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What is Internet?
“The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected
computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a " network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other resources of the World Wide Web.
History of Internet
The ARPANET was one of the "eve" networks of today''s Internet. Following on from the demonstration that packet switching worked on the ARPANET, the British Post Office, Telenet, DATAPAC and TRANSPAC collaborated to create the first international packet switched network service. The first TCP/IP-wide area network was made operational by January 1, 1983 when all hosts on the ARPANET were switched over from the older NCP protocols to TCP/IP. The opening of the network to commercial interests began in 1988. Various other commercial and educational networks, such as Telenet, Tymnet, CompuServe and JANET were interconnected with the growing Internet. This network was eventually interconnected with the others in the 1980s as the TCP/IP protocol became increasingly popular.
Internet in Modern Era:
As of September 30, 2007, 1.244 billion people use the Internet according to Internet World Stats. Writing in the Harvard International Review, philosopher N.J.Slabbert, a writer on policy issues for the Washington DC-based Urban Land Institute, has asserted that the Internet is fast becoming a basic feature of global civilization, so that what has traditionally been called "civil society" is now becoming identical with information technology society as defined by Internet use.
Common Uses of Internet
E-mail
The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. Even today it can be important to distinguish between Internet and internal e-mail systems. Purely internal or intranet mail systems, where the information never leaves the corporate or organization''s network, are much more secure, although in any organization there will be IT and other personnel whose job may involve monitoring, and occasionally accessing, the email of other employees not addressed to them.
The World Wide Web
Software products that can access the resources of the Web are correctly termed user agents. In normal use, web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox access web pages and allow users to navigate from one to another via hyperlinks. Collections of personal web pages published by large service providers remain popular, and have become increasingly sophisticated. In the early days, web pages were usually created as sets of complete and isolated HTML text files stored on a web server.
Remote access
An office worker away from his desk, perhaps the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can open a remote desktop session into their normal office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection via the Internet.
Collaboration
Version control systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents without either accidentally overwriting each other''s work or having members wait until they get ''sent'' documents to be able to add their thoughts and changes.
File sharing
A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication; the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands before or after access to the file is given. Internet collaboration technology enables business and project teams to share documents, calendars and other information.
Streaming media
Many existing radio and television broadcasters provet ''feeds'' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC). They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams are also popular.
Voice telephony (VoIP)
VoIP stands for Voice over IP, where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. Remaining problems for VoIP include emergency telephone number dialling and reliability. Most VoIP providers offer unlimited national calling but the direction in VoIP is clearly toward global coverage with unlimited minutes for a low monthly fee.
Censorship
Some governments, such as those of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, the People''s Republic of China and Saudi Arabia, restrict what people in their countries can access on the Internet, especially political and religious content. In Norway, Finland and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily (possibly to avoid such an arrangement being turned into law) agreed to restrict access to sites listed by police. While this list of forbidden URLs is only supposed to contain addresses of known child pornography sites, the content of the list is secret.
Marketing
Examples of personalized marketing include online communities such as MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Facebook and others which thousands of Internet users join to advertise themselves and make friends online. In turn, when they advertise themselves they advertise interests and hobbies, which online marketing companies can use as information as to what those users will purchase online, and advertise their own companies'' products to those users.
Reference Links: www.osce.org
www.livinginternet.com
www.firstmonday.org
www.internettrafficreport.com
www.warriorsofthe.net
Published: November 02, 2007
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