Internet: Today's Info. Giant
By Benzir Shaon

 

[This is a class lecture given in CSE class presentation without this script in Eastern University of Bangladesh. This is written after the lecture delivered. This is the extended part of main lecture.]

 

Internet. Today's information giant. Now I will discuss why I’m telling it the information giant.

 

Out Line Plans
First of all I want to put a lime light on the Out Line Plans of the discussion.
They are the basic, today's internet, negatives, some common terms, software, areas, our internet.

 

The Basic
If we break the word "Internet", we get "Inter" and "Net". So what do they mean? The word "Inter" stands for "Internal" and the other part "Net" means "Network"/"Something refers with connection". So, internet is something which is internally connected. So, we can say now, internet is nothing but a internal network. A network among computers. It's a wide network, named World Wide Web in short "www", which covers the whole globe. The word "Internet" came in the middle of the year 1990 and became familiar in 1994.

It'll encourage the concept of global village. Internet will help to build a strong global community.

 

Some Common Terms
Here some very common internet related terms will be discussed, such as: Web Page, Web Browser, Server, ISP, HTML, WWW, HTTP, URL, FTP, Domain.
What we see in the internet is known as web page and those who visit the pages are called web browser (user).

Server is the main computer which is the main controller of the whole web system. There are a few servers in few countries in the world, because they're so powerful and expensive, which is very tough for a poor or developing country or company.

ISP or the "Internet Service Provider". They provide internet facility for the users.

 

The web pages those are encoded files use the "Hyper Text Markup Language", in short "HTML". "WWW" or the "World Wide Web" is the media which we use for spreading information. First of all of a web address, we found the group of characters "http://", which means "Hypertext Transfer Protocol". It's a sort of protocol used by the World Wide Web. Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a special kind of format in internet used by HTTP.

 
"FTP" is a kind of tool used in internet to transfer file(s) from one computer to another. "File Transfer Protocol" is its full name.

The group of letters after the last dot (.) of the web addresses is known as domain. Users can define the category of the web site seeing the domain. Here some of domains are given with their meanings:

 

com - commercial
edu - educational
gov - government
net - host
org - non-profitable organizations
mil - military
biz - business related site
info - information

 

Software
For internet browsing a user needs software. The most commonly used software is "Internet Explorer" released by Microsoft Corporation. Others are Opera, Netscape Communicator, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, GoZilla, DAP (Download Accelerator Plus) etc. Users can download their trial versions from the web sites.

 

Areas
Internet has different areas. It is used in so many ways. Such as : students for their study, scientists for research reports, profitable & non-profitable organizations for their products or services or actions, e-commerce by business companies, email for communication used by all kinds of users, advertisements, data transfer, friends for chatting or to communicate.

 

Today's Internet
Today's internet is developed in many ways.
This is today's information giant. All kinds of information from many places, persons, companies are gathered, stored and adopted here. Today's information technology is unfulfilled without Internet.

Through internet we get all kinds of news and various kinds of research reports and articles.

We can see the use of ecommerce, which refers to electronic commerce, which is totally internet based. It's a trading system commonly adopted by the business organizations of developed countries.

"eMail", which stands for "Electronic Mail", is a very common term today. Email is a kind of mailing system which uses internet system. Now it has become more familiar than web site.

It's a place where an organization can say about themselves, their products or actions by publishing a web site. It's also possible for an individual person. He or she can show the activities or say about him/her what ever like. Beside these many companies serve to give the facility of free domain.
It is also used to communicate. People can talk like a telephone using internet which is called chatting. It's widely used by teenagers.

 

Negatives
It has many negative sides. But the some of the major problems are discussed here.

The no.1 problem is hacking. Hacking is a kind of crime, where the culprits are called hacker. They destroy the web sites by using computer programs. Sometimes web addresses are cancelled for hacking.

 

Hackers break the securities of web sites. Even they have broken the securities of Microsoft Inc., Pentagon and FBI!

Hackers make viruses. It's a kind of program by the hackers. Viruses spread through emails, web sites, soft wares, Floppy disks, CDs etc. Virus is strong enough to destroy a web site or a computer system and can break the securities of a network system or web sites. Modern Technologies are being updated to prevent this kind of hacking, but the most alarming event is that hacking is updating faster.

The other important drawback is adult sites, which contains pornography, nude photographs, obscene cartoons and jokes. They take the immature visitors to evil. This creates many social problems.

 

Our Internet
The use of internet in Bangladesh is not so old. But this is the matter of hope that the number of internet user in our country is increasing day by day. Today private universities are very common in our country. Many students are studying there. A private university without internet is totally unthinkable, where most students have to pay time in the computer laboratory to submit their subject related assignments. But it's a matter of grief that still now internet facility hasn't reach in rural areas and still now it is not cheaper. It's not impossible for Bangladesh to earn foreign currencies by exporting software or information technology based services where internet will play the major role. Hoping for a better future for Bangladesh through internet.

 

In spite of having many drawbacks, I'm personally very hopeful about internet. And from today I can see the day when about everyone will maintain a personal web site, designed by their own knowledge.

 

 

Delivered On: 18 May, 2004 at Dhanmondi, Dhaka
Written On: 19 June, 2004 at Azimpur, Dhaka