Computer Systems Recap

Dear Parents Teachers and Students,

In ICT I have learned about how a computer is structured, Network, Operating System Applications and Hardware.

In our first lesson we learned about Hardware, in the hardware their must be CPU (Computer Power Use), Motherboard, RAM (Random Access Memory), HDD (hard disk driver) and Case. CPU is the main thing just like the brain of the whole computer which is put onto the motherboard. Motherboard is something where you connect everything to. RAM is where data is stored and it stores thing only when the computer is turned on. Hard drive is something that stores things on the computer and saves data when the computer is off. Case is for protecting the whole Hardware, we had to put everything together into the Case.

In our second lesson, We did a smoke test by plugging the computer and turning it on. If there was smoke it means there is something wrong with the computer or you are missing something. Our group successfully put everything together and got the computer started up. We had to install a Linux OS software called "Ubuntu" this is a free software and it is in the middle of macintosh and Windows. The only problem we had was installing the software we had to restart the computer quite a few times to get it working.

In our third lesson, we learned how to connect networks and working with them. There are different networks like private ones and networks that are shared. Our computers can talk/connect together and communicate, IP address is just the same as an address just like a home address. A domain name is for showing one or more IP address. Domain names are used in URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) to show individual webpages.

In our fourth lesson This lesson we have to show how Internet works by filming with chairs and string. We learnt about how when one person sends a picture for example from ICHK to Facebook But first the computer has to find the IP address of Facebook. There are these small packages, which are numbered, and they split into little parts and they hop to different parts of networks they might hop to PCCW and AT&T etc. The packages take the fastest route as possible. As you can see when you load picture it doesn’t just come up as a picture all the time because sometime the packages could get lost. They never really come in the same order that’s why they have numbers on them so when they arrive they can reorder them self’s.

The Internet is just like a map and it’s all connected together, ICHK network is connected to PCCW network. Then PCCW connects to other networks around the Hong Kong area. Then it can also start to connect to other networks from around the world. For example AT&T, Optus, singtel.