The best way to start with the internet is to start with what you are reading right now--a "web page." This is the most fundamental article available on our site, and we wanted it as part of the main links to demonstrate our committment to the education of our clients.

For you to read this page on your screen, there are several steps involved. When you first typed in www.compasspointmedia.com in your browser (usually Netscape or Internet Explorer) and hit enter, your browser accessed your computer's network settings either by a dial up (modem) connection or a network card (including DSL, T1, and Cable modem, whichever you have), and sent out a request to your ISP that basically said "I want compasspointmedia.com." Your ISP of course was impressed by your wise choice, but it didn't know where compasspointmedia.com was located. Your ISP went to the nearest machine on the series of fiber-optic lines called the "Internet." The machine then directed the request to the appropiate "name handler," called a nameServer, that handles our site. The name handler then sent the request to the appropriate Server, which is the physical computer that holds the files and picture files that you are looking at.

We're halfway there, and since I'm assuming you understood that, the next part is easy: our server sends out this file, called "internet_primer.asp." When the browser receives the file, it sees that it also has embedded in it names of other files, in this case picture files. The image you see a the top is called "layout_version_02_wide_r1_c1.gif" (Long name I know but that's what you get with computers). The Blue and Gray "Knowledge Base" image at the top is also an image. The page you are looking at has instructions to your browser on where the images go, where the text goes, basically what the page is going to look like. The instructions themselves are written in a language called HTML. What you are seeing is the RESULT of the instructions in this page, not the actual code of the page.

The page itself is sent over the internet in chuncks called "packets." As this happens, my server is constantly asking "did you get that packet OK?" to which your browser replys, "Yes--got it OK," and then my server sends your browser another packet, and so on, until the entire page is sent. If any packet is not received, however, my server keeps resending it until your server says "OK, I got it."

To appreciate what is going on, you need to realize that the people who designed the coding and the various machines made HTML so that it would be a common language. That means that web pages can be viewed whether you have a Macintosh or a PC, whether you are running Windows or Unix or Linux or WHATEVER.

On the other hand, it's important to realize that as languages can be interpreted differently by different people, the same thing happens in HTML. You may have 15" monitor, while I have a 19" monitor. Your browser displays many aspects of an image dependent upon your screen resolution. Also, although most parts of a page will be put together the same in both Netscape and Internet Explorer, some small details will be different. If all this seems extremely complicated, well, it is and it isn't. You're not alone in your opinions; I sometimes marvel that the system works at all.

The other thing to appreciate about the internet is that a tremendous amount of information can only be sent at a finite rate. For a fast connection like a T1 line, this can be blindingly fast. But for a dial-up, 56K modem, things take a little bit longer. It is the responsibility of a good Website designer to take these limitations into consideration when designing pages. A great deal of our design process involves testing the speed at which pages load. Large complex images increase file sizes dramatically, so a good programmer learns to be frugal with how he designs.

What About Email?
It may surprise you that of all of the "packets" that go across the internet, most of them are not HTML pages like the one you are reading, but are email messages. Just about everyone, from executives to Grandmothers from Pasadena, use the internet to send email messages. The most important thing to remember is that emails are sent by a "hand-off" system that ensures that each relay point along the way has the message correct. Just as web pages are sent by using the HTML protocol, email messages are sent using a protocol called SMTP (which stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).

Let's suppose your email is sam@yahoo.com. Your are the sender of an email to ruby@aol.com. After you compose the message and hit "send," the message is sent through your ISP to a "mail handler" called an SMTP server. We'll assume for this example your ISP is Earthlink. The Earthlink Mail Server stores your email as a file, and adds a "stamp" at the top which gives information about itself for all other future handlers of this email.

At regular intervals, the mail server goes through each email in its bin and sends it out. It looks at the domain of the intended receiver, Ruby, which is aol.com. The earthlink mail server then goes onto the internet and searches for to location of the AOL mail server. Actually AOL may have several mail servers but it is able to hand the message off to any of them. This transfer is really the same as getting an HTML page like we discussed earlier, but this time something else also happens. When the sending mail server (Earthlink) confirms that the receiving server has gotten the email and saved the file, it then deletes the email for its own bin. This is that "hand off" that takes place. SMTP is so reliable that there is almost never a problem in handing off emails from server to server. Suffice it to say it's more reliable than the Postal Service.

When the AOL server receives the email, it also adds a "stamp" to the top of the email, with the date and time, and information about itself for the benefit of the next server. If however this is the server that handles mail for Ruby, it is stored on the mail server until Ruby calls into AOL. The same hand-off applies here also; the mail server will not delete the message until it has confirmed that it has been properly saved on Ruby's computer.

Actually I almost forgot something. When the AOL server receives the email from Earthlink, it is going to check and see if it has any user with an account named "Ruby." If there is, nothing more is done than otherwise; however if there is no Ruby at AOL, then the AOL Server will respond with a message "Sorry, I can't deliver that, there's nobody here by that name." This error message then gets sent all the way back down the line to Sam, who finds out that Ruby isn't at AOL (which I think is smart, but I don't voice personal opinions on my website of course).


Compass Point Media
Los Angeles, CA
310 701 3129
213 386 8829 Fax
info@compasspointmedia.com