Click here for further information on key dates in the Internet Timeline.

Internet Hierarchy

ICANN Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers - a non-profit private corporation
based in Los Angeles U.S.A.
Functions as the IANA — Internet Assigned Numbers Authority —
previously run by Jon Postel, deceased, 1943-1998
Click here for its early history, first at UCLA then USC.

Responsible for the allocation of IPv4 addresses 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 via five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).
On Feb 3rd 2011, this free pool of IPv4 address space was depleted.

Click here to see each country's IPv4 allocation, US allocated 1.2 billion, China 350 million, Japan 200 million, Germany 135 million, UK 125 million, South Korea 115 million, Brazil 90 million, France 84 million, Canada 74 million, Australia (and also Italy) 57 million, Netherlands 54 million, India 47 million, Russia 45 million, etc. See below re IPv6 with its huge numbers available to be allocated, no shortage there.

IANA also oversees a small root zone file of IP addresses for the registries of the *1446 Top Level Domains (TLDs) .com, .uk, .au, .cn etc which it publishes on thirteen root name servers operated by twelve organizations.

Asia Pacific Regional Internet Registry .au TLD Name registry for Australia, and generic .com and .net TLD Name registries based in the US
APNIC - Asia Pacific Network Information Centre based in South Brisbane.
As of April 14th 2011, all of its IPv4 address space was allocated. While fragments are still being recovered and reissued, IPv6 (with 128 bit addressing) is seen by IANA as the future. Click here for more details.
 
Previously with IPv4 (32 bit addressing) it would receive allocations in blocks of 16 million addresses which it reallocated in smaller blocks of, say, 64000 addresses to
 
ISP's - Internet Service Providers e.g. Telstra, Optus, iiNet, iPrimus, TPG, etc. The ISP's then allocate individual addresses, e.g. 202.139.83.152, to each computer, as required.
 
Within APNIC there are also seven National Internet Registries (NIRs) in Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam and India.
.auDA: is the Australian Government endorsed body that administers the .au domain space.
In July 2018 they appointed US-based body Afilias to supply its registry services which includes publishing the file of server addresses for all the .au domains.
E.g. swcs.com.au which is currently located on the Quadra Hosting network.
 
The domain's manager (Stephen Williamson) keeps Afilias updated through his registrar with any changes to the IP addresses of the swcs.com.au name servers.
 
Whenever the host is located via a name server, your ISP caches (remembers) its name and its IP address for, say, 24 hours, then deletes the record automatically. The cache reduces Internet traffic, and the automatic deletion (which means that the next time the name is requested, the ISP has to look it up again), enables a domain to change server hosts with only a 24 hour time delay for most ISP's to be updated.
 
Your PC saves a copy of the actual page in its cache, downloading a fresh copy only after a certain period of time, or when the user presses the refresh button.
Verisign: is the organization which actually maintains the root zone file, administers two root servers and supplies registry services for the generic .com and .net domains including google.com and microsoft.com
 
Google and other Search Engines store words and phrases, associating them with unique domain / page names.
 
They do this by simply following the hyperlinks within the web pages they know about, thus discovering new ones, and are thus building and refreshing the information in their databases continually.
 
Also, thus, when they display a search result, it may be a somewhat "stale" copy of the page. When you click on the link to download it, you then see the latest copy.

Although Google's statistics show penetration of IPv6 is increasing with the USA currently on 52%, there is still high use of IPv4 addresses worldwide. China's figures show just 5% are using IPv6, well, they do have 350 million IPv4 numbers available to their network.
In other countries in the Asia Pacific region, Australia's current IPv6 usage is 30%, Japan is at 53%, and India is 73%. Click here to see these stats. Click here to see your IPv6 & IPv4 address.

* Examples of Top Level Domain Registries: .com=160million (administered by Verisign), .cn=20million (China), .de=17million (Germany), .net=13million (also admin by Verisign), .uk=11million, .org=10million, .nl=6million (Netherlands), .ru=5.8million, .br=5million (Brussels), .au=4.2million, .fr=4.1million, .xyz=3.88million (Generic British-based) .eu=3.7million, .it=3.5million

Note, the latest Domain Name Industry Brief says that 2022 ended with 350 million registrations across all TLDs, substantially fewer than the 367.3 million it reported at the end of the third quarter in 2021. Verisign no longer counts the six Pacific and African ccTLDs managed by Freenom, notably .tk, which had contributed 24.7 million names to the Q3 2021 tally.
The report says: "the .tk, .cf, .ga, .gq and .ml ccTLDs have been excluded from all applicable calculations, due to an unexplained change in estimates for the .tk zone size and lack of verification from the registry operator for these TLDs."

