Appendix A 

 The appendix talks about some common knowledge things every CIS student should know, but there were still some nice takeaways for me.

  I’m thankful for DNS software. We talked about knowing phone numbers in class, at this point I can probably rattle off maybe 5 or 6 numbers of people I know. Now imagine having to do that for websites. Sure, you’d maybe learn some after a while, but what about IPv6 addresses? Good luck.

  I found it very interesting that the same man who invented the mouse also made the first hypertext system. I can’t tell you the last time I went a day without using one or the other. Especially interesting that he did this in the 1960’s, and that the idea for hypertext had been around since World War II.

  The evolution of web browsers was another subject I wasn’t very familiar with. I’m a bit older, so I was around for when Prodigy and AOL were the most popular ways to access the internet for most people. I have never seen a text-based browser, and I couldn’t imagine using one to navigate the web. Praise be to Marc Andreessen for the development of Mosaic.

  Another way to date myself here is with bandwidth. Right now, my connection is 400 Mbps, but when I first had access to the internet it was on a dial up modem at 28.8 Kbps. I remember waiting for a simple .jpeg to load up on my screen. It would take what seemed like forever. So many entertainment companies rely on the fast bandwidth we have now to make a buck.

  I also wasn’t aware that my ISP is just a middle man. Learning about the hierarchy of NAPs, CSPs and ISPs definitely changes my view of my ISP, especially when something goes wrong and it’s really not in their control, since they’re just a customer like me.

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