An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a company such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, or BrightHouse that provides Internet access to companies, families, and even mobile users. ISPs use fiber-optics, satellite, copper wire, and other forms to provide Internet access to its customers.

Choosing a destination for our next vacation often includes scouting out a location. At its most sophisticated, the process could involve using latitude and longitude values on a map to pinpoint the vacation locale, or a mapping service, such as Google Maps. Instead of latitude and longitude, or even a street address, websites on the World Wide Web rely on an Internet Protocol address or a uniform resource locator, which can help us locate a particular destination on the Internet. A uniform resource locator (URL) is a type of uniform resource identifier (URI). Entry of the URL and accessing a Web page is accomplished using a Web browser.

When you want to visit your favorite mall and shop at all the fine retailers, how do you get there? Most of us would prefer to use a car because it's fast, it's convenient, and you can use all the goodies like the air conditioner and the radio. Like a car helps us get to the mall quickly, a web browser allows us to travel through the Internet and visit our favorite websites. And just like we have preferences in cars, we have our own taste in design, function and brand when it comes to websites. Personally, I prefer Acura as my automobile of choice; with regard to traveling the Internet highway, my 'go-to' choice for web browsers is Mozilla Firefox, just as a personal preference.

File Transport Protocol, or FTP, is an open protocol standard that is widely used to transport and receive large files. It can also be used to send configuration files and software updates for network switches and routers. FTP uses ports for communications and also uses encryption to protect the information being received and sent. In this lesson, we will go over these topics so that you can be familiar with FTP and what it has to offer.

A client-server network is designed for end-users, called clients, to access resources such as files, songs, video collections, or some other service from a central computer called a server. A server's sole purpose is to do what its name implies - serve its clients! You may have been using this configuration and not even have known it. Have you ever played Xbox Live or used the PlayStation Network? Your Xbox One is the client, and when it logs into the network, it contacts the Xbox Live servers to retrieve gaming resources like updates, video, and game demos.

Networks are quite complex. The OSI, or Open Systems Interconnection, model is used to understand how networks or systems operate. In trying to understand this model, it is best to look at it based on the seven layers. The seven layers are the physical layer, data link layer, network layer, transport layer, session layer, presentation layer, and application layer. After breaking the OSI model down into the seven layers, focusing on one specific layer makes it easier to understand how systems communicate.

The last time you paid bills online, did you give any thought to the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) model and its presentation layer? As computer literate as you are, you may not know what the presentation layer, or data translator, has to do with paying your bills.

For example, when you accessed your bank account via the Internet, you used a secure connection provided by the presentation layer. The presentation layer also encrypted your account login information prior to transmission. Finally, at your financial institution's Internet server, the presentation layer decrypted your account login information, making it available for processing.

Before beginning our transport layer discussion in detail, let's take a look at the networking environment in which the transport layer exists: the OSI or Open Systems Interconnect model. The OSI model includes seven protocol layers, with each layer performing a specific and supportive communicative task. In this table, the names and descriptions of the layers are listed in descending order from the top layer to the bottom layer. Each layer provides inputs and outputs to and from the layers above and below it, if present.