 

https://www.swcs.com.au /smartantennas.htm

Internet in Australia

Recent email sent re the Internet in Australia June 19, 2014

Great seeing John, Tim, and Dave at Maccas after prayer and fellowship with Kingsley at the Church.

Guys, I’ve just updated my standard web page for smartphones (as well as PCs), very fast link, click on Christian Books and Media, and it’ll take you straight to an “etymologies” link, alphabetically sorted. Click on the image file below, you’ll see what I mean. Just added that work I spent “hours” on earlier this week on “book of judges” and “jubilee years”.

No video advertisements, hopefully fast response even on mobile coverage.

Talking about smartphones and mobile coverage outside Brisbane/Sydney/Melbourne/Perth, further to John and Tim’s comments at Maccas, Whirlpool have a chat-page on this that has been running for two-three years. I looked through it, it’s long, but it has some good background.

The big issue with the Internet of course is there is no centralised network, if a packet of your data file, say 1500 bytes, isn’t acknowledged within say, one second, uploading or downloading over TCP/IP, the packet is simply resent at set intervals until it either gets through or you give up. With multi-megabyte image files, advertisements, movies, and hundreds of mobile users trying to grasp some small slice of radio spectrum on the same base station, you get noise db problems, and continual automatic resending, and it just compounds the issue. Hmmm, yes, poor Telstra.

With ADSL, at least you get a dedicated line as an individual user, though the telephone line quality at times is poor. Television coax cable is of course the best, it has 1000 times the spectrum of telephone cable, you may be sharing the spectrum with up to 200 other users simultaneously, but generally it’s pretty fast and good.

But getting back to that article above — it started in 2011 with a fair few queries/complaints, it’s a long article and still going, it hit a bit of a climax mid-last year with Telstra’s new, portable, smart antennas (boosting signals inside buildings) — you can pay them off at a good monthly rate. See the comments by bransby1 in this extract from the page.

Smartantenna2.htm


 

lisa1983.htm

Apple Lisa 1983

APPLES Lisa and Mac, Steve Jobs's NeXT computer and HTML, 25 years on

Extract from an email to friends sent July 10, 2014

I do deeply remember back in 1983-1984, the Apple Lisa / Macintosh debacle, especially with NASA, no, they were not impressed after all the investment / infrastructure that they put in place with the Lisa. I imagine a few heads rolled. Here’s the article in Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Apple_Lisa#Reception

I often wonder if Apple management got a bit shirty with Steve Jobs, with what they must have copped from NASA, with the much cheaper Macintosh coming out a year later, and using different software. Because he left in 1985, then brought out the NeXT computer, which then became the computer used when Tim Berners-Lee developed HTML1 at CERN in Geneva in 1989. A language that not only "wrote" pages, but could also "read back" your queries, providing a simple search mechanism. Click here re HTML's launch in the US in 1991-92 — on another NeXT computer — and how it then "took off".

The thing about the HTML rules that are in its markup language, they’re completely free to learn, they’re very, very simple (I think), you don’t need to buy Adobe Acrobat to set out the document like you generally do if generating a PDF, you can use Notepad, it’s fine and it’s free, and importantly, every browser on the market supports all the main markup rules that came out in HTML1 through to HTML5. Twenty-five years later.

Some of the older versions of current browsers (pre 2010) only support the rules up to HTML4 ( which came out in 1997).

HTML5, yes, is discouraging the use of certain "internal" table markup rules, recommending new "external" stylesheet rules instead, due to the limited width in screen space on smartphones.

But the literally billions of web pages, so many electronic documents, out there being picked up by Google, no browser is currently not endeavouring to do the best it can on smartphones with those tables, because some of those documents may be pretty valuable to look at, and may not be, may never be changed.

Interesting. Steve

 

https://www.swcs.com.au /GoogleApps.htm

Google Apps vs Office 365

Google Apps vs Office 365 email sent August 22, 2014

Hi Chris

Had a quick, hopefully objective, look at a comparison between using Google Apps and using Microsoft Office 365 for your networking needs (noting always that Australia can be a bit slow when it comes to uploading data).

But yes, $5 per month per office user, gives you a pretty cheap network for you to log into, anywhere in the world.

