THE INTERNET

The Internet is the worldwide "network of networks" that links millions of computers together via copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other telecommunications channels. It is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.This publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks communicate using a set of protocols and standards, the most basic of which are TCP/IP. TCP/IP consists of the Transmission Control Protocol in conjuntion with the Internet Protocol. Other protocols such as DHCP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, IRC, MIME, POP3, SMTP, SSH, TELNET, RTP and many more help hold the whole thing together.
This learning resource will look mostly at the technical aspects of the Internet, but may eventually cover social, economic, historical and other aspects.
A popular way to visualize the complexity of the Internet is to see it as a stack of layers known as the OSI model, short for Open Systems Interconnection model.

OSI Layers:
* Layer 7: Application Layer – the main interface for the user(s) to interact with the application and therefore the network
* Layer 6: Presentation Layer – transforms data to provide a standard interface for the Application layer
* Layer 5: Session Layer – controls the dialogues (sessions) between computers
* Layer 4: Transport Layer – provides transparent transfer of data between end users and machines
* Layer 3: Network Layer – provides the functional and procedural means of transferring variable length data sequences from a source to a destination via one or more networks
* Layer 2: Data Link Layer – provides the functional and procedural means to transfer data between network entities and to detect and possibly correct errors that may occur in the physical layer
* Layer 1: Physical Layer – defines all the electrical and physical specifications for devices and the communications media

COMMUNICATING

email

Email is short for electronic mail, the transmission of messages over communications networks.E-mail messages are usually encoded in ASCII text. However, you can also send non-text files, such as graphic images and sound files, as attachments sent in binary streams. E-mail is one of the protocols included with the Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite of protocols. A popular protocol for sending e-mail is Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and a popular protocol for receiving it is POP3.POP (Post Office Protocol) means that email is downloaded onto your computer and then deleted from the mail server. Both Netscape and Microsoft include an e-mail utility with their Web browsers.

Email is an abbreviation for electronic mail. Email allows you attach files such as videos, word documents, etc. and send them to other people.
3/4 of college students use the internet 4 or more hours a week!

Newsgroups

Newsgroup is a group email where users can write about the specific subjects and every time they send, it spams to whoever is on the newsgroup. They are free and the cover a good variety of topics.

There are presently about 100,000 newsgroups but only about 20,ooo of them are in active use. news groups can sometimes be unreliable but they can also be a useful in finding information,friends and also to bring people together.News groups are normally arranged to according to hierarchies to make finding easy.