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Lesson 1:   Meet the Net

 

Read the text below and answer the questions on the right - when you have finished you can check how well you know English and the Internet!
Meet the Internet

The 'internet' has many parts. When most people talk of 'the internet' they are in fact referring to only one part of it - the World Wide Web. Yet e-mail (for example) is a very important part of the internet, yet many people use a separate program for their email. So what are the different parts of the internet, and how do they all fit together?

One of the earliest bits of the Net is FTP, which stands for File Transfer Protocol. 'File' and 'transfer' are easy enough to understand, but what is a 'protocol'? Put simply, a protocol is a method that two computers have agreed to use when they are talking to each other. The very first job of the internet was to move files from one computer to another even when these computers were very far apart, and File Transfer Protocol did this job. If you use the Net just to browse your favourite websites, you may not use FTP a lot, but the people who built those websites almost certainly used a FTP program to put the pages on the web in the first place.

We all know what e-mail is, but did you know that you usually use two different protocols with it? We usually send mail by SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and pick it up, as you might expect, by POP (Post Office Protocol). And yes, the World Wide Web also uses a protocol. The links on a web page that you click to take you to another part of the Net are called 'hypertext links'. Look at the top of your web page, and you should see that you are at "https://www.english-online.org.uk/" . Http stands for (you guessed it!) HyperText Transfer Protocol, and the 'www' after that shows that this page is part of the World Wide Web.

Today, if we just want to browse the web, we can do almost everything with one program - a web browser. A browser is one kind of 'net interface'. Net interfaces are programs which sit between you and the internet and help you and the Net make sense to each other. The browser takes care of the technical details of connecting you to the web, and makes sure that the information from the internet arrives in a way that makes sense to you. It also finds out what you want to do, and passes on the information in a way that the internet can understand.

Websites are built in different ways. Pages that contain a lot of information but are not very interactive are called 'static' pages. These are usually written in a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). Interactive pages can be written as if they are computer programs. Because it can be dangerous to run unknown programs, many interactive websites today use interactive scripts that don't run on your computer. These scripts often use a language developed for Personal Home Pages (php)

Sometimes, you might want to get sound or video from the internet. These are things that the internet can only deliver to you through File Transfer Protocol, but you see them in your browser because your browser has special programs called 'plug-ins' which run these files as soon as they arrive.

1.What is the best definition of a protocol?    
    An agreed means of communication
    The way that a computer talks
    Something made from FTP
    A method between two computers
2.How many protocols does the text mention?    
    Three
    Four
    Five
    Six
3.What does interactive mean?    
    Using one protocol
    Responding to the user
    Running a database
    Containing unknown .php
4. Why might 'active pages' be dangerous?    
    They might crash your computer
    They might contain viruses
    They might be used by hackers
    A,B, and C.
5. Plug-ins deliver    
    Extra features for your web browser
    Pictures from the Internet
    More interactivity
    File transfer protocols