The Internet
Invented during the 1960’s in North America and first used by the U.S. Military, the internet has driven technology throughout the world as the first major breakthrough in digital communications since satellite T.V. (television).
Its expansion has spread across the globe, reaching virtually most areas of the populated world.
Speed in the beginning was very slow, but accelerated as connection speeds increased which greatly sped up all online activities across all devices.
The internet can be thought of as a set of nodes that are all connected together, where each node is a computer or device on the internet network.
IANA (Internet Assigned Number Authority) control and administer domain names in North America.
This means that every domain name is registered through them via their country registrar if they have a state owned service, otherwise all registration control is overseen by IANA.
Administration
The internet began in the United States of America including the domain name service (DNS) and associated protocols.
Many people hire a business to do all of their internet work for them, because in some instances, it requires technical skills. On average, many people may not have the expected skill level to accomplish the task of going online for personal or business purposes.
Having a website or app running full-time may become costly, depending on your budget. Maintaining a website, email account or app can be quite time-consuming as well as costly, for the owner.
Ownership is governed in this order:
IANA USA,
Your local country’s state authority
Domain Names
Domain names were originally any website name such as www.example.com which demanded a yearly fee, passed onto your local country domain name authority where you can choose, select and pay for your desired domain name e.g. www.mywebsite.com.
Ownership is governed in this order:
IANA
Your local country’s state authority
Websites
www, also known as the ‘world-wide-web,’ is the prefix to the actual domain name mywebsite.com for use on the web server, however aliases began to be used – basically removing the www from www.mywebsite.com to only require mywebsite.com to be typed into the internet browser’s address bar field. So instead of typing in www.google.com, we only need to type in google.com and press the Enter key on your device.
Internet Browsers
Internet or web browsers (as they were originally called), are what you need to view web pages such as mywebsite.com. It is a graphical interface for you to view a web page online and downloads words, documents, pictures and videos for you to look at locally on your desktop computer, tablet or smartphone. Any web site such as youtube.com streams compressed videos to your device using either a browser or an app. Traditionally, internet browsers were how you viewed multi-media content on the internet. Some of that media includes text (letters with different fonts), pictures (images) and videos. Of course the speed of streaming has increased and as a result higher definition videos have evolved into high-speed and high-quality streamed video whether it’s downloadable or not (only streamed – downloaded in parts as custom file types, which may not be easily viewable or joined together to be watched later).
Menus
A typical menu would contain a list of selection options or features including: new tab, new window, new private window, history, downloads, bookmarks, zoom, print, find, edit, settings, help and exit. Let’s go over these options to explain what they are and what they do.
New Tab
A tab is a window within a window – this means that you can switch/swap/tab across to a new child window pane within the main parent window quickly-it’s as if you can flick quickly between websites in a single window (multiple windows within one window). Tabs are a relatively new addition to internet browsers and browsing. Prior to this, people had a stack of windows open and it was easy to get lost in navigation of where you were or wanted to be!
The introduction of tabs gave users a quick and neat browsing experience on the internet.
It is certainly a very useful feature of modern browsers.
New Window
A window is similar to that of a window on your computer, smartphone or tablet in that it is the main container used for viewing content within the program, software or app.
Windows were created first and tabs second, along the timeline of browser development.
Prior to the New Tab feature, there was only the New Window option, which meant that users would create a pile, stack or layer of browser windows, within the program.
New Private Window
The internet got flooded with browser tracker files such as cookies that allowed a website to record certain information according to local guidelines from your internet browser browsing session.
Cookies
Cookies are used to store data for the website session or according to the browser settings - that is, users can change the cookie settings in the Settings section in the File menu of the browser.
Cookies can record and transmit:
Your name, address, country, telephone number, email addresses
Your IP Address
The time and date of logging on to their websites
Activity on their websites (actions such as page navigation, downloads and uploads)
History
This is basically a list of all the URL’s and website pages that you have visited in chronological order for fast referencing. They are listed in time or date order.
