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 documents of the World Wide Web.

Terminology: Internet vs. World Wide Web:

The Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous. The Internet is
a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires,
fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc. In contrast, the Web is a
collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by
hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is one of the services
accessible via the Internet, along with many others including e-mail, file
sharing and others described below.

The Internet protocol suite is a collection of standards and protocols

organized into layers so that each layer provides the foundation and the
services required by the layer above. In this scheme, the Internet consists
of the computers and networks that handle Internet Protocol (IP) data
packets. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) depends on IP and solves
problems like data packets arriving out of order or not at all. Next comes
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is an application layer protocol.
It runs on top of TCP/IP and provides user agents, such as web browsers,
with access to the files, documents and other resources of the World Wide
Web.

History:
Main article: History of the Internet
Creation
Main article: ARPANET

The USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced
Research Projects Agency, known as ARPA, in February 1958 to regain a technological
lead.[1][2] ARPA created the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) to further
the research of the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program, which had
networked country-wide radar systems together for the first time. J. C. R. Licklider was
selected to head the IPTO, and saw universal networking as a potential unifying human
revolution.

Licklider moved from the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University to MIT in

1950, after becoming interested in information technology. At MIT, he served on a
committee that established Lincoln Laboratory and worked on the SAGE project. In
1957 he became a Vice President at BBN, where he bought the first production PDP-1
computer and conducted the first public demonstration of time-sharing.

At the IPTO, Licklider recruited Lawrence Roberts to head a project to implement a

network, and Roberts based the technology on the work of Paul Baran who had written
an exhaustive study for the U.S. Air Force that recommended packet switching (as
opposed to circuit switching) to make a network highly robust and survivable. After
much work, the first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were
interconnected between UCLA and SRI International in Menlo Park, California, on
October 29 1969. 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. In the UK, this was referred to as the
International Packet Stream Service (IPSS), in 1978. The collection of X.25-based
networks grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by
1981. The X.25 packet switching standard was developed in the CCITT (now called
ITU-T) around 1976. X.25 was independent of the TCP/IP protocols that arose from the
experimental work of DARPA on the ARPANET, Packet Radio Net and Packet Satellite
Net during the same time period. Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the first
description of the TCP protocols during 1973 and published a paper on the subject in
May 1974. Use of the term "Internet" to describe a single global TCP/IP network
originated in December 1974 with the publication of RFC 674, the first full specification
of TCP that was written by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine then at Stanford
University. During the next nine years, work proceeded to refine the protocols and to
implement them on a wide range of operating systems.

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. In
1985, the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the
construction of a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone using computers called
"fuzzballs" by their inventor, David Mills. The following year, NSF sponsored the
development of a higher speed 1.5 megabit/second backbone that become the NSFNet.
A key decision to use the DARPA TCP/IP protocols was made by Dennis Jennings,
then in charge of the Supercomputer program at NSF.

The opening of the network to commercial interests began in 1988. The US Federal
Networking Council approved the interconnection of the NSFNET to the commercial
MCI Mail system in that year and the link was made in the summer of 1989. Other
commercial electronic email services were soon connected, including OnTyme,
Telemail and Compuserve. In that same year, three commercial Internet Service
Providers were created: UUNET, PSINET and CERFNET. Important, separate networks
that offered gateways into, then later merged with the Internet include Usenet and
BITNET. Various other commercial and educational networks, such as Telenet, Tymnet,
Compuserve and JANET were interconnected with the growing Internet. Telenet (later
called Sprintnet) was a large privately-funded national computer network with free dial-
up access in cities throughout the U.S. that had been in operation since the 1970s. This
network was eventually interconnected with the others in the 1980s as the TCP/IP
protocol became increasingly popular. The ability of TCP/IP to work over virtually any
pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth although the
rapid growth of the Internet was due primarily to the availability of commercial routers
from companies such as Cisco Systems, Proteon and Juniper, the availability of
commercial Ethernet equipment for local area networking and the widespread
implementation of TCP/IP on the UNIX operating system.

