University of Washington CSE 154

Section 1: Internet and WWW

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Section 1

This section is about the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW). Most sections will have exercise problems to work on, but since we have just begun the quarter, this one is more casual and conversational in nature.

Many of these problems don't have an obvious well-known answer, and some don't have a single correct answer. The point is just to get everyone talking and participating and talking about the web.

Exercise : Ballparking

  1. What do you think are the top 10 most visited sites on the web today? How would you find out what they actually are?
  2. What is one of your favorite web sites not listed among those top 10, and why? Do you have a favorite web "meme"?
  3. What is one of the WORST sites on the web, and why?
  4. How many internet protocols (e.g. http at the beginning of a URL) can you name?
  5. .com, .net, and .edu are examples of Top-Level Domains (TLDs). How many more TLDs can you name? What are the most recent TLDs to be created?
  6. What are the top 5 web browsers in market share? How many other web browsers are there?

Exercise : History

  1. Can you name two people prominently involved in the history of the internet?
  2. What was one of the first web sites you used regularly?
  3. What was the first email, and when was it sent?
  4. What were the first 20 domain names to be registered?
  5. Why are we “running out” of IP addresses? How many are there? What is being done about this?
  6. What is one major change that you think will happen to the web within the next 5-10 years?

Exercise : Spelunking

  1. How would you find out the IP address of a website? Does it ever change?
  2. How many computers does a piece of data travel through between you and google.com? How can you find out?
  3. What's the difference between your local IP address and your internet IP address?
  4. Follow the commands on this lecture slide to simulate being a browser. How is this different from Viewing the Source of a document in your browser?
  5. What type of web server software is our course web server (webster.cs.washington.edu) running? How can you find out?
  6. Can you find a website whose server software listens on a port other than 80?
  7. What internet programs (other than web browsers and email programs) do you use regularly? What TCP port(s) do they communicate on?

Exercise : Terminology / Jargon

How many of the following internet/web terms do you know? Pick a term and explain what it is.

  1. 4chan
  2. Apache
  3. bandwidth, latency, throughput, broadband
  4. blog
  5. bookmark
  6. brogrammer
  7. Brony
  8. browser plug-in
  9. bump
  10. cache
  11. CAPTCHA
  12. cloud computing
  13. cookie
  14. cosplay
  15. domain name
  16. Dreamweaver
  17. firewall
  18. flame war
  19. Foxkeh
  20. frag
  21. frame
  22. gopher
  23. guild
  24. hashtag
  25. imba
  26. ISP
  27. LAMP
  28. LAN
  29. LARP
  30. Linux
  31. mashup
  32. meme
  33. mirror
  34. newb
  35. open source
  36. P2P
  37. ping
  38. podcast
  39. portal
  40. proxy
  41. raid
  42. RFC
  43. rick roll
  44. RSS feed
  45. script
  46. spawn camper
  47. spyware
  48. tag cloud
  49. tweet
  50. VoIP
  51. web crawler (or web spider)
  52. wiki
  53. Y U NO

Some dictionaries of web slang:

Exercise : Sample Page

Unordered list: <ul>, <li>

ul represents a bulleted list of items (block)
li represents a single item within the list (block)

<ul>
	<li>No shoes</li>
	<li>No shirt</li>
	<li>No problem!</li>
</ul>

More about unordered lists

<ul>
	<li>Simpsons:
		<ul>
			<li>Homer</li>
			<li>Marge</li>
		</ul>
	</li>
	<li>Family Guy:
		<ul>
			<li>Peter</li>
			<li>Lois</li>
		</ul>
	</li>
</ul>

Ordered list: <ol>

ol represents a numbered list of items (block)

<p>RIAA business model:</p>
<ol>
	<li>Sue customers</li>
	<li>???</li>
	<li>Profit!</li>
</ol>
  • we can make lists with letters or Roman numerals using CSS (later)

Exercise : Uploading to a Web Server

Upload a web page to our Webster server following the directions on our Uploading Files page. Then view the page in the browser.

screenshot