Downloads (folder)
Most browsers have a Downloads menu option which is usually a direct link to your computer, smartphone or tablet’s Downloads folder on your device.
Bookmarks (folder)
The bookmarks folder is usually stored in a location inside the main application’s folder, such as Chrome, Firefox or Opera etc. You may have to search your system or disk to find the location of this folder. This is useful for when you want to export or import all or some of your bookmarks.
Zoom
To zoom in or out of any tab, window or page, simply hold down the 'Shift + Ctrl' keys and then press either '+' to zoom in (make it bigger) or press '-' to zoom out (make it smaller).
To print any tab, window or page, simply press the 'Ctrl + P' keys on your keyboard to print the document using a printer or to save it as a PDF document file format (e.g. fileA.pdf).
Find
To find any words within a tab, window or page, simply press the 'Ctrl + F' keys to search for words.
Edit
Cut, Copy and Paste are the 3 editing functions.
To copy any highlighted (selected) text, file or folder, simply press the 'Ctrl + C' keys to copy the selection(s).
To paste any highlighted (selected) text, file or folder, simply press the 'Ctrl + V' keys to paste the selection(s).
To cut any highlighted (selected) text, file or folder, simply press the 'Ctrl + X' keys to cut (remove temporarily – send to the clipboard) the selection(s).
Settings
In the settings sub-menu, there are many options to control and manage your browser.
This includes: your passwords, usernames, cached temporary files, cookies, auto-fill data and layout/design settings such as font type, font size, ad blocking, language, time zone or region etc..
In Settings, you can empty your cache – which may fix some problems with websites not loading correctly or plugins and extensions which are not working correctly. This may be called ‘Clear browsing data,’ or ‘Clearing the cache.’
Privacy and security settings can be manipulated in here. There are also extensions, add-ons and plugins. All of these things help you obtain extra features and multimedia (audio and video) capabilities to have a richer and more interactive experience for the user.
Help
Most software/apps/programs tell you about the version number in the help menu. Go to Help/About "App Example" and there it will tell you the version number of the app/program/software that you have installed on your device.
Exit
If you press 'Exit,' the browser program will close.
HTML
Hyper Text Markup Language, known as HTML, was the invention of the internet language that made web pages visible to the human eye. HTML is a software language used in internet web browsers or ‘browsers’ and servers to display mixed content, link sites, email, receive information in forms submitted and work with plugins and extensions to provide a highly enjoyable user experience for the person browsing the ‘net (internet) in a browser on their device.
HTML was first developed by Professor Tim Berners-Lee around 1991. HTML was to develop into HTML5, as it is today. Probably the most valuable feature is the new support of audio and video files - they can now be embedded by using the code in the HTML to embed the file, so that users can listen to audio and watch videos in any web browser.
Smartphones have internet browsers, however most people use apps-which use a different language to HTML.
HTML5
HTML5 brought a new platform which could play audio and video. This was a game-changer for HTML and user interaction. People can hear and watch sound and video files in any modern browser that supports HTML5.
Supported Audio Formats
mp3
ogg
wav
Supported Video Formats
mp4
webm
ogg
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Websites are usually made of HTML and CSS, which enables webpages to display content that is visually appealing, rich full of features. CSS allows for formatting of text within a webpage using HTML. It uses a style, which can be edited (changed) to alter properties such as font type, font size, font alignment, background colours etc.
It really acts a a template for how text and colours appear on a webpage or website, much the same as a Document Editor, such as LibreOffice Writer.
Plugins
Plugins were part of the evolution of modern browsers, after HTML.
Early plugins included Macromedia’s Flash and Shockwave Flash back in the 1990’s.
Adobe’s PDF (Portable Document Format) viewer plugin emerged for internet browsers, produced by Adobe. This plugin is used to open and view .pdf files within a browser tab or window.
Plugins became popular with multimedia software companies who developed such products.
