| EnServe Administrators Manual |
|
Important Concepts - Browsing The Web |
|
Overview.One of the most popular uses of the Internet is the World Wide Web (WWW or Web).At its most basic the World Wide Web is a collection of files stored on millions of different computers all connected to the Internet. When a person uses a web browser like Internet Explorer or Netscape to view a web page they are copying files from one or more web servers, across the Internet, to their own computer which then organises, formats and displays the files as a single page in the web browser window. A web page may be made up of text, images or any other type of files. It is up to the browser to decide how to display each type of file, some are shown in place on the page while others require an extra program to use as a viewer or editor. Web pages usually contain hyperlinks, these are special areas of the page content that, when clicked with the mouse, tell the web browser to load a specific web page. Using these links a person can navigate easily between pages. Wandering from page to page looking for something specific is what is known as browsing the web. The beauty of the WWW is that it is largely platform independent. That means that it should look and act pretty much the same regardless of what browser and operating system you use to view it. This broad availability is the core of the World Wide Web's appeal. The web browser often stores a copy of the files that make up a web page on the computer hard drive after they have been viewed. Later, when the person tries to view a web page containing any of those files the browser checks to see if the files on the web server are different add if not loads them from the computers hard-drive rather than waste time copying them from the web-server. This store of recently visited files is called a cache or web-cache.
The WWW has grown immensely larger and more sohpisticated in the past couple of decades. There are now millions of web sites and billions of pages available to anyone with a web browser and an Internet connection. It is still, however, a largely unpoliced, unregulated environment with a population of billions. It therefore pays to learn about the World Wide Web before venturing on to it. Sadly a detailed discussion on the joys and dangers of living with the Web is well beyond the scope of this document.
The EnServe and The Web.The EnServe can allow people using your network to browse the WWW from their computers by acting as a gateway from your network to the Internet.The EnServe can also allow control of which computers on the network have access to browse the WWW.
The EnServe Web Cache.The EnServe can provide a network-wide web-caching service. Instead of the browsers on every computer on your network storing their own copies of recently accessed files the EnServe can store copies of all files recently accessed by any computer on the network. The EnServe checks all requests for files on the WWW and if it has a copy of a requested file it sends the copy to the browser instead of spending time downloading it from the WWW. Sharing the stored files between all the computers on your network this way can significantly speed up web browsing. |