Behind the Scenes

Servers

All content, including text, images and graphics, audio and video, live on a computer or series of servers, called a server.

You find that information on the server, and pull it over the Internet using the web and a browser to your computer. Your computer is often called a “client server.”

Terms and Concepts

IP addresses

Every computer has an address, called an IP number. It is a series of numbers. Your computer has an IP number.

Domain name or URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

This is the address for a particular web site. Since words are easier to remember than a series of numbers, a commission assigns words a specific IP address. So when you type in www.site.com you go to the IP address assigned to ‘site.’ This is the hosting server with files, information, or web sites. It is easy to find out what your IP address is. Use this site and see what information you can find. http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup

Most servers are powerful computers commonly stored on shelves at an Internet Service Provider (ISP), and continually connected to the Internet. Places with large numbers (hundreds or thousands) of servers are sometimes called server farms.

Client Server

This is your computer, or any computer accessing the Internet.

Cookies

Cookies are identification tags which tell the server where you are, so it knows where to send the information you want. In order to participate in chats, forums, purchase online or engage in other interactivity, you have to tell the server where you are - cookies do this.

You should know, when you make a comment in an online chat, you provide your IP address to the host server. So even though you may not sign your real name to a comment, for example, if the people managing the host server wanted to track down a particular comment to a particular IP address, they could. Thus, your “anonymous” comment is far from anonymous.