Packet switching, the idea underneath the internet, works by doing what?

Breaking messages into pieces that travel independently

Reserving a dedicated line for each conversation

Passing all traffic through one central computer

Compressing files before they are sent

The World Wide Web was first developed at which organisation?

CERN, the European particle physics laboratory

What does HTML provide for a web page?

A description of its structure and content

The encryption that protects it in transit

The address other sites link to

What makes a hyperlink distinctive?

It points from one document directly into another

It copies text between two files

It stores a page for reading offline

It encrypts the page it sits on

The @ sign was chosen for email addresses because it did what?

Separated a person from the machine they used

Was the only spare symbol on early keyboards

Stood for "address" in commercial writing

Marked the end of a transmitted message

The "dot-com bubble" describes what?

A rush of investment in internet firms that collapsed around 2000

The first wave of home broadband

A shortage of available domain names

A legal fight over web standards

What is the purpose of a web standard published by a body such as the W3C?

To let independently built software work together

To decide which websites may be published

To set the price of internet access

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The Internet Medium ⚡ 10 Questions ⏱️ ~7 Mins +100 XP

How the Web Was Built

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The web went from an internal document system to a global one in about six years. This is how the pieces fitted together.

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~7m

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Medium

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+100

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About this topic

The internet and the web are separate inventions about twenty years apart, and confusing them obscures how each one worked. The internet is a way of moving packets between networks that do not have to agree on much. The web is one particular thing built on top of it: addresses, a markup language and a rule for requesting documents. Neither was designed to make money, and both spread partly because nobody could charge for them. These questions trace the sequence — packet switching, the protocols that joined incompatible networks, the CERN proposal, HTML, the first browsers that ordinary people used, and the investment mania that followed. The explanations pick out the decisions, such as putting the underlying software in the public domain, that made the difference.

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How the Web Was Built: all 10 questions and answers

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1Packet switching, the idea underneath the internet, works by doing what?
- A Compressing files before they are sent
- B Breaking messages into pieces that travel independently Correct
- C Reserving a dedicated line for each conversation
- D Passing all traffic through one central computer
Answer: B. Breaking messages into pieces that travel independently

Why: The pieces can take different routes and are reassembled at the far end. That is what makes the network resilient, since traffic simply flows around a broken link.
2The World Wide Web was first developed at which organisation?
- A CERN, the European particle physics laboratory Correct
- B NASA
- C The US Department of Defense
- D Bell Labs
Answer: A. CERN, the European particle physics laboratory

Why: It was proposed there in 1989 as a way for physicists to share documents across incompatible systems. CERN put the underlying software in the public domain in 1993, which is a large part of why it spread.
3What does HTML provide for a web page?
- A The encryption that protects it in transit
- B The address other sites link to
- C The speed at which it loads
- D A description of its structure and content Correct
Answer: D. A description of its structure and content

Why: Tags mark up headings, paragraphs, links and images. Appearance was later split out into CSS so a single stylesheet could govern an entire site.
4What makes a hyperlink distinctive?
- A It stores a page for reading offline
- B It encrypts the page it sits on
- C It points from one document directly into another Correct
- D It copies text between two files
Answer: C. It points from one document directly into another

Why: The idea predates the web; Vannevar Bush described an associative document machine in 1945. Links running only one way is what makes the web easy to publish to and impossible to keep tidy.
5In an address ending .org or .jp, that last part is called what?
- A The path
- B The top-level domain Correct
- C The subdomain
- D The protocol
Answer: B. The top-level domain

Why: Country codes such as .jp are two letters, while general ones such as .org began as three. Hundreds more were added after the naming system was opened up in 2013.
6Which 1993 browser is most often credited with popularising the web?
- A Mosaic Correct
- B Netscape Navigator
- C Internet Explorer
- D Opera
Answer: A. Mosaic

Why: It showed images alongside text in a single window and ran on ordinary desktop machines. Several of the people who built it went on to make Netscape Navigator.
7The @ sign was chosen for email addresses because it did what?
- A Was the only spare symbol on early keyboards
- B Stood for "address" in commercial writing
- C Marked the end of a transmitted message
- D Separated a person from the machine they used Correct
Answer: D. Separated a person from the machine they used

Why: Ray Tomlinson picked it in 1971 precisely because it could not appear in anyone's name. It had been commercial shorthand meaning "at the rate of" for centuries beforehand.
8Wikipedia was launched in which year?
- A 2005
- B 2009
- C 2001 Correct
- D 1996
Answer: C. 2001

Why: It began as a loose side project to a more tightly edited encyclopedia called Nupedia, which it rapidly overtook. Letting anyone edit produced more usable material rather than less.
9The "dot-com bubble" describes what?
- A A legal fight over web standards
- B A rush of investment in internet firms that collapsed around 2000 Correct
- C The first wave of home broadband
- D A shortage of available domain names
Answer: B. A rush of investment in internet firms that collapsed around 2000

Why: Valuations ran far ahead of revenue at companies with no route to profit. Much of the fibre-optic cable laid during the boom sat unused for years and later carried very cheap bandwidth.
10What is the purpose of a web standard published by a body such as the W3C?
- A To let independently built software work together Correct
- B To decide which websites may be published
- C To set the price of internet access
- D To register company trademarks
Answer: A. To let independently built software work together

Why: A page written to the standard should render in any browser that follows it. The alternative was the 1990s pattern of sites that worked properly in one browser only.

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Between typing an address and seeing a page, a dozen systems cooperate in under a second. A walk through the sequence.

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