Two basic possibilities: "dial in", or "always on". In Australian
in 2005 it's still most common to dial in to an Internet Service
Provider (ISP) using your existing phone line in conjunction with a
modem see later, although more and more
people are investing in "always on" technologies such as ADSL and
Cable Internet. At university, all of our computers are "always
on", via dedicated data links.
There are usually some initial technical hassles getting
everything working. Most systems have quite a few messy details
that have to be configured.
once it's running, we download and view Web pages, send and
receive emails, run special-purpose Internet software such as ICQ,
RealPlayer, etc, etc.
In this unit, we discover how all this stuff
works.
Important Note
In this subject, we attempt to tell no lies... However, we
do not guarantee to always tell the whole truth!!
That is, for every aspect of Internet and network technology that
we cover, there's always more to it than is revealed in these
notes. This, of course, quite normal in educational practice, but
it's worth reminding you up front.