Growth:
The network gained a public face in the 1990s. On August 6 1991, CERN, which
straddles the border between France and Switzerland, publicized the new World Wide
Web project, two years after British scientist Tim Berners-Lee had begun creating
HTML, HTTP and the first few Web pages at CERN.

An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW based upon HyperCard. It was
eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993 the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0
of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously
academic/technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word "Internet" had become
commonplace, and consequently, so had its misusage as a reference to the World Wide
Web.

Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the
majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks, such
as FidoNet, have remained separate) During the 1990s, it was estimated that the
Internet grew by 100% per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and
1997.[3] This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows
organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet
protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company
from exerting too much control over the network.

Today's Internet:

A rack of servers

Aside from the complex physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the
Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (e.g., peering
agreements), and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to
exchange data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is essentially defined by its
interconnections and routing policies.

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. [4]

Internet protocols:
For more details on this topic, see Internet Protocols.

In this context, there are three layers of protocols:

• At the lower level (OSI layer 3) is IP (Internet Protocol), which defines the
datagrams or packets that carry blocks of data from one node to another. The
 vast majority of today's Internet uses version four of the IP protocol (i.e. IPv4),
and although IPv6 is standardized, it exists only as "islands" of connectivity, and
there are many ISPs without any IPv6 connectivity. http://www.livinginternet.com.
ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) also exists at this level. ICMP is
connectionless; it is used for control, signaling, and error reporting purposes.
• TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) exist at
the next layer up (OSI layer 4); these are the protocols by which data is
transmitted. TCP makes a virtual 'connection', which gives some level of
guarantee of reliability. UDP is a best-effort, connectionless transport, in which
data packets that are lost in transit will not be re-sent.
• The application protocols sit on top of TCP and UDP and occupy layers 5, 6,
and 7 of the OSI model. These define the specific messages and data formats
sent and understood by the applications running at each end of the
communication. Examples of these protocols are HTTP, FTP, and SMTP.

Internet structure:
There have been many analyses of the Internet and its structure. For example, it has
been determined that the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World
Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks.

Similar to the way the commercial Internet providers connect via Internet exchange
points, research networks tend to interconnect into large subnetworks such as:

• GEANT
• GLORIAD
• The Internet2 Network (formally known as the Abilene Network)
• JANET (the UK's national research and education network)

These in turn are built around relatively smaller networks. See also the list of

In network diagrams, the Internet is often represented by a cloud symbol, into

and out of which network communications can pass.
ICANN:

ICANN headquarters in Marina Del Rey

For more details on this topic, see ICANN.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the
authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet,
including domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and protocol port and
parameter numbers. A globally unified namespace (i.e., a system of names in
which there is one and only one holder of each name) is essential for the Internet
to function. ICANN is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, but is
overseen by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet
technical, business, academic, and non-commercial communities. The US
government continues to have the primary role in approving changes to the root
zone file that lies at the heart of the domain name system. Because the Internet
is a distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected networks, the
Internet, as such, has no governing body. ICANN's role in coordinating the
assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central
coordinating body on the global Internet, but the scope of its authority extends
only to the Internet's systems of domain names, IP addresses, and protocol port
and parameter numbers.

On November 16 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in

Tunis, established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-
related issues.

Language:
For more details on this topic, see English on the Internet.

Further information: Unicode

The prevalent language for communication on the Internet is English. This may
be a result of the Internet's origins, as well as English's role as the lingua franca.
It may also be related to the poor capability of early computers, largely originating
 in the United States, to handle characters other than those in the English variant
of the Latin alphabet.

After English (30% of Web visitors) the most-requested languages on the World
Wide Web are Chinese 14%, Spanish 8%, Japanese 8%, German 5%, French
5%, Portuguese 3.5%, Korean 3%, Italian 3% and Arabic 2.5% (from Internet
World Stats, updated January 11, 2007).

By continent, 36% of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 29% in Europe,
and 21% in North America ([1] updated January 11, 2007).