HTML5 changed the requirement for use of a plugin, as it supports all modern multimedia formats.
Extensions
Extensions were the next phase or stage in browser development before the introduction of HTML5. They are more like an individual piece of software within the browser itself.
Software developers took advantage of the extension market for browsers and now there are extension stores, much like there are app stores. You can access the extension stores within browsers, by often going to: Settings/Extensions and then access the extension store that way.
IP Addresses
The IP address is either a 32-bit version, which is four (4) x sets of numbers, separated by a dot (.) For example: 192.168.1.0
The number range for each set contained by a decimal point, is 0-255 (256 numbers). This is called IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4).
The new IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) uses a 128-Bit address, making it very expandable.
IPv6 has many more times the amount of addresses available.
An example of an IPv6 address is 2001:db8::8a2e:370:7334
The total number of IPv6 addresses possible is 2128 which is 340 trillion trillion trillion IP addresses!
Symbols and Characters used
Possibly the most commonly used character since the invent of the internet, is the ‘@’ symbol, (pronounced /at/) used in every email, yet the hash-tag symbol ‘#’ is widely used in social media these days across several big platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others.
Symbols and special characters play a big role in accessing sites, services or features in 2023.
Protocols and Ports
The internet can be seen as a multitude of protocols and ports, in a nutshell.
But it can become very complex and knowledge of configuring such intricate systems can be a daunting task even at the best of times.
A protocol is a type of code in the software that connects to machines and devices that use the same protocol. Some examples include: http, https, smtp, pop3 and ftp.
A port is like a tunnel with a number in the range of 0-65,535 ports. Protocols can use ports to connect out to a WAN such as the internet.
HTTP
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol was developed in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee.
Each web browser contains the http and the https protocol to enable connection to a website for browsing it.
This is the standard protocol for using the internet that every internet browser contains – the basic http protocol. A URL (Universal Resource Locator) is any webpage address location, such as: https://www.wikipedia.org/ or any other page location within a domain name website.
For example (e.g.), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine
This webpage is contained within a website, with a URL or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine.
So, in other words, each website has webpages with unique locations, or separate URL's.
HTTPS
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure was developed for encrypted connections to scramble the data which transfers between two (2) devices, allowing for safe data transfer, such as for banking online.
HTTPS uses TLS or SSL to secure a browser connection between two devices over the internet or network.
HTTPS uses port 443
https://website.com would use the secure https protocol with port 443.
URL
A Universal Resource Locator, is any website page’s address location.
A typical URL would look something like this:
http://www.example.com/page1.html
TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol) is the software technology which connects websites to websites. It is the most commonly used type of data connection and transfer today. Each time you connect or open a website, the TCP utility built into the network settings in your computer, transfers data (pictures and words etc.) to your device (computer, tablet or smartphone).
TCP and UDP are the types of Internet Protocol that can be used to transfer data over the internet.
UDP
UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is used for data transfer more than web browsing such as TCP.
It is used for fast data transfers such as large file downloads.
IP (Internet Protocol) is the software technology that connects you to the internet. It is used to transmit packets of data from one connected machine to another connected machine on the internet and also acts as an addressing service for connected machines (devices) on the world-wide-web or internet network (the internet).
IP Address: an Internet Protocol address is a set of numbers and letters that identifies your internet connection on the global network. It is one system, with each device having its own unique address. Hiding your IP address using a VPN, private browser and other tunneling techniques can hide your address or create a different address which prevents tracking and secures privacy to a limited degree.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol was created by Abhay Bhushan and introduced for use on the internet in 1971. It allowed for uploading and downloading of files and folders over the internet using its own separate protocol channel with user access to folders and files, which are able to be locked using an authorised username and password. Ftp client software became a popular means of transferring data over the internet, securely using a username and password, with security protocols and variants, ensuring a secure connection and transfer of information online.
FTPS
File Transfer Protocol Secure was created by using SSL technology. FTPS servers and client software used SSL to secure the connection and make the transfer of information using encryption technology.
POP3
Post Office Protocol v3.0 has been around a long time and is still the main technology used for receiving emails across the world. You can configure your email client software settings for accounts: incoming POP3 servers to match your hosting domain. E.g. pop3.mymail.com on port 110.
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol First developed at some stage during the 1960’s, is still also the number one mail sending protocol today. Currently there are 333.2 billion emails sent per day across the world. That is a lot!
You can configure your email client software settings for accounts: outgoing SMTP servers to match your hosting domain. E.g. smtp.mymail.com on port 25.
SSH
Secure Shell protocol is used to transfer files and folders across the internet from a SSH client to a remote login SSH server. It operates using a key authentication system.
SSL
Secure Sockets Layer was invented by Netscape Communications. It used digital certificates to authenticate and encrypt the connection securely between two (2) devices using an internet browser over the internet. SSL went to version 3.0 before being replaced by TLS.
TLS
Transport Layer Security was created in 1999 as the new and more secure version of SSL. The current version is 1.3 as of 2023. It offers stronger encryption security and sophistication using a pseudo-random master password utility.
Encryption
Encryption is the process of using the science of cryptography to ‘hide’ or ‘code aka encode’ data so that it is unreadable to any user or device which does not have one of the keys. Two (2) keys are required to encrypt and decrypt (decode) the data over the internet or network.
DES
Encrypted keys began back in 1977 at IBM, when they released the first data cryptography encryption key system called Data Encryption Standard (DES). It was 56-bit encryption standard.
AES
The next standard to be released was AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) in 2001 by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology and delivered 128, 192 and 256-bit key sizes.
RSA
Rivest-Shamir-Adleman is a cryptographic system that contains a public encrypted key and private decryption key. It was developed in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman.
Following AES, came RSA which is still in use today. RSA has up to a 2048-bit key size, making it virtually uncrackable. To ‘crack’ a code, is to decrypt it, which means that you can read and copy the data.
VPN
A Virtual Private Network is a relatively secure way of using the internet to avoid intrusion, monitoring or data theft. If used with secure tunneling protocols, your internet connection will be virtually unreadable by anyone between your device and the website or online device that you are visiting, as well as links that you browse. In other words by using a VPN and secure tunneling, nobody can detect what you are doing online (unless you use a paid VPN subscription service, in which case, the staff can view your browsing sites and traffic, making it extremely valuable for privacy and avoiding online attacks with infections or destructive actions to your device(s).
VoIP
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a modern internet telephone, whereby a LAN ethernet cable from a WiFi modem router is plugged into an ethernet port at the back of the VoIP phone to allow you to make normal phone calls locally or internationally through a VoIP service provider. This allows for cheap phone calls over the internet.
Web Portal
A web portal is simply a website login page that gives users access to information such as company intranet information locally, or data remotely. This is very convenient for employees or organisations who can access information from data stored in local or remote databases stored locally or remotely or for users in community forums and open-source online communities who exchange information freely within the group online for registered users to access through the web portal.
Companies, governments and organisations benefit from using web portals, because it means that staff or users can securely access information from within an internet browser anywhere with an internet connection.
Security and Privacy
Security
Security refers to the protection of your device and your data.
Computers undergo vicious attacks that can either cause you great pain in terms of potentially costing money and time, as well as being an inconvenience, which you don’t really need.
Recommendations are to have a firewall installed and operating such as in an Internet Security software package for your type of operating system. Some popular programs available for various popular (commercial) operating systems have the downloads available from their website.
