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Chapter 7 Telecommunications, the Internet, and Wireless Technology 299

FIGURE 7.10 A VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK USING THE INTERNET

This VPN is a private network of computers linked using a secure “tunnel” connection over the
Internet. It protects data transmitted over the public Internet by encoding the data and “wrapping”
them within the Internet Protocol (IP). By adding a wrapper around a network message to hide its
content, organizations can create a private connection that travels through the public Internet.

hypertext with embedded links that connect documents to one another and
that also link pages to other objects, such as sound, video, or animation files.
When you click a graphic and a video clip plays, you have clicked a hyperlink.
A typical Web site is a collection of Web pages linked to a home page.

Hypertext
Web pages are based on a standard Hypertext Markup Language (HTML),
which formats documents and incorporates dynamic links to other documents
and pictures stored in the same or remote computers (see Chapter 5). Web
pages are accessible through the Internet because Web browser software
operating your computer can request Web pages stored on an Internet
host server using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP is the
communications standard used to transfer pages on the Web. For example,
when you type a Web address in your browser, such as http://www.sec.gov,
your browser sends an HTTP request to the sec.gov server requesting the
home page of sec.gov.
HTTP is the first set of letters at the start of every Web address, followed
by the domain name, which specifies the organization’s server computer
that is storing the document. Most companies have a domain name that is
the same as or closely related to their official corporate name. The directory
path and document name are two more pieces of information within the
Web address that help the browser track down the requested page. Together,
the address is called a uniform resource locator (URL). When typed into
a browser, a URL tells the browser software exactly where to look for the
information. For example, in the URL http://www.megacorp.com/content/
features/082610.html, http names the protocol used to display Web pages,
www.megacorp.com is the domain name, content/features is the directory
path that identifies where on the domain Web server the page is stored, and
082610.html is the document name and the name of the format it is in (it is
an HTML page).

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