The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years, especially in

the use of Unicode, that good facilities are available for development and
communication in most widely used languages. However, some glitches such as
mojibake (incorrect display of foreign language characters, also known as
kryakozyabry) still remain.

Internet and the workplace

The Internet is allowing greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with
the spread of unmetered high-speed connections and Web applications.

The Internet Viewed on Mobile Devices:

The Internet can now be accessed virtually anywhere by numerous means.
Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow
users to connect to the Internet from anywhere there is a cellular network
supporting that device's technology.

The World Wide Web

For more details on this topic, see World Wide Web.
Graphic representation of less than 0.0001% of the WWW, representing some of the
hyperlinks

Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (or just the Web)
interchangeably, but, as discussed above, the two terms are not synonymous.

The World Wide Web is a huge set of interlinked documents, images and other
resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. These hyperlinks and URLs allow the web-
servers and other machines that store originals, and cached copies, of these resources
to deliver them as required using HTTP. HTTP is only one of the communication
protocols used on the Internet.

Web services also use HTTP to allow software systems to communicate in order to
share and exchange business logic and data.

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. Web
documents may contain almost any combination of computer data including
photographs, graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content including
games, office applications and scientific demonstrations.

Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines, like Yahoo!, and
Google, millions of people worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse
amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the
World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information
and data.

It is also easier using the Web than ever before for individuals and organisations to
publish ideas and information to an extremely large audience. Anyone can find ways to
publish a web page or build a website for very little initial cost. Publishing and
maintaining large, professional websites full of attractive, diverse and up-to-date
information is still a difficult and expensive proposition, however.

Many individuals and some companies and groups use "Web logs" or blogs, which are
largely used as easily-updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations
encourage staff to fill them with advice on their areas of specialization in the hope that
visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be
attracted to the corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, whose
product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in
their work.

Collections of personal Web pages published by large service providers remain popular,
and have become increasingly sophisticated. Whereas operations such as Angelfire
and GeoCities have existed since the early days of the Web, newer offerings from, for
example, Facebook and MySpace currently have large followings. These operations
often brand themselves as social network services rather than simply as Web page
hosts.

Advertising on popular Web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce or the sale of
products and services directly via the Web continues to grow.

In the early days, Web pages were usually created as sets of complete and isolated
HTML text files stored on a Web server. More recently, Web sites are more often
created using content management system (CMS) software with, initially, very little
content. Users of the CMS, who may be paid staff, members of a club or other
organisation, or even members of the public, fill the CMS database with content using
editing pages designed for that purpose, while casual visitors view and read this content
in its final HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems
built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the
target visitors.

Remote access
Further information: Remote access

The Internet allows computer users to connect to other computers and

information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. They may do
this with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption
technologies, depending on the requirements.

This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and

information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit
the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third
country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts
could have been created by home-working book-keepers, in other remote
locations, based on information e-mailed to them from offices all over the world.
Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet,
but the cost of private, leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in
practice.

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. This gives the worker complete access to all of their normal files and
data, including e-mail and other applications, while away from the office.

This concept is also referred to by some network security people as the Virtual
Private Nightmare, because it extends the secure perimeter of a corporate
network into its employees' homes; this has been the source of some notable
security breaches, but also provides security for the workers.

Collaboration:
See also: Collaborative software

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has
made collaborative work dramatically easier. Not only can a group cheaply
communicate and test, but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups to easily
form in the first place, even among niche interests. An example of this is the free
software movement in software development which produced GNU and Linux from
scratch and has taken over development of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org (formerly known
as Netscape Communicator and StarOffice).

Internet 'chat', whether in the form of IRC 'chat rooms' or channels, or via instant
messaging systems allow colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way when
working at their computers during the day. Messages can be sent and viewed even
more quickly and conveniently than via e-mail. Extension to these systems may allow
files to be exchanged, 'whiteboard' drawings to be shared as well as voice and video
contact between team members.

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
For more details on this topic, see File sharing.

A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment.

It can be uploaded to a Web site or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be
put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load
of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-
peer networks.

