A Journey Through a Bachelor of Information Technology Degree

            In order to fully understand the fundamentals of information technology, you must first build a solid foundation by learning where computers came from and why they were originally invented.   The history and future of computers has been a very long and fascinating journey.   Britannica.com defines a computer as “An apparatus that performs routine calculations automatically” (Pottenger & Hemmendinger, 2018 ).   It is thought that computers were first conceptualized around the 1400s by Leonardo da Vinci.   By the late 1800s, computers were starting to be invented to help calculate census data.   Once the first computer was built, computing technology grew exponentially at a steady pace.   The late 1900s saw the rise of personal computing and the 2000s saw the advent of the mobile computer .   With each evolution of computer technology, more and more of the science fiction dream...

     During our fourth week of class, we were asked to explain the importance of information and system security for individuals and organizations.      Keeping information secure is vital for any person or company.   If personal data is not secure, a person will have to worry about have portions of their identity potentially stolen.   If a company does not make sure that its data is secure, then they will have to worry about many different factors that will affect their customers, suppliers, employees, etc.   When examining information security, there are many different methods that can be used to gain access to data that would be otherwise secured.   In a previous assignment, we used the ping and tracert commands to determine the connectivity of different websites.   These commands can also be used in nefarious ways to attack personal or commercial technological infrastructure.   In addition to those two comma...

During our third week of class, we had a very brief introduction into networking.   Our assignment was to investigate and experiment with the ping and tracert commands.   We needed a sample of different geographical locations to test with.   Another part of our assignment was to explain how packets travel through a network. When a person makes a query on the internet, the computer they are on creates packets to request the data from wherever they are looking.  At home, the packet path starts at the computer and travels through the Network Interface Card (nic) into the router.  From the router, the packet travels to the modem.  From the modem, the packet travels to the ISP that the user subscribes to.  The ISP then sends the packet out to the internet, where it travels to the network that has the information being requested.  The packet then follows a similar route but in reverse until it reaches the server with the information that it is r...