INTRODUCTION

In the previous unit, you have gone through the concepts relating to networking and Internet. The Internet is the network of networks and is used for many applications. Internet allows you to share resources and applications with ease. The Internet uses TCP/IP as its basic protocol on which many more application level protocols have been developed. The Internet can carry any digital signals such as text, graphics, sound, video and animation. Today, Internet has thousands of networks and millions of users, using many services.

Uses of Internet technologies have become common place in recent times. Since, the advent of Mosaic Browser in 1993, the popularity of web and its users grew very fast. The web application during this era primarily wanted to provide information about various organizations and some basic interaction with the clientele. Even in this time some of major usages of Internet were to browse and search the information and communication through emails. Since, 2003 there is a shift in focus in use of Web technologies. The Web has now become a platform for collaborative, community driven applications. This form of Web at present is called Web 2.0. There are other more structured forms of web organization that is at present popular named Web 3.0 and beyond. However, that is beyond the scope of this Block

This unit introduces you to some of the basic applications of the Internet that have become part of daily routine application of any Internet users, whereas, the next unit will focus on some of the applications relating to Web 2.0. We will discuss about browsing, emailing, searching and chatting in this unit. If you are using World Wide Web on Internet then you are essentially doing the browsing. You may need to search the net for relevant information. Sometimes, you may like to send messages to your friends either offline or online and hence you will need email or chat.

2.1 OBJECTIVES 

After going through this unit, you should be able to:

 explain the term browsing and perform browsing on the Internet;

 explain the role of search engines;

 identify and use the basic features of email services;

 identify and use basic models of chat; and

 appreciate the various security issues on the Internet.

2.2 BROWSING

Browsing also called Surfing the process of looking into the information available in the web. One of the preconditions for browsing is that you should be connected to the Internet. For connecting to Internet you should have an Internet account with a service provider (like MTNL, BSNL) and you have done the connection settings on your computer relating to that account.

Activity: Set up a connection to Internet on your Computer. Ask for the relevant settings.