Components of Internet

URL

All of the documents that you will find on the Internet are differentiated by a unique address which is technically referred to as a URL which stands for Uniform Resource Locator.

Think of it as a networked extension of the standard filename concept: not only can you point to a file in a directory, but that file and that directory can exist on any machine on the network, and can be served via a several different methods.

They can look complicated but are easier to understand when you divide it into its component parts. Understanding how URL's are composed will enable you to locate and remember document locations with greater ease.

The first part http:// indicates that you wish to retrieve a document via the world wide web and stands for HypterText Transfer Protocol.

Most resources that you will access are located on World Wide Web servers and are thus named www at the beginning of the address. Each world wide web server will have a domain name. This is the domain name for SOFWeb - sofweb.vic.edu.au.

Web pages can be organised into directories. This web page sits in a directory called internet. Lastly each web page has its own file name - this document is called intro.htm. All web pages end in .htm or html because they are documents prepared for viewing on the web through a web browser.

To access a URL you only need to click on the Open Location button on your browser and type in the URL and press enter. All URL's or Web pages that you visit can be saved into your bookmarks file in your browser so that you don't have to remember them all.

Sometimes you may come across a url that starts with ftp:// instead of http:// this means that the file is located on an FTP server instead of a WWW server. FTP servers are sometimes used for downloading files as they are a lot quicker than the standard WWW server.

When you are accessing Newsgroups the urls will always start with news. eg. news:rec.gardening. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. URLs are used to identify specific sites and files available on the World Wide Web.

The structure of a URL is: protocol://server.subdomain.top-level-domain/directory/filename Not all URLs will have the directory and filename.

Two examples:

• http://www.ebizel.com/con2007_first.htm

gopher://gopher.state.edu/

URLs

Similar to an e-mail address, a URL is read like a sentence. For example the URL http://www.ebizel.com/ is read as "http colon forward slash forward slash www dot healthyway dot com". Internet addressing is used to identify people, computers, and Internet resources.

Using the Internet requires an understanding of different addressing schemes. People are identified with electronic mail addresses. Computers are identified with IP addresses and domain names. Resources and files available through the World Wide Web are identified using URLs.