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. The price can be paid by the
remote charging of funds from, for example a credit card whose details are also passed
—hopefully fully encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file
received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests.

These simple features of the Internet, over a world-wide basis, are changing the basis
for the production, sale, and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer
file for transmission. This includes all manner of print publications, software products,
news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has
caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the
production and distribution of these products in that country.

Internet collaboration technology enables business and project teams to share

documents, calendars and other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety
of areas including scientific research, software development, conference planning,
political activism and creative writing.

Streaming media
Many existing radio and television broadcasters provide Internet 'feeds' of their live
audio and video streams (for example, the BBC and Rush Limbaugh). They may also
allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again
features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters'
who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a
computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the
same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. The range
of material is much wider, from pornography to highly specialized technical Web-casts.
Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where—usually audio—material is first
downloaded in full and then may be played back on a computer or shifted to a digital
audio player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment
allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual
material on a worldwide basis.

Webcams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. While

some webcams can give full frame rate video, the picture is usually either small or
updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in
the Panama Canal, the traffic at a local roundabout or their own premises, live and in
real time. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams are
also popular. Many uses can be found for personal webcams in and around the home,
with and without two-way sound.

Voice telephony (VoIP)

For more details on this topic, see VoIP.

VoIP stands for Voice over IP, where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that
underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional
two-way voice extension to some of the Instant Messaging systems that took off
around the year 2000. In recent years many VoIP systems have become as easy
to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the
Internet carries the actual voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a
normal telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those
with always-on Internet connections such as cable or ADSL.

Thus VoIP is maturing into a viable alternative to traditional telephones.

Interoperability between different providers has improved and the ability to call or
receive a call from a traditional telephone is available. Simple inexpensive VoIP
modems are now available that eliminate the need for a PC.

Voice quality can still vary from call to call but is often equal to and can even
exceed that of traditional calls.

Remaining problems for VoIP include emergency telephone number dialling and
reliability. Currently a few VoIP providers provide an emergency service but it is
not universally available. Traditional phones are line powered and operate during
a power failure, VoIP does not do so without a backup power source for the
electronics.

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.

VoIP has also become increasingly popular within the gaming world, as a form of
communication between players. Popular gaming VoIP clients include Ventrilo
and Teamspeak, and there are others available also.
Censorship:
For more details on this topic, see Internet censorship.

Some governments, such as those of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, 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. This is
accomplished through software that filters domains and content so that they may
not be easily accessed or obtained without elaborate circumvention.

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.

Many countries have enacted laws making the possession or distribution of

certain material, such as child pornography, illegal, but do not use filtering
software.

There are many free and commercially available software programs with which a
user can choose to block offensive Web sites on individual computers or
networks, such as to limit a child's access to pornography or violence. See
Content-control software.

Internet access:
For more details on this topic, see Internet access.

Common methods of home access include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial
cable, fiber optic or copper wires), Wi-Fi, satellite and technology 3G cell phones.

Public places to use the Internet include libraries and Internet cafes, where computers
with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in many
public places such as airport halls and coffee shops, in some cases just for brief use
while standing. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access
terminal", and "Web payphone". Many hotels now also have public terminals, though
these are usually fee-based.

Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the
Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi-cafes, where a would-be
user needs to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These
services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be
limited to a confined location. The whole campus or park, or even the entire city can be
enabled. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial WiFi
services covering large city areas are in place in London, Vienna, Toronto, San
Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The Internet can then be accessed
from such places as a park bench.[5]

Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless
networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular phone networks,
and fixed wireless services.

High-end mobile phones such as smartphones generally come with Internet access
through the phone network. Web browsers such as Opera are available on these
advanced handsets, which can also run a wide variety of other Internet software. More
mobile phones have Internet access than PCs, though this is not as widely used. An
Internet access provider and protocol matrix differentiates the methods used to get
online.

Leisure:
The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web, with
entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on
university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much of the main traffic.
Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short
cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs
or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas.

The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World
Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other Web
sites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries'
use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity. A song
in the Broadway musical show Avenue Q is titled "The Internet is for Porn" and refers to
the popularity of this aspect of the Internet.

