Lesson 3 Website Critique

ICANN - http://www.icann.org/
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
A non-profit established to maintain stability and interoperability on the
Internet, it cooridinates unique Internet addresses around the world. It coordinates the DNS, the Domain Name System.
(I am learning a lot from this site. The language and presentation are easy for a novice like me to pick up.)

Things I am learning: Registrars are companies that compete with one and other for your domain name.

I like the Glossary of Internet Terminology. I can reference it when reading. For example, I quickly found that gTLD stands for generic top level domain. What does that mean? Examples are .com, .net, and .org. These can be registered without restriction. They were created, along with four others (.edu,.gov.,.int.,and .mil) in the 1980's. Seven more were added in 2001 and 2002. Some are sponsored, meaning they are regulated by the community of which they are a part, while the unsponsored
TLD's fall under the jurisdiction of ICANN. (I think I got that right.)

Anyway, just going through the glossary from a to z is good for learning new Internet vocab. It's also good for reinforcing the terms that you hear on a daily basis.

Internet Traffic Report - http://www.internettrafficreport.com/main.htm
Shows numerically the global flow of data and reliability of connections. If you are having trouble reaching sites, you can check the traffic report to see if it is a global or a local problem. The Global Index measures the response time of servers,
Internet traffic, in paticular round-trip travel time, is measured with a test called "ping." The router is like a traffic cop. Packet loss measures the reliability of a connection. Packets are sent along the router. If they don't all make it back, that is "packet loss."

You can look up various routers around the world and see their index. The closest one geographically is in Georgia. Is that where I'd look to see if I am having slow response time?

Yesterday the ISP that our library uses (Windstream) had a nationwide outage. Our internet was down all day. I'm thinking that this would not be something reflected at the ITR since this seems to be measuring routers.

Pew (non-profit research center) - http://pewresearch.org/
A "fact tank" that analyses trends in society through polling, news analysis, and other measurements. A couple of the projects that look interesting to me are the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Nielson Net Ratings (private research center) - http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/ I still need to go to this website. I am getting into a little trouble with falling behind because I'm hitting snags with trying to create my pages. More on that elsewhere in this blog. Let me find out where. . .