Lecture 3

The Rise of the Internet

1. Factors behind the early development of the Internet
a. US and Society Bloc engaged in a cold war escalating after WWII
b. The US Gov. did not have adequate communications to function
effectively in the event of a real nuclear conflict with the USSR.
c. The early funding from DARPA was an attempt to identify
technologies that could be employed to create a resilient data
network that could continue to function tin the event of war.
2. A very short history of the internet
a. 1961-1969 Research in distributed communications progresses
b. 1969 Arpanet is commissioned by the DoD with notes at UCLA,
Stanford, UCSC, and Uni of Utah to design the best effort network.
Original Internet.
c. 1971: 15 notes operational w/ 23 systems
d. 1984: 1000 systems on ARPNET
e. 1977: chat introduced by Jakko Oikarenen
f. 1989: number of system reaches 10,000
g. 1990: Arpanet ceases to exist and is now knows as the Internet as
restrictions on commercial use are dropped by the Gov.
h. 19991: Initial design for the WWW is published by CERN
i. 1993: White House goes online
j. 1995: Netscape introduces the first real hypermedia browser as a
result of research performed at U. Minn.
k. 1996: Microsoft introduces Internet Explorer and browser war begins
l. 1997: US Commercial Decency act is passed, and promptly struck
down by the Supreme Court as Unconstitutional
m. 2016: 3.6 Billion Active Internet Users / day.
3. Earliest Internet Apps
a. The first application was a crude form of email which enabled
researchers located at the various hosts to share text information
electronically
b. This was soon followed by a file transfer application which allowed
the sharing of medium sized text files
c. Next up was the establishment of bulletin boards which allowed
groups of researchers to post messages
4. 90% of the population in North America has regular access to the internet
a. Although Asia only has 44% penetration, Asia has 1.7 Billion users.
Compared to 320 million in North America. Asia = dense.
5. Domain Statistics as of 9/2/2016
a. 294 million active domains
b. 386 million deleted domains
c. 80,000 domains added in past 24 hours
d. 93,000 deleted in past 24 hours
e. Over 1 Billion registered websites
6. What is the Internet?

a. A loose confederation of data communication networks

b. Data communications: sending digital info from computer to
computer
c. Information highway connecting far corners of the world
d. An open, distributed system: no central control
7. Internet Applications
a. Electronic mail
b. File transfers
c. WWW
d. Podcasting
e. Streaming Video
f. IM
g. Video conferencing
h. Voice over IP
8. Email Stats
a. Approximately 170 Billion emails sent every day
b. 70 % of all emails are spam or infected with worms or viruses
c. 1.1 Billion legitimate senders per day
9. Origins of the Web
a. Tim Berners Lee and CERN project
b. Initially a distributed, hypertext system for disseminating physics
and scientific research
c. Pages based on a markup language that can be shared by different
computer systems
10. World Wide Web
a. An assortment of computers (web servers) connected by the
Internet
b. Employs a common protocol HTTP. Text on drugs
c. Send and receive hypermedia documents
d. Pioneered at Brown
11. Early Years of the Web
a. Text-based browsers
b. Web expands to government agencies and educational community
c. NCSA introduces a graphical user interface browser, Mosaic
d. Web becomes the new Internet killer app.
e. Performance issues gave the web the name World Wide Wait
12. Commercialization of the Web
a. Original ban on commercial sites lifted (1990)
b. .com becomes the most dominated designator as opposed to
.edu, .gov, .org, .biz
c. E-commerce is born: electronic transactions over the Web
13. Organization of the Web
a. Web clients and Web servers
b. Common protocol: HTTP
i. HyperText Transfer Protocol
ii. Connect, request, send, receive, display

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c. Naming convention called URLs for identifying resources

d. HTML defines how Web pages are structured
Web Browsers and Servers
a. Web browsers
i. Ask for, receive, and display Web documents
b. Web servers
i. Remote systems that store Web documents
Going to a Web site
a. A page of information is transferred to your computer, which
proceeds to display it. The web page comes to you!
Fetching and Opening Web Page
a. Web browers ask for pages bytheir Uniform Resoruce Location
b. Http = protocol
c. URL = path
d. /courses/cs002 = resoruces
e. URLS provide easy to remember network
Parts of a URL
a. HTTP states that we are requesting a page from a remote web
server
b. www.cs.brown.edu = the name of the web server. The name must
be registerd.
How is the information routed?
a. There are many protocols that govern how information is transferred
on the rweb.
Return addresses
a. Your request is transferred to the right server because machines
along the way know how to interpret the URL ad map it to an
address where the web page resides
b. When it arrives at the correct server, your message includes a
return address so the server knows where to send the requested
page
What is a web server?
a. A Server is simply a computer that acts as utility for other
computers. A web server that serves up web pages
b. A file sever is a computer that returns files requesters by users on
to other computers. When you request a file from the Brown
computer system, you are communicating with a file server.
Search engines
a. An internet search engine is a program that tries to provide a user
with a list of potentially relevant web sites based upon typically a
few key words provided by the user
b. The actual search is being done by a server.
c. The differences between search engines are their indexing and
matching methods
Search Engine Communication

