The Internet. Essay -- Design and Technology

The Internet. The Development of the Internet The Internet had started as a research project that was funded by the US Military. There were only three computers that were linked up to this network at this time. After 1969 a total of four computers were linked to this network, but nowadays there are billions. To link onto the internet everybody had a dial up connection which was a connection through your telephone line, when you wanted to go onto the internet a analogue signal would have been sent to your telephone provider and you would have been billed by them according to what your pay package was. The disadvantage of this was that you couldn’t accept telephone calls that were being made to your phone numbers but now the latest technology allows telephone calls to be accepted regardless if you are on the internet and now a new digital signal is being used instead of the old analogue one. Before simple information was displayed on the internet for example reviews and news and membership clubs were common, but now anything can be found on the internet. The internet also has a long way to go before it is 100% safe in the future; internet developers are working on improving the search engines, privacy and the security of the internet. Spam Spam is the name given to unwanted e-mails. This could be things advertising new products, or get rich prize draws, credit schemes and pornography. Spam can cost businesses as much as a couple of million pounds to send out computers. Spam can be sent to home computers as well as business computers. Businesses try to filter Spam by using blockers but these attempts may fail, because Spam is sent out in its millions this can clog up the internet network causing computers to rum slow or even crash. E-mail E-mail is short for electronic mail. E-mail is not only for fun but plays a large part in effective communication between major businesses. Almost everybody connected on the internet has an e-mail account. Accounts are free and can be achieved by singing up with companies such as yahoo, AOL and hotmail. Due to e-mail accounts being free storage space is limited. If you wish to have more storage space to keep more e-mails then the providers of your account offer you the chance to purchase a bigger account at a small price which you normally have to pay each month. Depending on ... ... should only contain material that is relevant and suitable for them. Ø Any pages that are likely to offend people should have a warning on them e.g. racist pages. Ø Links should not connect people to inappropriate sites when they are unaware of it. Ø People should not send Spam Ø Adverts on the internet should be true and not just joking about Ø If it is a purchasing site any extra cost such as VAT should clearly be shown Ø The advertisers name should be shown clearly Ø Information on web sites should not encourage illegal acts Ø Private data can’t be shown without the person knowing about it. Conclusion Overall the internet is a fast way to obtain information from a lot of different sources it is a good time killer if you are bored as it has billions and billions of different websites to explore. The internet is also a good way of advertising and selling and equally purchasing items. Although there are many draw backs the internet has more advantages than disadvantages. The fact that there are billions of people connected to the internet opposed to four computers when it was first set up means that it must be a good place to visit.