This course is the second in our Computer Science Principles series, designed around the AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) curriculum. It is a great foundation for anyone, at any age, to prepare for careers in technology and computer science. Understanding basics like the Internet will help you understand the interplay between hardware, software, data, networks, and the people that use them.
- How the Internet was born
- Sending and receiving information on a computer
- IP addressing
- DNS, routers, and packets
- Identifying web servers with URLs
- HTTP and HTML
- Encrypting data that's sent over the Internet
Skill Level Beginner
- Humans have used various forms of communication throughout history. Communication is the basis of how we record history, entertain each other, share our deepest thoughts, preserve memories, explore science, and explore our world. Communication extends from lingual communication through speech to written communication through the alphabet and the written word to digital communication using binary values to abstract object and concepts from the real world. Digital information breaks everything down into binary bits, tiny values of either on or off, or ones and zeros.
Information can be broken down into these binary bits and shared everywhere. But in order for that to work, a system needs to be created that governs how all the computers, servers, hardware, and software work together. For decades, computers have been able to communicate with each other over networks, but for a long time, and still today, some of those networks are proprietary, meaning that they can only communicate with others that are on the same network type.
A way needed to be created to allow any computer to communicate with each other. But still gives companies the ability to create software and hardware that work with the network. That is what gave birth to the internet. What is unique about the internet is that it isn't a strict set of rules. It's a design philosophy. That is what's allowed it to grow and scale to what it is today, and allow it to evolve and expand in the future. Although the internet is a bunch of hardware and software, the design of the internet is very organic, regardless of what you're communicating and how.