1. Input Devices
2. The Display
3. Software Applications
4. The Operating System
5. The File System
6. Memory
7. The Network Environment
8. The Internet
9. Search Skills
10. Computer Specifications (Hardware Overview)

The internet is a global network of computers linked with unique IP addresses which allows communications over great distances. In many ways the internet works exactly like a local computer network, except by definition the internet's network is external, owned by noone (or everyone) and all communications over it has to be secured or must be treated as if it is public.

A great deal of smoke and mirrors obscures how the user's computer connects to the internet. The two main environments that novice users connect to the internet from are work and home. At work, administrators typically create a local network (with a local set of IP addresses) and "route" traffic to and from the internet through a "router" which exposes a single IP address to the internet. This point is where most security is imposed and is known as the "firewall". In the work milieu, only certain resources are permitted to have an inside and an outside exposure through the firewall, typically these are servers which enable inbound and outbound email. One major exception to this are instant messenger clients.

In the home environment, typically the internet service provider (ISP) maintains the relationship between a user's computer and the internet. The ISP assigns an external (internet) IP address to the user's computer, and typically maintains the inbound and outbound mail servers. At times, this means that the rest of security responsibilities are shouldered by the user.

Some users make use of a hardware firewall/router which does the same thing for the home network that it does for the work envirnment. Namely, the firewall/router creates an internal IP address space and exposes only one IP address to the internet. Other users make use of what is called a "software firewall". Software firewalls really only make sense if there is only one computer connecting to an ISP. Even then, software firewalls have earned a reputation for being challenging to set up and maintain, and many people consider relying on them for the primary layer of security as a last resort.

Beyond security, the main thing to understand about the internet is that it is like a highway with many different kinds of traffic on it. The world-wide-web is a network of computers which publish information through a network protocol "HTTP", where each "web site" has claimed a unique human-readable name (a domain, like http://www.cluelesspc.com) which allows users world-wide to forget about the IP address and access the resources by name alone. The servers which keep track of all the web site names and their corresponding IP addresses are called "domain name servers" (DNS), although really this is a misnomer, because they respond to requests (with come with a domain name) by returning the corresponding IP address. Thus DNSs might be better called "IP Address Servers".

Beyond HTTP the internet's "information superhighway" also routes email traffic, IM traffic, FTP (file transfer protocol) traffic, and much more. However, web browsing using HTTP, email, and IM currently represent the vast majority of what novice users make use of when they use the internet.