21/10/09

What is World Wide Web?


What is World Wide Web (WWW)?
It is a service offered on the Internet created from a group of protocols that allows the search of files or hypertexts in servers or computers, and it standardize and organize information that will be exchanged. It was created by Tim Berners Lee and Robert Cailliau.

How does it work?
It is necessary to have a browser. Then in a special box you have to indicate to the computer where to look the file you need, in example, you “say” to the computer “please search, using the Internet Protocol, in the World Wide Web the file eriescomm that is a commercial site”, of course the computer will not understand these words, consequently we write down: http:// (which is the command to use an Internet Protocol) www (here is the first place the computer is ordered to look for) eriescomm.com (this is the folder we are looking for).

What happens then? The computer using the Internet Protocol Suit connects with the server using an assignated number. Then, uses the WWW service which means that the computer is seeking a file that is in a place in the world. The file is eriescomm and the extension is commercial, that is asignated by the Domain Name System, but the computer does not understand this words, it is necessary to track a number. Here comes the role of the Uniform Resource Locator that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. Using the DNS and the URL the machine, using the Internet plataform, can locate the file easily and then show it in the screen of the first client through out a interface.

What is it for?
The World Wide Web let us share easily information and files created by us and give a big boost to the communication among communities. Without the WWW we would not be able to click on a link and get to the site we want.

FOTOS
Twenty Years Ago
WWW

Recomendamos:
JAMES GILLIES, ROBERT CAILLIAU, How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web.
MICHAEL A. BANKS, On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders.