Hi gang!
I hope the 1st lesson wasn’t too daunting… 
Its really simple maths anyway – just remember to divide your kbps (kilobits per second) by 1000 and you’ll have (roughly) the number of characters per second being received and transmitted (its actually 1024 – 2^10 or 2 to the 10th power,but lets not worry too much about that for the moment….)
I did mention latency in my last post – just what is latency? According to Wikipedia, latency is
“the time taken for a packet of data to be sent from one, time for encoding the packet for transmission and transmitting it, the time for that serial data to traverse the network equipment between the nodes, and the time to get the data off the circuit. This is also known as “one-way latency”. A minimum bound on latency is determined by the distance between communicating devices and the speed at which the signal propagates in the circuits (typically 70-95% of the speed of light). Actual latency is much higher, due to packet processing in networking equipment, and other traffic.”
Phew!
Here’s a shorter version:
“In a network, latency (a synonym for delay), is an expression of how much time it takes for a packet of data to get from one designated point to another.”
So, for our purposes, it means how long it takes for the data of your web page, coming out of your yet-to-be-running (!) web server, to reach the person who requested that web page – that person may be in Lithuania!
To get from where you are to Lithuania, for example, your data has to travel through many other machines before it gets there. That’s the nature of the Internet, and knowing this now will help when you may be fielding emails from your yet-to-be-running web server visitors about how “slow” your site is…
Just so you know! (it may not be your machine at all…)
Theory #2
I know you want to get going as soon as you can, but its important to understand the underlying stuff, because this is what you need to know to become a world-class web master!
TCP/IP – what is TCP/IP?
TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, which is a set of networking protocols that allows two or more computers to communicate. The Defense Data Network, part of the US Department of Defense, developed TCP/IP, and it has been widely adopted as a networking standard.
It lets two machines communicate using a standard protocol – a “conversation” that both machines understand.
WWW – what is WWW?
WWW is an acronym which stands for World Wide Web.
Who invented the World Wide Web?
The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau in 1990. In 1989, while working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), both men made proposals forhypertext systems. In 1990 they joined forces and wrote a joint proposal in which the term “World Wide Web” is used for the first time. And in late 1990 and early 1991, Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser.
(taken from http://www.boutell.com)
What are hypertext systems?
Hypertext is text that contains hyperlinks. The documents we see on the World Wide Web are the best-known example of a hypertext system.
What are hyperlinks?
A hyperlink is a link you can click on or activate with the keyboard (or other device) in order to go somewhere else. A hyperlink is defined by its function, not by its appearance. What it looks like, or sounds like, or smells like, is completely irrelevant except as a way of recognizing it. Visually impaired people follow hyperlinks with speech-based browsers and never see text at all. A hyperlink without a blue underline is still a hyperlink if your browser allows you to click on it or otherwise activate it to go somewhere else on the world wide web.
So now you have a bit of history about how the world wide web works – well, sort of….
There’s a heap of other stuff you really need to know, but at this point, I don’t want to drag you down with theory.
You just want to get going, don’t you?
Of course you do!
So! (I keep saying that, don’t I? There’s another 22 bits wasted! )
OK. Here we go.
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Well, enough for Lesson 2.
Tomorrow, we’ll learn about the DNS. And this really is a lesson which you need to learn.
So until then, think of a topic that you are really passionate about, and get ready to download some software to get you up and running, and which will let you show your passion to the world (wide web!)
Until then…
Be on the lookout for Lesson 3.
As always, comments and suggestions are most welcome.