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a. Google continuously crawl the web, using a program called a spider

or crawler.
b. It stores a local copy of the pages it finds, and builds a lexicon of
common words. For each word, it creates a lsit of pages that contain
that word.
c. A query for a given word returns that list, sorted by pagerank.
Pagerank is computer based on the pageranks of the pages linking
to a document.
Making money on searches
a. Google has become one of the most highly values public companies
in the world due to its popularity and its ability to get advertisers to
bid ranking in order to feature their web links.
Web Publishing
a. Web pages employ HTML to signify both content and structure
b. HTML separates elements and presentation
c. The authors control elements
d. Was intended as a platform-independent standard
e. But HTML has evolved into many successive versions and flavors
Evaluating Content on the Web
a. The web is an anarchists heaven. There is little accountability for
anything published
i. No censorship
ii. Accuracy of unverified information is always an issue.
iii. Much of the content is rushed into print
iv. Information on practically everything can be found there
however and it is constantly evolving and being updated
b. If you read something in an email or on the web that sounds to be
too good to be true.
Organization of the Internet
a. TCP/IP: Messages on the internet are standardized using two
protocols:
i. TCP (transfer control protocol) breaks messages up into small
chunks.
ii. IP (internet protocol) specifies how messages are addressed
and routed
b. TCP
i. Messages are broken up into units of a fixed size and sent out
on the internet
ii. These messages may be received in an order different from
that in which they were sent
iii. Each packed contains a destination address
iv. Individual packet may also be lost
v. TCP may request packets to be resent, and finally it puts the
units back in order.
c. IP
i. The Internet Protocol governs addressing and routing

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ii. IP address is 4 numbers, each less than 256.

iii. Routers on the web know how to interpret IP addresses and
send the packets to the correct destination
iv. IP packets are also known as datagrams
Packet Switching
i. In packet switching, the message is broken up into separate
data packets each addressed to the destination.
ii. Packets are transmitted over any available connection to the
destination, wehre the receiving node reassembles the
measure
Packet Errors
i. Internet was designed to be a best effort network when it
was conceived
ii. Performance, security and reliability enhancements have been
band aids on top of the original, simple design
iii. Approximately 1-3% of ALL packets sent over the Internet get
lost and have to be re-transmitted.
Domain Names
i. Domain names are more intuitive names for IP Addresses
ii. Cs.brown.edu is domain name for brown CS server
iii. How is the connection made between the domain name and
the IP address?
Domain name servers
i. The process is distributed. Brown provides a name server for
all domain names that end in brown.edu
ii. How does the internet find the address of this name server?
iii. There are top level name servers for each of the domains.
(.com / .edu / .etc.)
Secondary Top Level Servers
i. Within 48 hours of the entry into the Network Solutions
machine this information is copied over into 12 other top level
servers
ii. This relieves traffic on any one, and makes sure that one
machine going down will not cripple the internet.
Top 13 machines
i. Currently of the 13 top level domain servers:
1. 6 in DC, 4 in California, 1 in Japan, 1 in England
Caching servers
i. Caching servers are located at locations where there is a high
degree of activity
ii. They maintain copies of the most frequently accessed web
pages so that they can be retrieved locally instead of having
to go over the internet for each access
iii. This works for those web pages that dont change very often
iv. Most large businesses and institutions have local caching
servers

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v. Increases performance and conserved bandwidth

k. Space
i. The internet was designed to accommodate about 4 billion
unique addresses using the current address numbering
scheme
ii. Over 3.2 billion addresses in use
iii. Most domains and ISP maintain tables of sub-addresses which
are assigned to users when they connect in order to conserve
addresses
iv. This is very complicated and inefficient
v. IPV6
1. Internet protocol version 6 has been proposed which
offers (4 billion)^4
2. Why is that important? Everyone could have a unique
internet address
3. Computers, PDAs, cellphones, media players, wrist
watches, etc..
vi. 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage = 250 megabytes / person on
earth
Security issues
a. Widespread adption of the Internet and the Web and email in
particular, have made the web the breeding ground for many types
of illicit or undesirable activities:
i. Computer viruses, Trojans, and worms
ii. Financial fraud and theft
Impact of the Internet
a. Very few technological advances have impacted the planet as
quickly and as completely as the development of the Internet
b. No one involved in the early development would have envisaged
the level of adoption or the range of services as the internet
c.

Lecture 4: Intro to computer architecture

1. The Stack
a. Software
i. Applications
ii. Middleware
iii. Operating systems
b. Hardware
i. Computers
ii. Processors / memories / display / storage
iii. Materials
iv. Physics
2. Digital
a. Digital: means discrete