Some of these include: kaspersky.com, 360totalsecurity.com, avg.com, eset.com, avast.com, norton.com, comodo.com and avira.com, These packages combine detection, removal of viruses and repair of infected files on your device, to keep you protected as well as (if possible), clean/repair/fix any corrupted or infected files in your system. Usually these anti-virus applications come in the form of a monthly or yearly subscription. Windows computers are the most vulnerable to computer virus infection, because of how widespread this commercial OS is across the world today. Apple computers are somewhat at risk to security and privacy breaches. Linux computer operating systems are the least vulnerable to malicious attacks and infections of the three (3) systems.
Firewall
Yes, it is most important that you install a firewall on your machine, to block any incoming connections from outside of your local network (LAN) and allow outgoing connections from your device and LAN to the internet outside (WAN).
Defending your device is essential to ensure a clean and fully functioning computer, tablet or phone.
Keeping unwanted access to your device, will protect it from 'sniffing,' malicious or destructive activities, and data theft.
Ports
There are 65,536 ports available in a network connection (ports 0-65535), and choosing the ports you want open or closed, is important to fully understand how to use a firewall. Port ‘0’ is reserved by your OS for IP address functionality.
Action | Result |
ALLOW (permit) incoming connections | permit incoming connections from a device on the internet or network to YOUR device (not recommended and potentially dangerous)
|
DENY (block) incoming connections | incoming connections are NOT permitted, with no response to the attempting connecting device. This means that all ports from 0 - 65535 are BLOCKED from connecting to your device from the internet or a network. |
REJECT (block) incoming connections | incoming connections are NOT permitted, with a response from your device to the attempting connecting device, advising to it that it has been rejected (not allowed {not permitted}) |
ALLOW (permit) outgoing connections | permit outgoing connections from YOUR device to another device on the internet or network (this option still has risks of devices transferring data via your browser or other software to the external {outside} device, hence acting as a security risk) |
DENY OUTGOING ports 1 - 79; DENY OUTGOING ports 81 - 442; DENY OUTGOING ports 444 - 65535 | Do not allow (do not permit) ports 1 -79 to be open OUTSIDE; Do not allow (do not permit) ports 81- 442 to be open OUTSIDE Ports 80 and 443 are the most commonly used ports needed for a device. Port 80 is a web browser connection port required by many websites and the more popular and secure port required by many websites is port 443 – the Secure connection port. Most email can be accessed in a web browser using port 443, with no other ports required to be open (such as gmail.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com), however some home or business users use a desktop client. In this case, you will need to allow port 25 to send emails (SMTP protocol) and port 110 to receive emails (POP3 protocol). |
Incoming Connections
Generally speaking, you want to BLOCK all incoming connections to your device, to protect it from online attack(s). BLOCK may also be referred to as REJECT or DENY (see the table above).
Some software, such as business or gaming software, may require you to OPEN an INCOMING port, in order to allow the external server or device to talk to your client (locally installed) software or app.
Outgoing Connections
Generally speaking, you want to ALLOW outgoing connections to your device but only allow the ports out that you need to use, to protect it from online attack(s), device destruction or data theft (see the table above for how to setup OUTGOING connections, securely).
Privacy
The internet has brought society great joy through networking and communications – in particular, with family and friends. People continue to advance through their lives using the internet, but it comes at a cost or price, because to stay safe and secure, it costs resources which are usually time and/or money. Defending your valuables online is an important issue, because it can be compromised if the person either has changed something or the computer was never set up correctly from purchase to defend against attacks, theft, damage and destruction.
This section is divided into: internet connections, detection, repair and/or removal of viruses and monitoring for any potential attacks in the future.
It is important to clear your internet cache, history, cookies and other files regularly and is recommended to be completed often, in order to maintain a fast operating browser application with less chances of a slowly operating computer. The more 'junk' files that you store in your internet browser or operating system, the slower your machine will be. Also, be aware that the more applications that you have installed, the slower the computer will operate at.
Building a Website
Making a website these days can be done in three (3) ways:
Online using pre-made templates from a website seller and may offer the option of buying your own domain name (such as mywebsite.com), email addresses, security certificates for secure e-commerce websites;
Make your own website using a template from the thousands available online for sale. There are many website template styles out there today, such as Wordpress, Joomla, etc.; or
Write your own HTML code in a document editor.
