Week 4 Class

Last week's class was the most frustrating and confusing class so far. We discussed vocabulary such as ISP, TCP, and VPN etc. relating to information technology, and most of the discussion was way over my head. While I understand the importance of learning these terms, today I remember and understand little about what we even discussed. I think my issue is that I can not wrap my head around the idea of this world wide network. The idea that information is being passed throughout the world without any physical connections (such as wire connections) boggles my mind. In class, Professor Sine showed us the path taken when certain packets of information are sent and while it was amazing to see how information travels from D.C. to Paris to Newark, DE etc. I still did not understand how it was possible. Even when just thinking about sending emails, I think it is amazing that the information written can be sent to people around the world on this "network".

The second part of the class was also discouraging to me. We discussed Trojan horses and other Internet bugs, and it seems that there are endless ways to invade and infect computers. This is frustrating for me because I do not know how to really protect myself from these bugs. I can use my laptop as an example. My laptop has all the downloaded security programs recommended by UD and yet it is still infected with viruses. It is very slow, programs freeze easily and much of the time the Internet is unreliable. This is frustrating for me because I do not think I used my laptop in a risky manner and yet it is infected.