Appendix A contained a lot of information that I had previously learned in other classes. It was nice to refresh some of the concepts that I had not reviewed in a while, such as the different types of cabling. It also expanded on some topics that I was already familiar with. For example, I knew about domains like .us, but I did not realize that they were called general top-level domains or gTLDs. Similarly, I understood that networks send information in packets, but I was unaware of the term for it, which is called packet switching. There were plenty of examples like this throughout the reading where I recognized the concepts but learned what they were called or realized specific details about them.

There were also many concepts that I did not know before. While I was aware that the Internet has been around for a long time, I was not familiar with all the specific programs and projects that contributed to making it what it is today. Learning that the original ARPANET was created by the Department of Defense was especially surprising and interesting. I had originally thought that it was made by different companies and people, but not a part of the government. It was fascinating to me to see what the Internet was originally used for and how much that has changed over the years.

In addition, there were a couple of pictures in the book that caught my attention. The first one was Lynx, which is a text-based browser, and the second one was Mosaic, the first graphical browser. It really highlights how far web browsing has come, which is something we often do not realize. It is amazing to think that, not too long ago, people would navigate the web using just a keyboard, and now we have browsers with advanced features, like integrated AI.