And if you use Gmail collaboratively, and not MS Outlook, for your email and calendar needs, you do get those ads, yuk, yuk, but you save a fair bit of money each month.

Blessings Steve

http://stylefactoryproductions.com /blog/office-365-vs-google-apps

** End of email

 

https://www.swcs.com.au /PHPandHTML.htm

PHP and HTML

And PHP and HTML — an endeavour to briefly explain the difference email sent August 23, 2014

Hi Chris

Firstly HTML

Webpage files on your smartphone, tablet, desktop come down as “hypertext”, with markup commands / instructions for the browser (Android, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape — these are all browser programs written by different companies) and they are all free programs that run under the hardware’s operating system.

The webpage files tell the browser program how to markup, layout the page using graphic images, background colours, text, and importantly, hypertext, it’s called that because it references (“hyperlinks”) to other text, which the browser can immediately access, through standard rules in the language.

This markup language, HTML, is universal, it has to be, else the different browsers would get the file / files and wouldn't know what to do with them

 

Now PHP

The second two letters of PHP stand for “Hypertext Preprocessor”. It’s a free language that runs on servers. Because it’s free, it is very popular out there.

If you’re a business, then you’re paying for a server to host your webpages, and paying for IT people to program, not only the HTML that’s going to be downloaded, but also the pre-processing that’ll need to occur whenever you need to finetune what the customer has requested.

If they’ve requested their account statement, it needs to look up those figures on an SQL database. If they’ve requested the status of their order, it’s had to look up that status. etc, etc. So yes, there are many, many more commands available to run on the server, and that can be, yes, more complex, more labour-intensive in the programming, debugging (and ultimately can be pretty expensive). But to get the job done, that’s what you'll need.

Trust that’s a little clearer. Cheers Steve

** End of email

 

https://www.swcs.com.au /basicHTML.htm

Basic HTML Commands

Basic HTML Commands

Hyper Text Markup Language

Firstly a brief background

The commonly used HTML tags referred to below are those applicable to HTML4. Click here to "dive" into HTML5.

 

HTML Tags

The first thing to remember about HTML tags is that most of them are used in pairs, ie., they have an opening and closing tag. Whenever you use a tag - say <span> - you must also close it off with another tag - in this case, </span>. Note the slash - / - before the word "span"; is what distinguishes a closing tag from an opening tag. A few of the HTML tags (br p li image hr) do not need a closing tag. All HTML commands are enclosed in <> braces. These <> brace sequences are what the Internet browser uses in determining how a page should be displayed.

All special HTML character entities and foreign characters are enclosed in & ; braces e.g. &lt; will display the < character.

Use of colour in the HTML commands. In the HTML tags listed, items shown in green are HTML command tags. Items in blue then illustrate actual HTML coding with the results of that coding shown immediately after it. Note, HTML command tags may be entered in either upper or lower case (or a combination of upper and lower case).

 

Click here for more information on these commands.



Text Tags    Return to Top of Menu

<center></center>
Centers a portion of text

<center>This text is centered</center>
This text is centered

<hl></hl> (h and the number one)
Creates the largest headline

<hl>Biggest Heading</hl>

Biggest Heading



Please note HTML tags can be combined. In this next example the center and the h1 tags are combined. Also, note that the closing HTML tags must be in the opposite order (work from inside out).
<center><hl>Biggest Heading Centered</hl></center>

Biggest Heading Centered


<h2></h2> (h and the number two)
Creates the next biggest headline. Heading Numbers range from 1 to 6. One is the largest and six is the smallest.

<h2>Next Biggest Heading</h2>

Next Biggest Heading


<h6></h6> (h and the number six)
Creates the smallest headline

<h6>Smallest Heading</h6>
Smallest Heading

<b></b>
Creates bold text

<b>Bold Print</b>
Bold Print
<i></i>
Creates italic text

<i>Italic Print</i>
Italic Print
<font size=?></font>
Sets size of font, from 1 to 7.

<font size="3">Example of size 3</font>
Example of size 3 font
<span></span>
Alternative span command that changes Font size and, optionally, Font family

<span style='font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial'>This is an example of a span that changes the font size to 16pt and the font family to Arial.</span>
This is an example of a span that changes the font size to 16pt and the font family to Arial.
<font color=?></font>
Sets font color, using name or hex value. Note that the color and size tags may be set into the same command.

