

Which options are there for connecting to the Internet?

The most common access point is a telephone socket. The options available are either dial-up, Wi-Fi and broadband. Broadband is currently the most popular connection method for Western nations. While dial-up was the primary access type before the year 2000. ISDN was another cable option, which has generally been supplemented by broadband now. Likewise satellite and mobile phone access is an option, but expensive and less common. Recently, Wi-Fi has gain widespread in public spaces. Hotspots are in airports, hotels, cafes, universities, and are spaces which provide access to anyone entering them with an Internet enabled device.

Which country has the most active users?

The stats suggest China has, closely followed by the European Union. Then we have the USA, Japan, India and Brazil as major Internet users. The highest percentage of the population using the Internet belongs to Iceland. With 90%. Western nations have a percentage of around 65-70% usage on average. The USA and UK having around 74% and 73% respectively.

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EMAIL

Is EMAIL an abbreviated term?

It is. Electronic Mail is the full term. Electronic Mail can be abbreviated as either E-mail or Email. Different nations tend to favour one of these abbreviations. In the USA it's usually E-mail, and in the UK it's usually Email.

Is Email just like a letter?

In many ways it is. Just like a postal letter, an Email is sent from one unique address to another. And is handled by numerous mail servers, just like the Royal Mail pass a letter from one sorting office to another. The advantage of Email is that it's usually free, arrives nearly instantaneously and you can make multiple addresses for different purposes. Both postal and electronic mail have the same disadvantage, junk mail.

When was Email created?

A long time ago, and before the age of the Internet. Many experts acknowledge the birth of Email to be in the mid 1960's, when CTSS was developed by MIT. Email became hugely popular when ARPANET was created, and of course is one of the primary applications of the Internet.

Which protocols does Email use?

SMTP is the primary protocol for out going mail. That is to mean, SMTP is used for sending a message from one server to another. A mail client, such as Outlook Express, will use either the POP or IMAP protocol to handle incoming mail. That is to mean, POP and IMAP is used for transferring a message from a mail server to someone's personal computer.

Does Email have a standard format?

It has, IMF and MIME are the two Internet standards which dictate the format of Email. They have laid down that an Email is to be split into two parts. A header and a body. The header includes all the vital delivery information, like who sent the message and the mail servers which handled the message, and the character encoding used. The body of the Email includes the actual textual and binary content of the Email.

What's the syntax of an Email address?

The current syntax of a simple address is as follows, user@webfaq.co.uk. The 'user' part of the address is the local function of it, meaning a user account at a specific mail server. The '@' symbol represents 'at', and points to the mail server. Connecting both the local and server information. 'Webfaq.co.uk' indicates the domain name and mail server. The SMTP protocol will handle the task of matching the domain name to the mail server, it does this by using DNS data.

Bcc and Cc header fields, what are they?

Bcc stands for Blind Carbon Copy and Cc for Carbon copy. Both fields are options for people sending a message to multiple people. If you put someone's address into the Bcc field, then that user will not beable to view the other people you sent the message too. If you put someone's address into the Cc field, then that user can see all the people who received the message.

How big can attachments be?

There is not a limit, but most mail servers usually set a limit of around 1mb for an attachment. Mail protocols also have a problem handling large files, and they usually require an attachment to be broken down into separate parts to be sent. Attachments have had a bad press because many have included viruses. Therefore it's essential your mail client or webmail has the ability to scan attachments for viruses.

Is encryption available for Emails?

It is, most free webmail and some free clients provide encryption. When sending an Email without encryption, it is possible for someone to intercept the data packets and read the data within the message. Therefore encryption is a vital option for ensuring a confidential message can only be read by the intended recipient.

What is spoofing?

This is when an Email is made to appear as if it came from address it did not. The header information of an Email will usually contain the Email address and IP address of the sender. A spoof Email will doctor this data to make it appear as if it came from an Email address and IP address it did not originate from.

 

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