I took a close look at The Internet book : everything you need to know about computer networking and how the internet works earlier in the week. To make my mashup book as accessible as possible, I've been looking for how others cover background information on the internet and the Web. Comer's book focuses on the Internet rather than the World Wide Web. That is, the World Wide Web is presented as a set of services on top of the Internet.

In my book and in my course, I need to figure out how much of the Internet I would treat as a black box. I will draw from people's concrete experience of the World Wide Web and the Internet and point out, for instance, things they are treating as a black box such as the networking that ties computers and desktop computers together. I will need to get into the issues of clients and servers.