INTERNET

 

INTERNET

 

Introduction to the Internet

 

The Internet is a global communications system of diverse interconnected computer networks for the exchange of information of virtually every conceivable topic known to man

 

A Description of the Internet

 

There are several ways to describe the Internet:

 

From a social Point view

The Internet is million of people communicating, sharing ideas and information.

 

From a practical, recreational , or commercial point of view

The Internet is a vast collection of information that can be searched and retrived electronically. This collection includes advice all sorts of topics, data, electronic texts, government information, images,museum exhinits,scholarly papers ,software, and access to commercial activities. Tapping into these resources use.

 

From a technical point of view

 

These computers and networks communicate by exchanging data according to the same rules, even though the networks and computer systems individually use different technologies.

 

How the Internet Developed

 

In the late 1960s the United States Department of defense , through its advanced research projects agency (ARPA), funded research into the establishment of a decentralized computer network. From the beginning , some of the developers and researchers saw the advantages of a network in which computer systems of different types could communicate. They also foresaw the development of a community from among the users of this network. The network was named ARPANET. It linked researchers at universities, research laboratories, and some military labs. The 1970s saw the further development of the ARPANET and the establishment of connections networks in other countries. These were relatively small (fewer than 100) number of sites or hosts (computer systems) on these networks. In the early 1980s other networks, in the U.S. and elsewhere, were established.

 

In the late 1980s the National Science Foundation (U.S) funded the development of a network (using the internet protocols) named NSFNET to connect supercomputer centers in the united states.

 

This large worldwide collection of networks and computer systems communicating according to the same protocols has come to be what’s called the Internet.

 

Usenet, the “User’s Network ”, originated in 1979. It allowed people to share information in the form of articles arranged into newsgroups. Usenet was developed separately from the Internet . but programs and protocols for distributing articles on the internet are readily available .

 

A numbers of commercial networks and some other using technologies that can not be adapted to internet protocols came into being in the 1970s and 1980s. Two examples are CompuServe. Which charges users for connect time and other services, and BITNET, a network that linked many universities.

Public access to the internet has always been an issue. The Cleveland Free nets , a community based network ,was also developed in the late 1980s to give internet access to anyone with a computer and modern. Several other community groups have started free nets and several have joined to form the National Public Telecommunications Network (NPTN).

 

The development and operation of ARPANET , NSFNET , and several other networks throughout the world was subsidized by government funds. These networks established acceptable use policies, which stated what type of activities were allowed on these publicly supported networks.

 

These policies prohibited any purely commercial activities , and set the tone for a developing code of network ethics or etiquette. Commercial networks were also being develope ,although under the acceptable use policies, they could not use the transmission links of the public networks. So for some time commercial  activity on the major portion of the internet in the united states was prohibited. However, in 1988 several commercial network  searched an CompuServe or someone using MCImail could send a message to someone with an internet address at a public institution such as a college or university. Likewise,messages could be sent from NSFNET to these private networks, but email from one user on a private service could not be transported over NSFNET to another user on private service.

 

In 1990 ARPANET ceased to exist as an administrative entity , and the public network in the

U.S. was turned over to NSFNET. The internet was growing at a remarkable rate and clearly becoming bigger than the public institutions wanted to manage or support. In the early 1990s commercial networks with their own Internet Exchanges or gateways were allowed to conduct business on the internet, and in1993 the NSF created the InterNIC to provide services , such as registration of domain names, directory and database services to the internet community, and information about internet services. These services were contracted to the private sector.

 

The explosive growth on the internet and the inclusion of commercial networks and services has been accompanied by an astounding increase in the population of Internet Users.

 

This increase includes users who are not part of an academic or research community. The internet is reaching the size and importance of an infrastructure, a necessary underpinning of society. From a research project, the internet has grown very rapidly into something that involves millions of people worldwide.