i. Digital representation is comprised of a limited number of

data points to encode information
ii. Most of our electronic devices use digital techniques to work
with data and information
iii. Since we have a limited number of data points to work with, it
means that many representations are approximations of the
real thing.
b. Analog vs digital
i. Analog = continuous
ii. Digital = discrete
c. Bits (= binary digits)
i. Internally, all data in a digital device is contained in memory
locations that are either on / off.
ii. Everything in memory can be thought of being expressed in
bits
1. 0n =1; off = 0
2. A single bit can represent only 2 values.
iii. Binary numbers
1. With two bits, we can represent four different values
2. With 8 bits, we can represent 256 values (0-255)
3. Bit = single, nibble = 4, byte = 8, word = multiple
bytes.
iv. Representing Data in the Computer
1. Internally, everything data / programs / texts, is
represented in bits.
2. With an array of bits, we can represent any number or
thru assignment, any character.
3. Ascii: agreed upon code in which every character /
number is given a unique 8 bit code
3. What are computers made of?
a. Primarily transistors
b. Invented in 1951, the transistor is the basic electrical building
blocks for all modern electronics
c. Called by the greatest invention of the 20th century
d. For digital applications, transistors are packaged in Integrated
Circuits
4. Transistor
a. Made out of silicon and tiny amount of impurities such as selenium
or gallium arsenide to create what is called a semiconductor
b. Semiconductor allow us to control the flow of electrical charge very
precisely.
c. Billions of semiconductors can be placed on an integrated circuit
using a process called photolithography.
5. Transistor functionality
a. Transistor can be made to:
i. Amplify or attenuate electrical signals

ii. Invert electrical signals

iii. Store electrical voltage values
iv. Switch electrical signals off / on
b. Create logic circuits commonly known as GATES
c. Gates are packaged intro integrated circuits commonly known as
chips
d. Intel 4004 processor chip circa 1971 = first processor
6. Use of logic gates in computers
a. Primary uses:
i. Switches and logic circuits that can be switched between 0
and 5 volts. A Switch can signify a bit that is a 1 or a 0.
ii. Storage of voltage levels equivalent to 0 or 5 volts. In this
way, bits of memory can be implemented or pixels on an
LCD display on a laptop can be created.
b. AND and OR Gates
i. Combine these to make a machine that processes binary
information.
ii. The purpose of a latch is to allow a data value to be stored
temporarily.
7. Von Neumann Machine
a. Input -> CPU <--> Memory -> Output
8. Fetch, Decode, Execute Cycle
a. Computer instructions are stored in memory. To run a program,
instruction is:
i. Fetched from memory
ii. Decoded
iii. Instruction is executed
iv. Speed at which cycle occurs is determined by system clock.
9. Cycle Times
a. Generally the faster your computer can get through a fetch-decodeexecute cycle, the faster it will perform.
b. Cycle times are measured in gigahertz, a billion cycles / second
c. PCs read 3500 megahertz or 3.5 Gigahertz.
10. Memory
a. Each memory unit has its own address
b. Memory units are organized in groups of bytes or words
11. Random Access Memory
a. Main computer memory is called RAM
b. random in that one may access any addressable memory unit
independently of any other
c. In almost all modern machines the smallest single addressable
amount of memory is one byte.
d. Memory is measured in megabytes
12. DRAM
a. RAM allows for both reading and writing in memory. Contrasts this
with ROM

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b. Most RAM is volatile, or dynamic. When you turn off the poer, the
contents of RAM is lost
c. Sometimes one talks about DRAM which is short for dynamic RAM.
ROM
a. Read only memory can only be read from its contents cannot be
altered or written over easily
b. This type of memory is used to hold instructions that need to always
be there and always be the same
c. Initial instructions that are executed when your PC is turned on
which instructs the machine to load.
Registers
a. Registers are memory locations that are used to facilitate the
movement of data inside a digital computer
b. Registers work in conjunction with the system clock which
determines the speed with which
c. Basic registers
Machine Language
a. Every CPU has its machine language; the set of instructions it knows
how to execute
b. A typical instruction might say: get the contents of a memory
location and put it in the accumulator register
Machine instructions
a. Instruction would consist of two numbers:
i. First would be address of memory unit to be accessed.
ii. Second is the operation code of the instruction.
Structure of Instructions
a. Suppose we used 32 bits to encode a machine language instruction
Information transfer inside the CPU
a. Individual bits in a memory unit are transferred to the CPU in
parallel
b. Opposed to serially
The memory bottleneck
a. Machine can perform dozens of instruction in the time it takes to
retrieve one item from memory
b. One solution is very fast memory in the CPU call cache memory. A
computer will typically have 1000s of bytes of cache, as opposed to
billions of bytes of RAM
Central Processing Unit
a. Manages the instruction- execution cycle
b. Fetch DECODE EXECUTE
Types of processor operations
a. Data movement operations
i. Moving data from memory to the CPU
ii. Moving data from memory to memory
iii. Input and output
b. Arithmetic and logical operations

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i. Integer arithmetic
ii. Comparing two quantities
iii. Shifting, rotating bits in a quantity
c. Program control
Challenges to increase speed
a. Thickness in atoms between the silicon layers in transistors is
getting very thin as we attempt to cram more transistors into the
same amount of space
b. Heat. More and more transistors on a chip, the ability to cool it and
keep it from burning up is increasingly a problem
c. Noise. As more transistors are packed ever more tightly together,
the noise level of the circuits increases which affects reliability.
A new computing paradigm
a. Quantum computing: seeks to use the spin of atomic particles to
implement binary digital systems
b. Molecular computing: using molecules to hold electrical charges
instead of transistors