Internet
Definition of Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.
Internet is a short form of the technical term interconnected network, the result of interconnecting computer networks with special gateways or routers. The Internet is also often referred to as the Net.
One of the main attributes of the Internet is there is no central controlling computer or person that directs traffic or information.
1. J.C.R. Licklider of MIT, first proposed a global network of computers in 1962, and moved over to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in late 1962 to develop it.
2. Leonard Kleinrock of MIT and later UCLA developed the theory of packet switching in 1965, which was to form the basis of Internet connections.
3. Lawrence Roberts of MIT connected a Massachusetts computer with a California computer in 1965 over dial-up telephone lines. It showed the feasibility of wide area networking, but also showed that the telephone line's circuit switching was inadequate. Kleinrock's packet switching theory was confirmed.
4. Roberts moved over to DARPA in 1966 and developed his plan for ARPANET.
5. The Internet, then known as ARPANET, was brought online in 1969 under a contract let by the renamed Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which initially connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern US (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UCSB, and the University of Utah).
6. Later on NASA was also plugged in.
7. The Internet was designed in part to provide a communications network that would work even if some of the sites were destroyed by nuclear attack. If the most direct route was not available, routers would direct traffic around the network via alternate routes.
8. The early Internet was used by computer experts, engineers, scientists, and librarians. There was nothing friendly about it. There were no home or office personal computers in those days, and anyone who used it, whether a computer professional or an engineer or scientist or librarian, had to learn to use a very complex system.
9. E-mail was adapted for ARPANET by Ray Tomlinson of BBN in 1972. He picked the @ symbol from the available symbols on his teletype to link the username and address.
10. The telnet protocol, enabling logging on to a remote computer, was published as a Request for Comments (RFC) in 1972. RFC's are a means of sharing developmental work throughout community.
11. The ftp protocol, enabling file transfers between Internet sites, was published as an RFC in 1973, and from then on RFC's were available electronically to anyone who had use of the ftp protocol.
12. While the number of sites on the Internet was small, it was fairly easy to keep track of the resources of interest that were available. But as more and more universities and organizations--and their libraries-- connected, the Internet became harder and harder to track. There was more and more need for tools to index the resources that were available.
13. At about the same time, Brewster Kahle, then at Thinking Machines, Corp. developed his Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), which would index the full text of files in a database and allow searches of the files. (Google search Example of indexing).
14. In 1991, the first really friendly interface to the Internet was developed at the University of Minnesota. (Q – What is should be called?)
15. The demonstration system was called a gopher after the Univ. of Minnesota mascot--the golden gopher (A friendly menu system for exploring the Internet developed at the University of Minnesota.).
16. Gopher's usability was enhanced much more when the University of Nevada at Reno developed the VERONICA searchable index of gopher menus. It was purported to be an acronym for Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Netwide Index to Computerized Archives.
17. In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee and others at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, more popularly known as CERN, proposed a new protocol for information distribution. This protocol, which became the World Wide Web in 1991, was based on hypertext--a system of embedding links in text to link to other text, which you have been using every time you selected a text link while reading these pages. Although started before gopher, it was slower to develop.
18. The development in 1993 of the graphical browser Mosaic by Marc Andreessen and his team at the National Center For Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) gave the protocol its big boost.
19. Later in 1994, Andreessen moved to become the brains behind Netscape Corp., which produced the most successful graphical type of browser and server.
20. In 1995 Microsoft declared war and developed its MicroSoft Internet Explorer.
21. Since the Internet was initially funded by the government, it was originally limited to research, education, and government uses. Commercial uses were prohibited unless they directly served the goals of research and education. This policy continued until the early 90's, when independent commercial networks began to grow. It then became possible to route traffic across the country from one commercial site to another without passing through the government funded NSFNet(National Science Foundation NETwork) Internet backbone.
22. Delphi was the first national commercial online service to offer Internet access to its subscribers. It opened up an email connection in July 1992 and full Internet service in November 1992.
23. Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer
24. During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year.
25. From 2009 onward, the Internet is expected to grow significantly in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Indonesia (BRICI countries).
Social Role of Internet
1. The influence of the Internet has caused a change in the way we communicate, learn and shop.
2. The Internet has enabled entirely new forms of social interaction, activities, and organizing things.
3. Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have created new ways to socialize and interact. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of information to pages, to pursue common interests, and to connect with others. It is also possible to find existing acquaintances, to allow communication among existing groups of people. Sites like LinkedIn foster commercial and business connections. YouTube and Flickr specialize in users' videos and photographs.
4. Mail made possible connections among people without physical proximity.
5. Internet Banking and Payment mechanisms like Credit card had made life easier and a lot of time is saved.
Technical Role of Internet
1. It is obvious and common practice for surgeons in one part of the country, or another part of the world, to consult with other specialists while performing operations and such operations can also be, at the same time, monitored by other surgeons in any part of the world. This reduces time and cost a nation would incur to hire those expatriates or send people for training to deliver the same service. Through this kind of technology, specialists share skills, knowledge, and experience without necessarily coming physically together.
2. The development of teleconferencing facilities and multi-media capabilities makes internet possible to combine audio and video facilities, which has been of huge benefit especially in healthcare delivery and distance learning
3. In agriculture, easier and faster access to up-to-date market and price information assists farmers and rural-based traders in their businesses.
Commercial Role of Internet
1. Linking consumers and businesses via internet
2. Managing online purchase and payment systems.
3. Improving the standards of customer service and support.
4. Helps to improve market position in the challenging world by providing current information.
5. It moves the world slightly closer to a perfectly knowledgeable market, a market in which everything that is for sale is advertised and everything that is wanted for purchase is requested somewhere, and buyers and sellers can contact each other with no cost.
Advantages of Internet
1. Communication:
Now we can communicate in a fraction of second with a person who is sitting in the other part of the world. Today for better communication, we can avail the facilities of e-mail, chat. There are plenty messenger services in offering. With help of such services, it has become very easy to establish a kind of global friendship where you can share your thoughts, can explore other cultures.
2. Information
Information is probably the biggest advantage internet is offering. The Internet is a virtual treasure of information. Any kind of information on any topic under the sun is available on the Internet. The search engines like Google, yahoo is at your service on the Internet. You can almost find any type of data on almost any kind of subject that you are looking for. Students and children are among the top users who surf the Internet for research.
3. Entertainment
Downloading games, music or just surfing the Web are some of the uses people have discovered. There are numerous games that may be downloaded from the Internet for free. When people surf the Web, there are numerous things that can be found.
4. Services
Many services are now provided on the internet such as online banking, job seeking, purchasing tickets for your favorite movies, guidance services on array of topics engulfing the every aspect of life, and hotel reservations.
5. Commerce
Ecommerce is the concept used for any type of commercial deals that involves the transfer of information across the globe via Internet. It has become a phenomenon associated with any kind of shopping, electronic payments and almost anything.
Disadvantages of internet
1. Theft of Personal information
If you use the Internet, you may face danger as your personal information such as name, address, credit card number etc. can be accessed by other culprits to misuse it. For ex: Phishing.
2. Spamming
Spamming refers to sending unwanted e-mails in bulk, which provide no purpose and needlessly obstruct the entire system.
3. Virus threat
Virus is nothing but a program which disrupts the normal functioning of your computer systems. Computers attached to internet are more prone to virus attacks and they can end up into crashing your whole hard disk, causing you considerable headache.
4. Pornography:
This is perhaps the biggest threat related to person’s healthy mental life. It’s a very serious issue concerning the Internet.
Services/ Applications of Internet
1. WWW
2. Email
3. FTP
4. Newsgroups and Message Boards
5. Chat Room
6. Instant Messaging