What is Internet?

Internet

What Is the Internet?

Can you remember a time when you could not tweet, post, email, blog, snap, or like someone online? Many people today have grown up being able to do all of these things. But there was a time when none of this was possible. What makes this possible today is what we call the Internet.

According to Webopedia, the Internet is a worldwide system of connected networks. Each network consists of millions of computers, servers, routers, and printers. You can think of the Internet like the telephone network or the interstate highway system. You may have even heard people refer to the Internet as the Information Super Highway. The networks that make up the Internet may be owned and maintained by different companies but messages and data move across all of them without regard to ownership because they all use the same protocol or language to communicate.

Who Created the Internet?

According to Hobbes' Internet Timeline, in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into orbit. While this might not sound serious, this happened during a time in American history called the Cold War. It was at this time the threat of nuclear war was at its greatest. The thought was, if the Soviets could launch a satellite into space, then they might be able to launch a nuclear bomb and hit the United States, destroying all of our communication lines.

The Internet began in 1969 as a research project funded by the Department of Defense with a goal of creating a means of communication beside telephone lines. The first network was called ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency NETwork). The focus was on communicating in the event part of the network was disabled. This early network was the precursor to the Internet. It was limited in function but launched the idea of a different method of communication

Who Owns the Internet?

No one actually owns the Internet, and no single person or organization controls the Internet in its entirety. The Internet is more of a concept than an actual tangible entity, and it relies on a physical infrastructure that connects networks to other networks.

Number of Worldwide Users

According to Internet Live Stats, as of August 12, 2016 there was an estimated 3,432,809,100 Internet users worldwide. The number of Internet users represents nearly 40 percent of the world's population. The largest number of Internet users by country is China, followed by the United States and India.

In September 2014, the total number of websites with a unique hostname online exceeded 1 billion. This is an increase from one website (info.cern.ch) in 1991. The first billion Internet users worldwide was reached in 2005.

How Does Information Move Across the Internet?

Data travels across the internet in packets. Each packet can carry a maximum of 1,500 bytes. Around these packets is a wrapper with a header and a footer. The information contained in the wrapper tells computers what kind of data is in the packet, how it fits together with other data, where the data came from and the data's final destination.

When you send an e-mail to someone, the message breaks up into packets that travel across the network. Different packets from the same message don't have to follow the same path. That's part of what makes the Internet so robust and fast. Packets will travel from one machine to another until they reach their destination. As the packets arrive, the computer receiving the data assembles the packets like a puzzle, recreating the message

All data transfers across the Internet work on this principle. It helps networks manage traffic -- if one pathway becomes clogged with traffic, packets can go through a different route. This is different from the traditional phone system, which creates a dedicated circuit through a series of switches. All information through the old analog phone system would pass back and forth between a dedicated connection. If something happened to that connection, the call would end.

That's not the case with traffic across IP networks. If one connection should fail, data can travel across an alternate route. This works for individual networks and the Internet as a whole. For instance, even if a packet doesn't make it to the destination, the machine receiving the data can determine which packet is missing by referencing the other packets. It can send a message to the machine sending the data to send it again, creating redundancy. This all happens in the span of just a few milliseconds.

Internet Protocol (IP):

The internet’s primary component and communications backbone. Because the internet is comprised of hardware and software layers, the IP communication standard is used to address schemes and identify unique connected devices. Prominent IP versions used for communications include Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)

Applications

The Internet has many important applications. Of the various services available via the Internet, the three most important are e-mail, web browsing, and peer-to-peer services . E-mail, also known as electronic mail, is the most widely used and successful of Internet applications. Web browsing is the application that had the greatest influence in dramatic expansion of the Internet and its use during the 1990s. Peer-to-peer networking is the newest of these three Internet applications, and also the most controversial, because its uses have created problems related to the access and use of copyrighted materials.