The World Wide Web (WWW) is made up of millions of web pages.  A collection of web pages run by one person or organisation is called a web site.  A web address is a URL (uniform resource locator) and it contains the name of the host eg altavista as well as the type of organisation it is eg com (a company), mil (military), or edu (education).  The first part of a URL specifies the type of server to be called.  The last part of a URL gives specific information for the server.

The home user uses a program called a browser to go to the address of a web page.  The address goes through their ISP (Internet Service Provider) to the host server of the web page.  The image of the web page is sent back via the ISP to the home computer.  Email, games, downloading of software can be accessed, not just web pages.

Many very busy web sites set up a mirror site in another country to make access easier.

If the connection is not from a home computer, it could be by cable, satellite, or a university, government department etc.

Web pages are downloaded in sections because information is sent by a process called packet switching.  Data is sent in small sections called packets and some packets travel along busier lines and may have to be resent or change and travel along different lines.

In order to protect their systems, users set up a firewall between their computer and the Internet.  This controls what information passes in an from the computer eg unwanted email, viruses, unsuitable sites.

The speed of access to information is of concern.  The amount of information that can come in at any one time is called the bandwidth of the connection eg water flowing through a pipe.  The wider the bandwidth of a connection to the Internet, the more data that can come through at one time. When people share a connection, each user receives less bandwidth, just like the water flow is affected when there are many taps turned on at once.   Complex web pages are also slower to download because of the graphics, music or video.

A browser is a program used to access the Internet eg Netscape Communicator and Internet Explorer.  A user keys in a URL and the browser finds the address and displays the information as web pages. 

Connections to other pages can be made through hyperlinks. When we click on a hyperlink, the browser jumps to the page pointed at.

Netscape has the following navigation buttons

Internet Explorer has the following navigation buttons:

A home page is usually the first page you seen when you visit a site.  It is often called index.html or default.html.