The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of computers and devices connected by communications channels that facilitates communications among users and allows users to share resources with other users. Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics. This article provides a general that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite The Internet Protocol Suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. It is named from two of the most important protocols in it: the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which were the first two networking protocols defined in this standard. Today's IP networking (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 of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is an ordered sequence of symbols. As a concept, however, information has many meanings. Moreover, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the documents of the World Wide Web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail Electronic mail, commonly called email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages across the Internet or other computer networks. Originally, email was transmitted directly from one user to another computer. This required both computers to be online at the same time, a la instant messenger. Today's email systems are based on a store-and-.
Most traditional communications media, such as telephone and television services, are reshaped or redefined using the technologies of the Internet, giving rise to services such as Voice over Internet Protocol Voice over Internet Protocol is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet or other packet-switched networks. Other terms frequently encountered and synonymous with VOIP are IP telephony, Internet telephony, voice over broadband (VoBB), broadband telephony, (VoIP) and IPTV Internet Protocol television is a system through which Internet television services are delivered using the architecture and networking methods of the Internet Protocol Suite over a packet-switched network infrastructure, e.g., the Internet and broadband Internet access networks, instead of being delivered through traditional radio frequency. Newspaper publishing has been reshaped into Web sites A website [citation needed] is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed relative to a common Uniform Resource Locator (URL), often consisting of only the domain name, or the IP address, and the root path ('/') in an Internet Protocol-based network. A web site is hosted on at least one web server,, blogging, and web feeds A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an aggregator. A web feed is also sometimes referred to as a syndicated. The Internet has enabled or accelerated the creation of new forms of human interactions through instant messaging Instant messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based communication between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared software clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet. More advanced instant messaging software clients also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as, Internet forums An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are not shown in real-time, to see new messages the forum page must be reloaded. Also, depending on the access level of a user and/or the forum set-up, a posted message, and social networking sites A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user , his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and.
The origins of the Internet reach back to research in the 1960s, both commissioned by the United States government to develop projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks as well as private research. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone A backbone network or network backbone is a part of computer network infrastructure that interconnects various pieces of network, providing a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or subnetworks. A backbone can tie together diverse networks in the same building, in different buildings in a campus environment, or over wide by the National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about US$6.87 billion (fiscal year 2010), the NSF funds approximately 20 percent of, as well as private funding for commercial backbones spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the merger of many networks. The commercialization Commercialization is the process or cycle of introducing a new product into the market. The actual launch of a new product is the final stage of new product development, and the one where the most money will have to be spent for advertising, sales promotion, and other marketing efforts. In the case of a new consumer packaged good, costs will be at of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the services of the Internet.
The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own standards. Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces In general, a namespace is an abstract container providing context for the items it holds and allowing disambiguation of homonym items residing in different namespaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network, that uses the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing. Its role has been characterized as follows: "A space and the Domain Name System The Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers, are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, United States, ICANN is a non-profit corporation created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998 to be able to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 Internet Protocol version 4 is the fourth revision in the development of the Internet Protocol (IP) and it is the first version of the protocol to be widely deployed. Together with IPv6, it is at the core of standards-based internetworking methods of the Internet. IPv4 is still by far the most widely deployed Internet Layer protocol. As of 2010[ and IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 is a version of the Internet Protocol that is designed to succeed IPv4, the first publicly used implementation, which is still in dominant use currently[update]. It is an Internet Layer protocol for packet-switched internetworks. The main driving force for the redesign of Internet Protocol is the foreseeable IPv4) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. It is an open standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements. All participants and managers are (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.
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Terminology
See also: Internet capitalization conventions Internet capitalization conventions are the practices of various publishers regarding the capitalization of "Internet" or "internet", when referring to the Internet/internet, as distinct from generic internetsThe terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British are not one and the same. The Internet is a global data communications system. It is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides connectivity between computers. In contrast, the Web is one of the services communicated via the Internet. It is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources The concept of resource is primitive in the Web architecture, and is used in the definition of its fundamental elements. The term was first introduced to refer to targets of Uniform Resource Locators , but its definition has been further extended to include the referent of any Uniform Resource Identifier (RFC 3986), or Internationalized Resource, linked by hyperlinks In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically[citation needed]. The reference points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. Such text is usually viewed with a computer. A software system for viewing and and URLs In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym for URI,. The best-known example of a URL is the ".[1]
The term the Internet, when referring to the entire global system of IP networks, has traditionally been treated as a proper noun A noun can co-occur with an article or an attributive adjective. Verbs and adjectives can't. In the following, an asterisk in front of an example means that this example is ungrammatical and written with an initial capital letter Capital letters or majuscules are the larger of two type faces in a script. In the Roman alphabet they are A, B, C, D, etc. They are also called capitals (caps) or upper case (uppercase). The latter name comes from manual typesetters, who kept them in the upper drawers of a desk or in the upper type case, while keeping the more frequently used. In the media and popular culture a trend has developed to regard it as a generic term or common noun and thus write it as "the internet", without capitalization.
The Internet is also often simply referred to as the net. In many technical illustrations when the precise location or interrelation of Internet resources is not important, the Internet is often referred as the cloud, and literally depicted as such.
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The Associated Press For the most part, you need to be connected to the Internet at all times to use it. And headlines and photos are sometimes cut off in awkward ways. ... Review: News app that lets you choose your editor The Associated Press
