July 2006
Beginner
459 pages
12h 42m
English
Content preview from The Internet: The Missing ManualBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Chapter 1. Getting Online
The Internet, as you may have heard, is a parallel universe. It’s a travel agency, bank teller, music store, video player, radio station, and newspaper wire service, not to mention a bulletin board, chat room, post office, and global chess tournament. Or at least the Internet can be all that stuff if you can connect to it. That can be the tricky part.
The basic components you need for Internet fun include:
Internet service. Lots of stuff on the Internet’s free, but getting to the Internet usually isn’t. In fact, you have to sign up for an account with somebody—your cable TV company, phone company, or an outfit like America Online—to get your computer connected.
Equipment. Your computer may already have what it takes to get you online: a modem (if you want to get online via phone lines), an Ethernet jack (to connect by network wire), or a wireless card (to connect wire lessly). Details in a moment.
Internet software. If you’re going to send email and browse the World Wide Web, you need special programs to do so. Luckily, your computer came with these programs already on the hard drive.
This chapter explains each of these elements in more detail.
This chapter also describes each of the three primary methods people use to get their computers connected to the Internet these days, in this order:
Broadband connections. These are high-speed, extremely satisfying connections that are growing in popularity—but they’re fairly expensive.
Dial-up connections. Your computer ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.