One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure
creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced
world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from
role-playing games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people
interact and spend their free time on the Internet.

While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming
began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer, which players of games would
typically subscribe to. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or
certain games.

Many use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their
enjoyment and relaxation. As discussed above, there are paid and unpaid sources for
all of these, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies.
Discretion is needed as some of these sources take more care over the original artists'
rights and over copyright laws than others.

Many use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and
book holidays and to find out more about their random ideas and casual interests.

People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends
worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. Social
networking Web sites like Friends Reunited and many others like them also put and
keep people in contact for their enjoyment.

The Internet has seen a growing amount of Internet operating systems, where users
can access their files, folders, and settings via the Internet. An example of an
opensource webOS is Eyeos.

Cyberslacking has become a serious drain on corporate resources; the average UK

employee spends 57 minutes a day surfing the Web at work, according to a study by
Peninsula Business Services [2].

Complex architecture:
Many computer scientists see the Internet as a "prime example of a large-scale, highly
engineered, yet highly complex system".[6] The Internet is extremely heterogeneous.
(For instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of connections vary
widely.) The Internet exhibits "emergent phenomena" that depend on its large-scale
organization. For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity. Further
adding to the complexity of the Internet is the ability of more than one computer to use
the Internet through only one node, thus creating the possibility for a very deep and
hierarchal based sub-network that can theoretically be extended infinitely (disregarding
the programmatic limitations of the IPv4 protocol). However, since principles of this
architecture date back to the 1960s, it might not be a solution best suited to modern
needs, and thus the possibility of developing alternative structures is currently being
looked into. Thanks to studies done in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, it has been
shown that the internet is in the shape of a sphere or medusa jellyfish. There are 3
sections of this sphere. The core of the internet is made up of around a 100 of the most
tightly connected subnetworks, such as Google. [7]
Marketing:
The Internet has also become a large market for companies; some of the biggest
companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient nature of low-cost
advertising and commerce through the Internet; also known as e-commerce. It is the
fastest way to spread information to a vast amount of people simultaneously. The
Internet has also subsequently revolutionized shopping—for example; a person can
order a CD online and receive it in the mail within a couple of days, or download it
directly in some cases. The Internet has also greatly facilitated personalized marketing
which allows a company to market a product to a specific person or a specific group of
people more so than any other advertising medium.

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. Many of these users are young teens
and adolescents ranging from 13 to 25 years old. 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.

Further information: Disintermediation#Impact of Internet-related

disintermediation upon various industries and Travel agency#The Internet threat

The name Internet:

For more details on this topic, see Internet capitalization conventions.

Internet is traditionally written with a capital first letter, as it is a proper noun. The
Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers, the World Wide Web Consortium, and several other
Internet-related organizations use this convention in their publications.

Many newspapers, newswires, periodicals, and technical journals capitalize the term
(Internet). Examples include The New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, The
Times of India, Hindustan Times, and Communications of the ACM.

Others assert that the first letter should be in lower case (internet), and that the specific
article “the” is sufficient to distinguish “the internet” from other internets. A significant
number of publications use this form, including The Economist, the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation, the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, and The
Sydney Morning Herald. As of 2005, many publications using internet appear to be
located outside of North America—although one U.S. news source, Wired News, has
adopted the lower-case spelling.

Historically, Internet and internet have had different meanings, with internet meaning
“an interconnected set of distinct networks,” and Internet referring to the world-wide,
publicly-available IP internet. Under this distinction, "the Internet" is the familiar network
via which websites exist, however "an internet" can exist between any two remote
locations.[8] Any group of distinct networks connected together is an internet; each of
these networks may or may not be part of the Internet. The distinction was evident in
many RFCs, books, and articles from the 1980s and early 1990s (some of which, such
as RFC 1918, refer to "internets" in the plural), but has recently fallen into disuse.
Instead, the term intranet is generally used for private networks. See also: extranet.

Some people use the lower-case term as a medium (like radio or newspaper, e.g. I've
found it on the internet), and first letter capitalized as the global network.

