It's something to do with how the Internet works. Built on telephone networks, copper wires and all that fancy-pants stuff.

Queuing theory helps telephone networks handle situations where more people can make more calls than there are physical connections.

Packet switching is a digital network communications method that groups all transmitted data into blocks (aka, packets). Packet switching is the fancier version of circuit switching, where there is a physical path between the two nodes (just like an old fashioned phone operator, which moved switches around to connect phone calls).

Packet switching is the delivery of variable bit-rate data streams over a shared network, by traversing network adaptors, switches, routers, etc. Packets are like packets (the mail kind), they have the contents (data), a destination address (the address), and delivery information (or administrative information, such as the packet number).

Packets are sent individually between nodes, taking the route defined by a routing algorithm. Not all packets will necessarily follow the same route. The packets arrive in different orders than they're sent, the destination computer reassembles them into their appropriate sequence.

Protocols are the rules which allow controlled communication, which provide standards for data formats and error handling.

An IP address is like a phone number. IP addresses are referred to by domain names through DNS.

HTTP is a stateless protocol, it doesn't remember anything it did before what it did just now.

And that's about it.

With Hulbert, Paul Hulbert. Visibly shaken, but not yet stirred.
I did a lot of this stuff at A-Level, so yeah, stuff.

Topology is the shape! Like a star, or a line, with switches and routers and terminals and stuff.
Ring topology: Nodes in a serially closed loop. Messages are sent (in one direction) around the ring until it reaches the destination node.
Bus: Nodes connected into a single backbone cable. Any node can go straight to any other node, but only one message can go through the bus at once.
Star: Nodes connected to a central hub (e.g. a server). All computers are connected to the hub, hubs can be connected together, if a hub fails then all connections are lost.

Shannon-Weaver model of communication:
INFORMATION SOURCE ->(message)-> TRANSMITTER ->(signal)-> NOISE SOURCE ->(received signal)-> RECEIVER ->(message)-> DESTINATION

LAN: Local Area Network (local network)
WAN: Wide Area Network (heterogeneous infrastructure network - a mishmash of different kinds of networks and topologies)
BAN/PAN: Body Area Network/Personal Area Network (networks over one's person - e.g. phone and Bluetooth headset, RFID)
MAN: Metropolitan Area Network (city-wide or university-wide networks)
VAN: Value Added Network (provided by a network provider which adds email, EDI, etc in addition to basic network services; tends to be used by multiple organisations at once)
AN: Academic Network (university networks, such as JANET)

Backbone local networks support a number of LANs within an enterprise and/or geographically large area.

Back end networks interconnect large systems such as mainframes, super computers and mass storage devices. They're the kind of things that connect backbone local networks (which connect a number of LANs). They need high speed interfaces, but can support massive amounts of data transfer.

I'm actually in the lesson for once, so I'm going to blog about it WHILE DOING IT. Yeah baby, this is so Web 2.0.

Computers used to be a people job. A person who did maths for a living, I guess that's just a mathematician or a maths teacher or something. There was no computer programming, as there were no computers, aside from people who did maths for a living - but you couldn't program them.

Totally had automated machines though - hell yeah, weaving.

1866: They laid a cable across the Atlantic. Everyone thought it was cool, but it didn't work very well and died in a few days. Kind of like Windows Vista.

1936 - 1938: Some dude called Konrad (great name) creates a binary computer.

1940 - 1943: Bombe and Colossus in Bletchley Park break the Enigma and Lorenz codes, helping win World War II for Allied forces. Eventually leads to chemical castration and suicide of Alan Turing. I've sat next to him, there's a statue in the gay village in Manchester.

1945: Vannevar Bush (what a weird name) proposes a photo-electrical-mechanical device called Memex, which can follow links between documents on a microfiche (small fish?). This is the beginning of hypertext and the Steampunk Internet.

1946: ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). 30 tons; 30 units; 19,000 vacuum tubes and used 200 kilowatts of power. The Large Hadron Collider of the day, although much less likely to destroy the universe.

1950s: Computer networks come about. Mainframe computers, terminals all linked together (using a star topology!) within institutions (creating Intranets).

1957: The Soviet Union launch Sputnik 1.

1960s: Computer networks start linking into each other, creating Internets.

1962: Dr JCR Licklider heads ARPA's research into use of computers for military purposes.

1965: Ted Nelson coins the word "hypertext".

1969: ARPANET starts being made.

1970s: Mainframes became unpopular, people didn't want dumb terminals, smaller groups start to buy "minicomputers", separate from the mainframe. WANs start to appear.

1972: ARPANET creates email. Nigerian scammers rejoice.

1980s: Local Area Networks become invented. Many more computers are used, computers become affordable (and popular) for normal people thanks to Clive Sinclair and other genius nutters like that.

1980: Tim Berners-Lee begins thinking about creating the Web. Creates the notebook program, which links "nodes" of information.

1989: Tim Berners-Lee submits "Information Management: A Proposal", pretty much creating the theoretical WWW in the process.

1990s: PC's grow significantly more powerful, and significantly more popular. Internet commerce booms, Internet commerce busts.

1991: February 13th, Tim-Berners Lee sends an email.

1993: Marc Annderson create Mosaic, the first web browser.

2000: 7.4% of the world is on the Internet. Over 30% of UK households are online.

2009: 70% of UK households are online.

When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the World Wide Web... Now even my cat has its own page. Bill Clinton

Been there, done that.

I already know all about CSS. Separation of content and layout/style. All that jazz. Thus I don't want to write about it, because it's not new or interesting to me.

THIS VIDEO IS AWESOME :)))))

DHTML is just Javascript messing about with the DOM. JS does this all the time nowadays thanks to jQuery, Mootools, script.aculo.us and those ilk.

GOD, Blogger is so confusing!!!! Can't we use LiveJournal or MySpace??????????

I'll be honest, I already know all about HTML (hypertext markup language). So I wasn't paying attention.

According to United States Senator Ted Stevens, "the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes."