AQA Computer Science A-Level
4.9.3 The Internet
Advanced Notes
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Specification:
4.9.3.1 The Internet and how it works:
Understand the structure of the Internet.
Understand the role of packet switching and routers.
Know the main components of a packet.
Define:
● router
● gateway
Consider where and why they are used.
Explain how routing is achieved across the Internet.
Describe the term 'uniform resource locator' (URL) in the context of
internetworking.
Explain the terms ‘fully qualified domain name’ (FQDN), ‘domain name’
and ‘IP address’.
Describe how domain names are organised.
Understand the purpose and function of the domain service and its
reliance on the Domain
Name Server (DNS) system.
Explain the service provided by Internet registries and why they are
needed.
4.9.3.2 Internet security:
Understand how a firewall works (packet filtering, proxy server, stateful
inspection).
Explain symmetric and asymmetric (private/public key) encryption and
key exchange.
Explain how digital certificates and digital signatures are obtained and
used.
Discuss worms, trojans and viruses, and the vulnerabilities that they
exploit.
Discuss how improved code quality, monitoring and protection can be
used to address worms, trojans and viruses.
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The structure of the Internet
The Internet is defined as a network of interconnected
computer networks which uses an end-to-end communication
protocol.
The Internet is mostly a wired network, with cables that pass
under oceans to connect different continents.
Internet service providers
An internet service provider (or ISP) is a company that
provides its customers with access to the Internet. The
largest internet service providers are national companies and
are referred to as national internet service providers.
National internet service providers provide internet access to
smaller regional and local ISPs, from whom homes and
businesses can buy access to the Internet.
Packet switching and routers
A packet is a container in which data is transmitted over networks. You can think of a
packet as an envelope in the postal system, they’re labelled with addresses for their
sender and recipient and contain information intended for the recipient.
A packet switched network is one in which data is sent in
packets. One message is frequently split into multiple
packets, each of which is sent to its recipient via the best
possible route before being reassembled with other
packets by its recipient.
When a packet is sent through a
network, it usually has to pass through
a number of routers before reaching its
destination. A router uses the recipient
address on a packet to determine
where to send the packet. Every time
that a packet passes through a router,
a hop is said to occur.
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Each packet can only pass through a finite number of hops. A packet’s time to live (or TTL)
is a number that indicates how many hops the packet can partake in and is reduced by
one with each hop. When a packet’s TTL expires, the packet is said to be dropped,
meaning that the packet is deleted. The recipient will notice a missing packet and request
that the sender transmits the missing packet again.
The primary components of a packet
Component of packet Purpose
Sender’s address Identifies where the packet was sent from, and therefore
where the response should be sent to.
Receiver's address Identifies the packet’s intended recipient, allowing it to be
routed to the correct device.
Packet contents Where the packet holds the data that is being transferred.
Time to live (TTL) Holds the number of hops a packet can go through before
being dropped.
Sequence number Contains the number of packets in a message and identifies
a packet’s position in relation to others. This allows packets
to be reassembled in the correct order and allows missing
packets to be identified.
Routers and gateways
Two types of network device, routers and gateways, both perform essentially the same
job. They connect different networks, allowing packets to reach their destination.
Routers send packets to their recipient via the fastest
possible route. This might be the route that involves the
lowest number of hops or the route that is least congested at
the time. Routers hold tables with information relating to the
fastest routes to certain devices which they frequently update
so as to enable maximum performance.
Where two networks use different protocols, packets must be
modified so as to conform to both protocols. This is where
gateways come in, they strip away most of the packet’s
details, leaving just the packet’s contents. The gateway will then give packets new sender
and receiver addresses which comply to the new protocol.
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Uniform resource locators
A uniform resource locator (or URL) is an address assigned to files on the Internet.
Different protocols can be used in URLs to access different types of files in different ways.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology/index.html
Take for example the URL above. Each part of URL is broken down in the table below.
Part of URL Purpose
https:// The protocol being used to access a file. HTTPS stands for hypertext
transfer protocol secure.
www Subdomain for world wide web. This will usually point to the web
server hosted at the following domain. Other subdomains can be
used to point to specific directories, for example: news.bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk Domain. BBCis the name of the organisation. .ukis a top-level
domain (TLD) and .cois a second-level domain (2LD)
/news Directory of the file being requested.
/technology Subdirectory of the file being requested.
/index Name of the file being requested
.html The file’s extension. Hypertext markup language (HTML) is frequently
used for creating web pages.
There is a wide variety of top level domains (TLDs) available for use. While .comis the
most frequently used, TLDs like .organd .netare also common.
Domain names
A domain name identifies an organisation or individual on the Internet. They use
alphanumeric characters which make them easy for humans to remember.
Fully qualified domain names
A fully qualified domain name (or FQDN) is a domain that specifies an exact resource and
can be interpreted in only one way. An FQDN will always include the server’s host name.
https://bbc.co.uk/news/index.html https://
www.
bbc.co.uk/news/index.html
FQDN ✗
FQDN ✓
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IP Addresses
An internet protocol address (IP address) is assigned to
every computer on the Internet and every device that
communicates on a network.
IP addresses are not easy for humans to remember, which is
why domain names are used. Domain names map to IP
addresses, meaning they are essentially a human-friendly
representation of an IP address.
The domain name server (DNS) system
As mentioned previously, each domain name has a direct relationship with an IP address.
When you enter a domain name into your browser’s address bar, a domain name server is
used to translate the domain name into its corresponding IP address.
A domain name server stores a table of domain names and their corresponding IP
address. If a domain name server does not have a record of the domain that you are trying
to access, your request will be passed to another domain name server. Some very small
and rarely visited websites will require numerous changes of servers before a record can
be found. This makes those websites slightly slower to access than large websites.
