The Internet (508 words)

The InternetThe Internet
The Internet, or ?net, is a vast network
of computers that connects
many of the world’s businesses, institutions,
and individuals. The
Internet is composed of many parts, including
the World Wide Web, FTP,
IRC, Newsgroups, Gopher, WAIS, Archie,
and of course Electronic Mail
(Email).

The Internet is mainly used for communication.

Email is the most
heavily used resource of the Internet-
over 40 million email messages
are sent through the Internet a day. The
second most used resource,
called the World Wide Web, or WWW, consists
of pages of words, images,
sounds, and video.

The Internet is continuing to grow
at 40% a year, with about 20 million
users, mainly in USA, Canada, and Australia,
but still many all over the
world. You can do many things on the Internet,
such as shop for just
about anything, bank and manage money,
watch and listen to live cable
televison and radio broadcasts, talk to
other users with voice like a
telephone, conduct international meetings,
and access all kinds of
information on any subject imaginable.

As mentioned earlier, the WWW consists
of pages and pages of text,
images, sounds, and video. Unlike pages
in a book, there is no maximum
size for a page, and there is HyperText
Links. If you click on any one
of these links, the computer will automatically
go to the page specified
by the link. The WWW is programmed in
a computer language called Hyper
Text Markup Language, or HTML.

Searching the Web can be a difficult
thing to do, or if you use a
search engine, it can be really easy.

Since so many new web pages are
added to the Web a day, a very good index
is hard to keep, and an
alphabetical listing of millions of web
pages would be almost impossible
to navigate through. To help this problem,
people developed search
engines that search the Web for you. Some
search engines, like Yahoo,
search in a big web directory they have
made of hundreds of thousands of
web pages, that is organized like a phonebook.

Other search engines,
like Alta Vista, or Magellan, search in
a list of Web pages it has
created as it surfed the web all by it’s
self.

People usually access the Internet
through a computer using a device
called a modem. Modems connect people
to the ?net through telephone
lines. Some companies, and the “heart”
of the Internet, Use Fiber-Optic
cables to connect. Fiber-Optic cabled
are made of hair-thin strands of
glass that carry information at the speed
of light as pulses of light.

Fiber-Optics are thousands of times faster
than standard copper
telephone lines.

The Internet began in the 1960’s.

In 1962, the Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States
Department of Defense
developed a network of computers called
ARPAnet. At first, this network
only connected military and government
computer systems. The purpose was
to make all information safe, so that
in disaster or war, if one
computer was destroyed, it’s information
would not be lost.

In 1966, the ARPAnet was expanded
to include universities and other
institutions. One of the first universities
to be added was Utah State
University. Soon, large companies and
corporations were added, too. By
1990, anyone with a computer, a modem,
and Internet software could
connect to the Internet.

There are many things in the future
of the ?net, including video
conferencing, online virtual reality worlds,
and faster Internet
connections.