What is a web server?
Hardware
A web server is a computer sitting on the internet with an address. When you type its address into a web browser it returns a web page. The point of a web server is that they are always on, providing your website day and night even when you or your organisation have gone home for the day.
A web server holds all the files that make up your website. They also often act as a mail server which handles all the emails that use the same domain name as your website.
What is a network?
Hardware
If you connect a computer to another computer, you have a network. If you connect a computer to lots of other computers you also have a network. It is just a lot of computers connected to one another in a way that they can communicate with each other.
The internet is just the biggest network of computers where any computer connected to the internet is part of this global network. It is huge, but it is just a network of computers.
If you are on the internet, your computer is connected to a server (just another computer) which is connected to lots of other servers around the world.
What is a server?
Hardware
A server is just a computer like any home computer but often a little more powerful. The job of a server is to process and transfer data and on the internet they act like switchboards, transferring data from one computer to another.
A web server is the same but the content to be transferred is already on that server. You ask it for a web page and it transfers it to your computer. A web server will have an address called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. Every computer on the internet has an IP address.
Information is sent in packets, each with the destination’s IP address on them rather like postcards with a postal address on them.
There are other kinds of servers such as mail servers for all the email buzzing around the web. They all perform a service that the machine is normally dedicated to.
What is a computer?
Hardware
A computer is a machine used to enter information and receive an answer. Basically, that’s all it does.
The common method for entering data is by typing something into a keyboard, or moving a mouse around. The computer then takes this data, plays with it in a pre-determined way and returns an answer on the screen.
A computer uses programs to determine how to play around with the data. For example, if you open up a word processor and type the words “Hello World”, the program will take the keyboard input, and display it directly on the screen.
Inside a standard computer, be it a laptop, desktop or even a mobile phone there are three main elements. The first is the Central Processing Unit (CPU) this does all the clever stuff with the data. It can do countless calculations every second and works tirelessly the minute you switch the machine on.
The second element is the memory. This stores current data such as the program being run, and any data you input as well as data it has fetched to show you. If you compare a computer to a brain, this is the short term memory. It is very fast but not very large.
The third element would be the long term memory. This is usually a hard drive. This type of memory is very slow, but much larger and is used for saving files and storing away data for a later date. The great thing about this type of memory is that it remains in place even after the machine has been switched off.