See also:
Main articles: List of basic internet topics and List of Internet topics

Major aspects and issues

• Internet democracy
• History of the Internet
• Net neutrality
• Privacy on the Internet

Functions

• E-mail
• File-sharing
• Instant messaging
• Internet fax
• World Wide Web
• Voice over IP

Underlying infrastructure

• Internet Protocol (IP)

• Internet Service Provider (ISP)
• Series of tubes

Regulatory bodies

• Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)

 • Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

Notes
1. ^ ARPA/DARPA. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Retrieved on 2007-
05-21.
2. ^ DARPA Over the Years. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Retrieved
on 2007-05-21.
3. ^ Coffman, K. G; Odlyzko, A. M. (1998-10-02). "The size and growth rate of the
Internet". AT&T Labs. Retrieved on 2007-05-21.
4. ^ Slabbert,N.J. The Technologies of Peace, Harvard International Review, June
2006.
5. ^ "Toronto Hydro to Install Wireless Network in Downtown Toronto". Bloomberg.com.
Retrieved 19-Mar-2006.
6. ^ Walter Willinger, Ramesh Govindan, Sugih Jamin, Vern Paxson, and Scott Shenker
(2002). Scaling phenomena in the Internet. In Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 99, suppl. 1, 2573–2580.
7. ^ "Internet Makeover? Some argue it's time". The Seattle Times, April 16, 2007.
8. ^ What is the Internet?

References

• Media Freedom Internet Cookbook by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of

the Media Vienna, 2004
• Living Internet—Internet history and related information, including information
from many creators of the Internet
• First Monday peer-reviewed journal on the Internet
• How Much Does The Internet Weigh? by Stephen Cass, Discover 2007

Rehmeyer, Julie J. 2007. Mapping a medusa: The Internet spreads its tentacles.
Science News 171(June 23):387-388. Available at [3] . Sohn, Emily. 2006. Internet
generation. Science News for Kids (Oct. 25). Available at [4] .

External links

• "10 Years that changed the world"—WiReD looks back at the evolution of the
Internet over last 10 years
• Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
• A comprehensive history with people, concepts and quotations
• CBC Digital Archives—Inventing the Internet Age
• How the Internet Came to Be
• Internet Explained
• Global Internet Traffic Report
• The Internet Society History Page
 • RFC 801, planning the TCP/IP switchover
• Archive CBC Video Circa 1990 about the Internet
• "The beginners guide to the internet."

as a college campus, industrial complex, or a military base. A CAN, may be

considered a type of MAN (metropolitan area network), but is generally limited to an
area that is smaller than a typical MAN.
..... Click the link for more information.
Computer networking is the engineering discipline concerned with communication
between computer systems or devices. Networking, routers, routing protocols, and
networking over the public Internet have their specifications defined in documents called
RFCs.
..... Click the link for more information.

Internetworking involves connecting two or more distinct computer networks or

network segments together to form an internetwork (often shortened to internet),
using devices which operate at layer 3 (Network layer) of the OSI Basic Reference
Model (such as routers or
..... Click the link for more information.

as a college campus, industrial complex, or a military base. A CAN, may be

considered a type of MAN (metropolitan area network), but is generally limited to an
area that is smaller than a typical MAN.
..... Click the link for more information.

In computer science, data is any information in a form suitable for use with a
computer[1]. Data is often distinguished from programs. A program is a set of
instructions that detail a task for the computer to perform.
..... Click the link for more information.

Packet switching is a communications paradigm in which packets (discrete blocks of

data) are routed between nodes over data links shared with other traffic. In each
network node, packets are queued or buffered, resulting in variable delay.
..... Click the link for more information.

Internet protocol may refer to:

• The Internet Protocol, a data-oriented protocol used for communicating data

across a packet-switched internetwork
• The Internet protocol suite, a set of communications protocols that implement the
protocol stack on which the Internet runs

..... Click the link for more information.

