The twenty-first century observed the information and computer revolution; empowering people to have instant communication and permitting them in carrying out activities using computers. The use of the computer is not limited to a single or specific industry and its use would be seen in all the industries or sectors. Presently, we are living in a world wherein nearly everyone has heard about computer technology and over sixty percent of people have information on its usage. We can now find laptops or computers in shops, homes, educational institutions, ticket counters, and so on (Daily Alert, 2013). It is important to have an understanding of some important terms used in the field of computer technology. This essay will provide an understanding of the various terms involving the Internet such as, web browser, URL, Wi-Fi, network, firewalls, email, phishing, malware, and more.
The internet, in simple terms, occasionally called as ‘Net,’ is a global computer network system – a network system wherein users on one PC could, if they have authorization, get data from any other PC (and sometimes directly talk to users of various other PCs). The concept of internet got introduced in the year 1969 by the U.S. government’s ARPA–Advanced Research Projects Agency and was initially called as the ARPANet. The internet physically uses a part of the total resources from the presently prevailing telecommunication systems. In fact, what makes a technical level of distinction of the internet is about using the various sets of conventions known as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol or TCP/IP. The most broadly used segments of the internet are the ‘WWW’–World Wide Web which is also known as the ‘Web.’ The remarkable aspect of the internet is the hypertext, which is a method of immediate cross-referencing (Search Win Development, 2014).
One of the largest software being made is that of the web browser. It is software which is unique. It would be used for getting online accessibility for several electronic exchange services like e-learning, e-commerce, e-banking, e-mail, and so on. Hackers have an understanding that browsers could be identified on all tablets, smart phone, computers, and so on (Serrhini, 2013). The browser is usually an operator’s window to the outside world, offering them with an interface to conduct an extensive level of activities such as professional business, personal financial management, social networking, shopping and correspondence through email (Louw et al., 2008). Almost all the browsers have their disabled or enabled features which state their working nature about executing the good ones and putting a stop to the harmful ones. Several users are, however, not willing to set up and use the features accurately for promoting safety since several of them do not even still understand the real concepts of security (Serrhini, 2013).
Websites would be located by the addresses shown on the www–World Wide Web. Such types of addresses could be called Uniform Resource Locators or URLs. Each website has a unique URL allocated to it. Hence, the web services and searchers could effortlessly and quickly find them. There are many data which one could gather from a basic URL, inclusive of the following: the type of server wherein the website would be hosted; the type of organization wherein the website would be categorized; where in the world is the website situated; and the names on the website directories. By doing a careful review of the various parts of a website URL, one could rapidly gather some useful data. What’s more, by just removing certain sections of the URL, one could have a better understanding of the website compared to what would be accessed publicly (Boswell, 2017).
Wi-Fi is considered as a system of devices which are wirelessly linked and which makes use of the radio waves, permitting linkages between the various devices without the huge costs of complicated cables or without requiring them to face each other. During the recent years, LANs or Wireless Local Area Networks have attained a great measure of growth. When compared to the several technologies of wireless LANs, Wi-Fi, the technology of the wireless LAN that is IEEE 802.11b based, could be considered as the technology that is the main and the most outstanding (Vandana, 2006). Wi-Fi roaming provides significant business benefits for the operators. In today’s world, users expect that Wi-Fi would be accessed when they need it and wherever they travel to (Mohapatra et al., 2014). The technology of Wi-Fi is an ideal method for mobile-phone operators for linking to the internet. The ever-growing demand for devices that are Wi-Fi-empowered and the expanding amount of Wi-Fi systems ensures that this pattern would be continued later also (Robert et al., 2008).
A network consists of peripherals, network devices, mainframes, servers, computers, or other types of devices which get linked to each other for information sharing. A good illustration of a network would be the internet that links several millions of people across the world (Computer Hope, 2017). On a network, computers might be linked with infrared light beams, satellites, radio waves, telephone lines or cables. The two common kinds of networks are Wide Area Network–WAN and Local Area Network—LAN (Winkelman, 2013).
The firewall is usually an intermediate framework of the protected inner networks and the not much protected outer networks. It protects corporate systems from hackers, attackers, and unintentional accessibility into the corporate network systems. The basic varieties of firewalls are stateful inspectors, proxy servers, and screening routers (Desai et al., 2002). The firewall could confirm both hardware and software appliances. Further, there are various kinds of situations wherein a firewall could start from a basic packet filter to various firewalls. Choosing of firewalls is exceptionally alluring. They would be available in all capacities, shapes, and sizes. They would be designed according to the needs of the customer. The type of firewall being used for installation depends on the size, management, and protection of the system. Before selecting a design on the firewall, organizations need to have an exact understanding of the risk or threat (Dandamudi and Eltaeib, 2015).