<font color="red" size="2">Red text size equal 2</font>
Red text size equal 2

<font color="#ff0000" size="2">Same using hex color codes</font>
Same using hex color codes

Note: Good site for HTML Color Codes.
<pre></pre>
Preformatted text - the text is displayed the same way it is typed. Sometimes this is used to get text to align in columns. However, the table command (below) is a much better command to use to align text in columns.

<pre>
This is an example of the pre command.

When you use this command type the
text exactly as you wish it to appear.

Column 1   Column 2   Column 3
  item1      item2      item3
  item4      item5      item6
</pre>
<tt></tt>
Creates teletype, or typewriter-style text

<tt>This is an example of teletype text.</tt>
This is an example of teletype text.
<cite></cite>
Creates a citation, usually italic

<cite>This is an example of a citation.</cite>
This is an example of a citation.
<br>
Inserts a line break (line feed).

<a href="URL"></a>
Creates a hyperlink.

The URL can be either of two formats.
  • First format: If the link is to a page external to your web site then the link must be preceded by http://. For example http://www.yahoo.com.
     
  • Second Format: If you were linking to a page hosted at your own domain (i.e. on your own website), the http://www.yourdomain.com portion of the URL could be omitted. For example if the URL was http://www.yourdomain.com /example/images/mylink.htm, where yourdomain.com was your own website you could reference it as /example/images/mylink.htm.
A link to <a href="http://www.google.com"> google.com</a>.
A link to google.com.
<a href="mailto:EMAIL"></a>
Creates a mailto link


Send an email to <a href="mailto:steve@swcs.com.au"> steve@swcs.com.au</a>.

Send an email to steve@swcs.com.au.

Formatting Blocks    Return to Top of Menu

<div>
Creates a new division
<p>
Creates a new paragraph. Inserts an extra line feed prior to the beginning of the text.
<p align=?>
Aligns a paragraph to the left, right, or center
<blockquote>
</blockquote>

Indents text from both sides

<blockquote>This is an example of a blockquote.</blockquote>
This is an example of a blockquote.

<ol></ol>
Creates a numbered list

<ul></ul>
Creates a bulleted list

<li>
Precedes each list item, and adds a number

Numbered list.

<ol>
<li>Line 1.
<li>Line 2.
<li>Line 3.
</ol>
  1. Line 1.
  2. Line 2.
  3. Line 3.



Bulleted list.

<ul>
<li>Item 1.
<li>Item 2.
<li>Item 3.
</ul>
  • Item 1.
  • Item 2.
  • Item 3.


Graphical Elements    Return to Top of Menu

<img src="URL">
Adds an image. Please note the URL is the same format as described in the <a href="URL"> command above.
<img src="URL" align=?>
Aligns an image: left, right, center; bottom, top, middle
<img src="URL" height=? width=?>
Aligns an image with the height and width set. Setting the height and width of the image allows the browser to load the page fractionally quicker and without "jiggling" the page since it knows beforehand how much space to allocate to the image.
<img src="URL" border=?>
Sets size of border around an image

Insert the swcs logo and have it left aligned with no border and with height and width set.
Note: The align, height, width, and border tags are optional.

<img src="https://www.swcs.com.au /swcslogo.gif" height="54" width="65" align="left" border="0">



<hr>
Inserts a horizontal rule
<hr size=?>
Sets size (height) of rule
<hr width=?>
Sets width of rule, in percentage or absolute value
<hr noshade>
Creates a rule without a shadow

Insert an unshaded ruler of height 4 and width 300.

<hr size="4" noshade width="300">



Tables    Return to Top of Menu

<table></table>
Creates a table
<tr></tr>
Sets off each row in a table
<td></td>
Sets off each cell in a row
<th></th>
Sets off the table header (a normal cell with bold, centered text)

Table Attributes
<table border=#>
Sets width of border around table cells
<table cellspacing=#>
Sets amount of space between table cells
<table cellpadding=#>
Sets amount of space between a cell's border and its contents
<table width=# or %>
Sets width of table — in pixels or as a percentage of document width
<tr align=?> or <td align=?>
Sets alignment for cell(s) (left, center, or right)
<tr valign=?> or <td valign=?>
Sets vertical alignment for cell(s) (top, middle, or bottom)
<td width=# or %>
Sets width of cell — in pixels or as a percentage of table width
<td colspan=#>
Sets number of columns a cell should span (default=1)
<td rowspan=#>
Sets number of rows a cell should span (default=1)
<td nowrap>
Prevents the lines within a cell from being broken to fit

Three further notes re styles in Heading layouts

 

With all due appreciation to InfoSports which provided much of the background to this page

** End of article

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