Information is the result of processing, gathering, manipulating and organizing data in
a way that adds to the knowledge of the receiver. In other words, it is the context in
which data is taken.
..... Click the link for more information.

E-mail (short for electronic mail; often also abbreviated as e-mail, email or simply mail)
is a store and forward method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages
over electronic communication systems.
..... Click the link for more information.

weasel words.
* It does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by citing
reliable sources.
* It may require general cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
..... Click the link for more information.

computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information,

which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable
storage.
..... Click the link for more information.

World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked,

hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, a user views web
pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates
between them using hyperlinks.
..... Click the link for more information.

World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked,

hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, a user views web
pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates
between them using hyperlinks.
..... Click the link for more information.

as a college campus, industrial complex, or a military base. A CAN, may be

considered a type of MAN (metropolitan area network), but is generally limited to an
area that is smaller than a typical MAN.
..... Click the link for more information.

2, 1
(mildly basic oxide)
Electronegativity 1.90 (Pauling scale)
Ionization energies
(more) 1st: 745.5 kJmol−1
2nd: 1957.9 kJmol−1
3rd: 3666 kJmol−1

Atomic radius 135 pm

Atomic radius (calc.
..... Click the link for more information.

An optical fiber (or fibre) is a glass or plastic fiber designed to guide light along its
length. Fiber optics is the overlap of applied science and engineering concerned with
such optical fibers.
..... Click the link for more information.

wireless is normally used to refer to any type of electrical or electronic operation which
is accomplished without the use of a "hard wired" connection. Wireless
communication is the transfer of information
..... Click the link for more information.

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 (URLs), but its definition has been further extended to
include the referent of
..... Click the link for more information.

A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of

the same document or to another document that may be on a different website.

Hyperlinks are part of the foundation of the World Wide Web created by Tim Berners-
Lee, but are not limited to
..... Click the link for more information.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) formerly known as Universal Resource Locator, is a

technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings:

• In popular usage, many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform

Resource Identifier (URI);
•

..... Click the link for more information.

E-mail (short for electronic mail; often also abbreviated as e-mail, email or simply mail)
is a store and forward method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages
over electronic communication systems.
..... Click the link for more information.
 See Shared resource for the conventional meaning of file sharing

File sharing is the practice of making files available for other users to download over
the Internet and smaller networks.
..... Click the link for more information.

The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols that implement the
protocol stack on which the Internet and most commercial networks run. It has also
been referred to as the TCP/IP protocol suite, which is named after two of the most
important protocols in it:
..... Click the link for more information.

Internet protocol may refer to:

• The Internet Protocol, a data-oriented protocol used for communicating data

across a packet-switched internetwork
• The Internet protocol suite, a set of communications protocols that implement the
protocol stack on which the Internet runs

..... Click the link for more information.

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet
protocol suite. TCP provides reliable, in-order delivery of a stream of bytes, making it
suitable for applications like file transfer and e-mail.
..... Click the link for more information.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communications protocol used to transfer or

convey information on the World Wide Web. Its original purpose was to provide a way to
publish and retrieve HTML hypertext pages.
..... Click the link for more information.

A user agent is the client application used with a particular network protocol; the phrase
is most commonly used in reference to those which access the World Wide Web, but
other systems such as SIP uses the term user agent to refer to the user's phone.
..... Click the link for more information.

A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with
text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a
website on the World Wide Web or a local area network.
..... Click the link for more information.

first multiprotocol wide area network called the NASA Science Internet, or NSI. NSI
was established to provide a total integrated communications infrastructure to the NASA
scientific community for the advancement of earth, space and life sciences.
..... Click the link for more information.

The ARPANET, developed by DARPA of the United States Department of Defense,

was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the
global Internet.
..... Click the link for more information.

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edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our
staff. Although the vast majority of the Wikipedia® encyclopedia articles provide
accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular
article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.

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Internet crime:
Internet crime is crime committed on the Internet, using the Internet and
by means of the Internet.