E-commerce websites involve more design, layout and interactivity than just a simple website such as a blog or company website providing information, mostly in the form of text and images.
E-commerce websites are online shops, that sell physical or digital goods and/or services from a website. Therefore, they use credit card payment processing services, incorporated into the site, from a 3rd-party company.
The things you will need to make your own website:
A domain name, which is paid to a Domain Name Registrar company every 1, 2, 5 or 10 years.
A hosting https web server or service that leases you space to store your website on a monthly or yearly basis.
An Email server or service where you store your email addresses and administer them.
For e-commerce, you will need a credit card payment gateway service and a TLS (SSL) secure certificate to use the https protocol to securely connect and communicate when using your website.
Content Management System (CMS)
Content management systems are websites, specially designed for managing information such as text, images and videos on a website. The most popular CMS's are those written using the PHP computer scripting language. PHP is a server scripting language, which provides dynamic content. The most popular PHP CMS's include : Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress. These are all CMS's which use the file extension .PHP for active dynamic content.
QR Codes
QR codes (Quick Response codes) are the new way to scan objects for sending and receiving payments, sending website links or transferring data in some other secretive way. Each QR code is unique, that is to say – they are all different, like telephone numbers. They are similar to barcodes, used on product item labels, to identify each product uniquely (solely) that is matched up to a product description and price, stored on a computer system.
QR codes are the new modern style of barcode – they can be used to do many things including: shopping, downloading apps or opening websites.
Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies, or digital money.
Digital money has been around since the 1980’s, however it was the digital currency called Bitcoin, that really took off and became popular instantly around the world. Bitcooin, or BTC as it is officially known as in the banking and financial sector industries, was created by a Japanese man in 2009. Today there are BTC ATM’s (Automatic Teller Machines) and people trade online using Bitcoin everyday over the internet. You can use Bitcoin to purchase things online or trade in Bitcoin, the same as official national currencies such as the Chinese Yuan, Russian Rubles or Australian Dollars.
Types
There are basically two (2) types of email:
Client email: this is where you install a program or app onto your device and configure it manually (or automatically) to login to your email server which allows you to send and receive emails. Configuring the client software sets up an email account on your device (computer, tablet or phone). Ports must be set correctly, i.e. the Incoming (receiving) POP3 Port must be set to Port 110 and the Outgoing (sending) SMTP Port must be set to Port 25.
These are both unencrypted ports. POP3 has an encrypted port: Port 995 (if your server has this functionality).
Webmail: This is where a user can access their email online using a web browser. It uses TLS or SSL technologies (basically digital certificates, which you can also make yourself free). So, the concept is that you open a web browser and then type in the domain name of your email server hostname into the address bar of your browser with a ‘mail’ prefix.. For example: mail.mydomain.com
This will then present you with a new login screen with the fields: Username and Password.
Of coarse, this page is encrypted using security certificates. Enter your details, to access your online email account.
Composing an email (How to make an email)
There are several fields in an email and understanding what they are, how to use them and what they stand for are all important to fully understand which features that you may have in your email account, whether online in a web browser or accessing your email through a client.
To: field
This is who the email is going to. This is where you enter the person’s, company’s or server email address(es) into this field. For example: JohnnyX@email.com
Cc: field
Cc stand for Carbon Copy. Here you can enter the email address(es) to send them a copy of the email and/or attachments also.
Bcc: field
Bcc means Blind Carbon Copy.
Insert Attachment
The paperclip symbol is how/where you attach a file to your email(s). Select Insert/Attachment/Files from your computer then navigate to where the images, pictures, videos or documents are and press the button, ‘Select’ or ‘Upload.’
Send an email
To send an email, first check that it is all complete and ready to send, especially if you need to or have to send an attachment with the email. When you think you are ready, press the Send button.