The Internet Case

Introduction

The Internet and the Web has become an important component in academic institutions as it plays a vital role in combining information and communication (Luambano & Nawe, 2004 cited in D Patil, 2009). According to them, the Internet makes it possible to access a large amount of information that is up-to-date. The Internet enables students and academic institutions to communicate information to many people through having websites and search facilities (Luambano & Nawe, 2004 cited in D Patil, 2009). Students and lecturers can communicate through the Internet no matter how far apart they are geographically. Most people use the terms Internet and Web interchangeably, but the two terms do not mean the same thing. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things (Beal, 2010). Distant learning has also been driven by the internet (Luambano & Nawe, 2004 cited in D Patil, 2009). University students on daily basis and for various reasons need access to the internet, there could be lecture notes on learning sites to download, E-mails to check, to view student marks on student central, login social networks to communicate with friends and family or put the network to better use by sharing academic information and subscribing to academic authors, visit multimedia sites to download videos (could be academic), Mp3’s and other fun stuff, etc. So far the focus has been on academic institutions, but the internet is also vital to businesses and home uses. This makes the internet a highly important tool for learning, communication and recreation, without it learning will be hard, communication will be crippled globally and many people will be bored.

Internet users use different devices to access the Internet, these include cell phones, laptops and desktops. There many components involved before a device can be able to connect to the Internet and be able to receive information and communicate. These, according to elawexchange are Application, Network Operating System and Physical Connection components. These components work together to send and receive data between networks, which could be a LAN, MAN or WAN. How these components individually, Internet Services Provider (ISP) and Network Access Point (NAP) contribute when a connection is established between a device and the internet will be discussed with reference to different texts and examples. All the underlined concepts in the discussion are explained further and mostly definitions will be provided. All this information is gather to answer the question “how the internet works and how information is made available and accessed on the internet?” An example to put it all together is made using student in UKZN PMB Campus (Scenario). All component are explored on the topic Computer Networks and Components (CNC)

Scenario

UKZN PMB campus has multiple LANs