Week 1! and they are off...

Happily the first week of Net11: Communication and Collaboration Online has us doing some simple exercises and i'm feeling positive about the topics to come. The first activity 'Thinking About Usernames' merely asked me to use namechk.com to suss out an appropriate and available username for several different sites.  I'm using (wait for it) erinsecomb.  I'm already registered on a number of the sites: twitter.com, facebook.com, LinkIn.com, and blogger.com (obviously!) to name a few.


The first topic is 'What is the Internet?'. We learn the basics about networks and the networking technology behind them (TCP/IP and packet switching).  Domain names are the alphabetised names that respresent, or are 'mapped onto' IP addresses.  Bandwidth is the available amount of communication resources.  Kind of like the amount of lanes on the highway!  A 'broadband connection' is a term applied to a high speed connection.  Using this tester I discovered that my internet connection is currently 394kbps for downloads.  Wow... no wonder it takes me so long to download the iLectures! Currently the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines broadband as any connection with a download rate above 768 kbit/s.

There are a few interesting youtube videos to watch this week and I think I am reading ahead.  I shall let this information digest and continue my reflections tomorrow.