Computer crime is a general term that embraces such crimes as phishing, credit card
frauds, bank robbery, illegal downloading, industrial espionage, child pornography,
kidnapping children via chat rooms, scams, cyberterrorism, creation and/or distribution
of viruses, spam and so on. All such crimes are computer related and facilitated crimes.

With the evolution of the Internet, along came another revolution of crime where the
perpetrators commit acts of crime and wrongdoing on the World Wide Web. Internet
crime takes many faces and is committed in diverse fashions. The number of users and
their diversity in their makeup has exposed the Internet to everyone. Some criminals in
the Internet have grown up understanding this superhighway of information, unlike the
older generation of users. This is why Internet crime has now become a growing
problem in the United States. Some crimes committed on the Internet have been
exposed to the world and some remain a mystery up until they are perpetrated against
someone or some company.

The different types of Internet crime vary in their design and how easily they are able to
be committed. Internet crimes can be separated into two different categories. There are
crimes that are only committed while being on the Internet and are created exclusively
because of the World Wide Web. The typical crimes in criminal history are now being
brought to a whole different level of innovation and ingenuity. Such new crimes devoted
to the Internet are email “phishing”, hijacking domain names, virus immistion, and cyber
vandalism. A couple of these crimes are activities that have been exposed and
introduced into the world. People have been trying to solve virus problems by installing
virus protection software and other software that can protect their computers. Other
crimes such as email “phishing” are not as known to the public until an individual
receives one of these fraudulent emails. These emails are cover faced by the illusion
that the email is from your bank or another bank. When a person reads the email he/she
is informed of a problem with he/she personal account or another individual wants to
send the person some of their money and deposit it directly into their account. The
email asks for your personal account information and when a person gives this
information away, they are financing the work of a criminal.

According to security firm Symantec, Internet criminal activities have become a serious
commercial activity with selling email addresses, details of bank accounts and credit
cards through underworld auction sites is on the rise. Some even use trusted websites
such as MySpace and Facebook to do this.[1]

Statistics
The statistics that have been obtained and reported about demonstrate the
seriousness Internet crimes in the world. Just the "phishing" emails
mentioned in a previous paragraph produce one billion dollars for their
perpetrators (Dalton 1). In a FBI survey in early 2004, 90 percent of the 500
companies surveyed reported a security breach and 80 percent of those
suffered a financial loss (Fisher 22). A national statistic in 2003 stated that
four billion dollars in credit card fraud are lost each year. Only two percent
of credit card transactions take place over the Internet but fifty percent of
the four billion, mentioned before, are from the transaction online (Burden
and Palmer 5). All these finding are just an illustration of the misuse of the
Internet and a reason why Internet crime has to be slowed down.
Stopping the problem
The question about how to police these crimes has already been
constructed, but this task is turning out to be an uphill battle. Since the first
computer crime law, the Counterfeit Access Device and Computer Fraud
and Abuse Act of 1984, the government has been trying to track down and
stop online criminals. The FBI has tried many programs and investigations
in order to deter Internet crime, like creating an online crime registry for
employers (Metchik 29). The reality is that Internet criminals are rarely
caught. One reason is that hackers will use one computer in one country to
hack another computer in another country. Another eluding technique used
is the changing of the emails, which are involved in virus attacks and
“phishing” emails so that a pattern cannot be recognized. An individual can
do their best to protect themselves simply by being cautious and careful.
Internet users need to watch suspicious emails, use unique passwords,
and run anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Do not open any email or run
programs from unknown sources.

See also

• Internet fraud

References

• Kit Burden and Creole Palmer. (2003). Internet Crime: Cyber Crime-A New
Breed of Criminal? Computer Law and Security Report. 19 (3): 222-227.
• Richard J. Dalton. (2005). Newsday.
• Dennis Fisher. (2004). EWeek 21.
• Eric Metchik. (1997). A Typology of Crime on the Internet. Security Journal 9 (1-
3): 27-31.

Picture: [1]
1. ^ "Internet crime becoming major commercial activity".

External links

• Fraud in the Internet article by Computer Crime Research Center

• Groups to stop illegal images on the net:
• Cyber Law Discussion Forums
• Tips about online money