Email is known as electronic mail. The word ‘email’ is being used when people make use of the technology (or PCs) for sending and getting correspondence starting from one PC to the next one. The receiving and sending of correspondences are not restricted to words. One could use email for sharing website addresses, poems or photographs which one would like to share with other people (CEFLS, 2016). The email spam would target single users using direct mail messages. The list of email spam is usually made by searching websites for getting addresses, stealing lists of internet mails, or scanning of postings in Usenet. Normally, email spam would cost huge money to the users. Any person who has a phone service measured – would receive or read the mail when the meter runs. Hence, a specific offensive variation in email spam is about sending of spam to private or public mailing records (Mueller, n. d.).
Phishing is a conspicuous method of making an end-client to show his/her information or delicate facts to an online hacker, like, credit accounts or password, other financial information, or data which are sensitive. When a famous social website’s fake login page, for instance, Yahoo, Facebook, online payment processors and auction sites are being sent to inattentive or incautious users by a hacker via emails or pages of websites asking for the response, then it marks the start of an attack. Such websites or messages would be created to look like the real website, making it practically inconceivable to the victim to understand the difference. An email might seem to originate from the IT services support or system administrator, which requests that the user carries out a few activities, such as, ‘you are soon going to surpass your capacity limit, please click here to stay active’. When the user might click on the link or give the required data, the attacker would use that data for hacking into the user’s system or an account (Yeboah-Boateng et al., 2002).
Software that is dreadful is known as the malware. The malware is intended to harm the computer networks without the owner’s knowledge. Utilizing the technique and system development is posturing enormous difficulty for researchers in the industry and in academics. Several programs of the malware are complex and large. Hence, one cannot in any way, have an understanding of each detail (Verma et al., 2013). The malware made by the attackers is metamorphic and polymorphic, which could change the code as they proliferate. In addition, the volume and diversity of their variations seriously erode the efficiency of conventional defenses that commonly make use of methods based on signatures and cannot find the malignant executables which were not known earlier (Gandotra and Bansal, 2014). Giving education to the users of the internet on malware and the exact usage of the anti-malware apparatus are important measures in safeguarding the online buyers’ identity against the various malware strikes (Verma et al., 2013).
A router in technical terms is a gateway device of Layer 3 networks, implying that it links two or more than two of the networks and in the OSI model, the router works at the network layer. Routers have a CPU or processor, various types of I/O or input-output interfaces and digital memory. Routers work as computers having a particular aim, one which does not need a display or keyboard. The memory of the router would store a fixed O/S or operating system. By maintaining the information on the configuration in the memory’s segment known as the routing table, the routers can filter the outgoing and incoming traffic by the addresses of the receivers and the senders. Much before when the home networking systems had become famous, routers were found only in schools and businesses. Routers had become a common consumer usage when the households started accumulating several PCs and tried to share the internet connection available at home (Mitchell, 2017).
During the recent years, interest in blogging and blogs has expanded much (Olof Larsson and Hrastinski, 2011). Even when blogging is stimulating the interest of business owners, academic researchers, youth, and mainstream media, just a small amount of the users of the internet end up reading blogs and several of them do not even have an understanding of what the term implies (Boyd, 2006). Blogs could be stated as somewhat easily manageable personal websites having their contents being shown in a backward chronological order. Bloggers are agenda-setters that could be influential. For example, blogs are found to have made its effect on political media coverage and for promoting interaction among organizations and people. It could be stated that blogging as a form of human activity and blog as a type of negotiated personal form of expression is important to academics from a diverse range of scientific subjects (Olof Larsson and Hrastinski, 2011).
‘Cloud Computing’ is another new model for resource hosting and for providing services to customers. ‘Cloud Computing’ offers an on-request and easy access to a shared and centralized pool of resources for computing that could be installed by using few management costs and with greater effectiveness. ‘Cloud Computing’ is a term that evolved from the usual practice of portraying the internet as a cloud internet in various illustrated diagrams. The suppliers of ‘Cloud Computing’ rely on the internet as the medium for intermediary exchanges on delivering the resources of information technology to their customers. By making use of ‘Cloud Computing’, customers could have direct access to resources via the internet, from anywhere, or at any time by utilizing any of the internet gadgets, and without having to worry about any physical or technical issues. It is a comprehensive panacea wherein all the resources of computing, such as storage, networking, software, hardware, etc., are given quickly to the customers (El-Sofany et al., 2013).
It could be said that the computer and the internet language could be confounding and overwhelming. Indeed, even the hippest users of the computer and internet might sometimes need to refer to the several names, colloquialisms, and abbreviations for having a clue. This essay consisting of various terms, such as the internet, web browser, URL, Wi-Fi, network, firewalls, email, phishing, malware, cloud computing, blogs, router, and so on would enable you to understand these terms and help you to have an improved understanding of the world of computers and the internet.
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