Web Servers: The Center of 1,000 Universes Whether on an intranet or on the Internet, Web servers are a key repository of human knowledge. Indeed, there is a movement afoot that attempts to store every byte of every server that was ever brought on-line. The logic is compelling, even if the goal seems daunting: Never before has so much human knowledge been so available. Besides being easily accessed, Web servers have another ability that nothing in history, other than books, has had: They serve both text and graphics with equal ease. And, like CDs, they have little trouble with audio and video files | Working with Active Server Pages - Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Understanding Internet Intranet Development This chapter was written for a special group of people those who had an unusually good sense of timing and waited until the advent of Active Server Pages ASP to get involved with Internet intranet development. The chapter surveys an important part of the ASP development environment the packet-switched network. You will learn what this important technology is and how it works inside your office and around the world. The chapter also is a cursory treatment of Internet intranet technology details await you in later pages of the book see the From Here. section at the end of this chapter for specific chapter references . In this chapter you learn about The hardware of the Internet First look at the plumbing that enables your software to operate. One important Internet hardware feature affects how you use all of your Internet applications. The software of the Internet Learn about the software of the World Wide Web as well as that of its poor relation the OfficeWide Web. The protocols of the Internet Take a quick look under the hood of the Web and anticipate a thorough treatment of Internet protocols in later chapters . Understanding the Hardware That Makes the Internet Possible The Internet is like one vast computer. It is a collection of individual computers and local area networks LANs . But it is also a collection of things called routers and other kinds of switches as well as all that copper and fiber that connects everything together. Packet-Switched Networks Begin your exploration of this world of hardware by looking at the problem its founding fathers and mothers were trying to solve. A Network Born of a Nightmare A great irony of the modern age is that the one thing that threatened the extinction of the human race motivated the development of the one thing that may liberate more people on this planet than any military campaign ever could. The Internet was conceived