DNS Table
Domain Name IP address
turing.me 41.47.142.208
lovelace.com 16.57.142.88
babbage.net 84.88.49.3
Internet registries
An internet registry is an organisation responsible for the allocation of IP addresses. There
are only five internet registries in operation, each serving a different geographical area.
An important part of an internet registry’s work is to protect
the world’s depleting pool of unallocated IP addresses. When
a new IP address is requested, an internet registry will first
look for a previously allocated IP address that has become
unused rather than allocate a brand new IP address straight
away.
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Internet security
Firewalls
A firewall sits between a device and the Internet and regulates the packets that pass
through it. Firewalls can be either software or hardware and work as a proxy server which
can perform both packet filtering and stateful inspection.
Packet filtering
Firewalls use packet filtering to accept and block packets based on their source IP address
or the protocol that they are using (determined by their port number). A network’s
administrator can specify particular IP addresses or protocols to block or use automatic
filtering software that can block suspicious packets.
Stateful inspection
Stateful inspection actually examines the contents of a packet before deciding whether to
allow it through the firewall. Some firewalls keep a record of current connections in a
network, allowing them to filter out packets that aren’t related to activity on the network.
Proxy server
A server that sits between a public network and a private network is called a proxy server.
These devices manage every packet that passes between the two networks. Firewalls can
be said to act as proxy servers when they control the movement of packets between public
and private networks.
When a device in a private network
sends a packet through a firewall
and into a public network, the
packet’s “sender” address is that of
the firewall, rather than the device’s
private IP address. This provides
some degree of anonymity to
devices on private networks as their
private address is never sent
beyond the private network.
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Symmetric and asymmetric encryption and key exchange
When information needs to be transmitted securely over a network, encryption is used.
Symmetric encryption
In symmetric encryption, both the sender and receiver share
the same private key. This key is used to both encrypt and
decrypt data sent between the two parties.
Before sending any information, the sender and receiver
must participate in a key exchange to ensure that they both
have a copy of their shared key. If the key is exchanged over
a network, it is vulnerable to interception. This is a major floor
in symmetric encryption that asymmetric encryption
overcomes.
Asymmetric encryption
When two devices communicate using asymmetric encryption, four different keys are
used. Each device has a pair of mathematically related keys, one of which is kept secret
(the private key) and the other shared on the Internet (the public key).
When a message is encrypted with a public key, only the corresponding private key can
decrypt it and vice versa.
Before a message is sent, it is encrypted by the sender using the recipient’s public key.
This means that the message can only be decrypted by the corresponding private key (as
explained earlier), the recipient’s private key, which only the recipient has access to. This
means that the recipient is the only person who can decrypt the message.
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Digital certificates & digital signatures
Digital signatures
When using asymmetric encryption, a digital signature can
be used to verify the sender of a message and to verify that a
message has not been tampered with during transmission.
The process involves a number of stages, which are detailed
below.
1. A digest of the message is
created, perhaps by a
hashing or checksum
algorithm. The value of the
digest depends on the
content of the message and
will not be the same if the
message is changed.
2. This digest is encrypted with the sender’s private key
(which anyone can decrypt with the sender’s public key)
3. The encrypted digest is appended to the message
4. The message and appended digest are encrypted
with the recipient’s public key, meaning that only the
recipient can decrypt the information.
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When the recipient receives the message, they first
decrypt it using their private key; leaving them with
the decrypted message and an encrypted digest, as
shown in the image on the right.
As the digest was encrypted using the sender’s
private key in stage 2, it can be decrypted using the
sender’s public key as shown in the image below.
This verifies that the message was really sent by
the sender as only they have access to their private
key.
The recipient then carries out the same hashing or
checksum algorithm on the message and checks
whether their result matches the now decrypted digest.
If everything matches, the recipient can be certain that
the message was sent by the sender and hasn’t been
tampered with or corrupted during transmission.
Digital certificates
A digital certificate verifies ownership of a key pair used in asymmetric encryption and can
be used to check that a fake key pair isn’t being used by an imposter. Issued by certificate
authorities, these files contain: a serial number, the owner’s name, an expiry date, the
owner’s public key and the certificate authority’s digital signature.
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Worms, trojans and viruses
Worms, trojans and viruses are all types of malware that can infect computers.
Worms
Worms are pieces of malicious software that can self-replicate between computers, either
within a network or by users downloading and running a malicious file.
Trojans
A Trojan is a type of malware that is disguised as a benign file that users can be tricked
into opening. These are often spread as email attachments or downloaded from malicious
websites.
Viruses
If you’ve studied viruses in Biology, you may know that viruses require a host cell. This is
the same with computer viruses, which require a host file in which to reside. These files
are typically executable files, meaning that viruses can lie dormant in a computer until their
host file is opened or run.
Viruses can spread between computers over a private network, the Internet or even
through the use of physical media like hard drives, flash drives and optical disks.
Preventing malware
Although it is difficult to avoid malware completely, there are a number of precautions that
can be taken in order to protect computers from malicious software.
Malware often exploit bugs in code that enable them to take hold of a computer system.
Good code quality is an important factor in preventing malware and small oversights by
developers can have devastating consequences. Other vulnerabilities that malware exploit
include a lack of antivirus software, out-of-date software and poor security.
One general rule for preventing malware is to install antivirus software. Antivirus programs
are specialist pieces of software that scan the files on a computer and remove any
suspicious files. Many modern operating systems come with some level of antivirus
installed as a default.
In organisations, employees can be trained about the risks of opening suspicious email
attachments in order to reduce the risk posed by malware.
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