Internet

The Internet (contraction of interconnected network) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that
use the Internet protocol suite(TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of private,
public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, 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 and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic
mail, telephony, and file sharing.
The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the federal government of the United States in the
1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication with computer networks. [1] The primary precursor network,
the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the
1980s. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private
funding for other commercial extensions, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking
technologies, and the merger of many networks.[2] The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early
1990s marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet,[3] and generated a sustained exponential growth as
generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network. Although the Internet was
widely used by academia since the 1980s, commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually
every aspect of modern life.
Most traditional communications media, including telephony, radio, television, paper mail and newspapers are
reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet
telephony, Internet television, online music, digital newspapers, and video streaming websites. Newspaper, book, and
other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news
aggregators. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant
messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Online shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers
and small businesses and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to serve a
larger market or even sell goods and services entirely online. Business-to-business and financial services on the
Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.
The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage;
each constituent network sets its own policies.[4] Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in
the Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a
maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN). The technical
underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a
non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing
technical expertise.[5] In November 2006, the Internet was included on USA Today's list of New Seven Wonders

World Wide Web

World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer/Edge, Mozilla
Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari, and Google Chrome, lets users navigate from one web page to another via hyperlinks
embedded in the documents. These documents may also contain any combination of computer data, including
graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content that runs while the user is interacting with the
page. Client-side softwarecan include animations, games, office applications and scientific demonstrations.
Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Yahoo!, Bing and Google, users worldwide have
easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to printed media, books,
encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled the decentralization of information on a
large scale.
The Web is therefore a global set of documents, images and other resources, logically interrelated by hyperlinks and
referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). URIs symbolically identify services, servers, and other
databases, and the documents and resources that they can provide. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the main
access protocol of the World Wide Web. Web services also use HTTP to allow software systems to communicate in
order to share and exchange business logic and data.
The Web has enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and information to a potentially
large audience online at greatly reduced expense and time delay. Publishing a web page, a blog, or building a website
involves little initial cost and many cost-free services are available. However, publishing and maintaining large,
professional web sites with attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition.
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 communicate advice in 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.
Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce, which is the sale of products and services
directly via the Web, continues to grow. Online advertising is a form of marketingand advertising which uses the
Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine
marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising),
and mobile advertising. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable
television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.[68]:19 Many common online advertising practices are
controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.
When the Web developed in the 1990s, a typical web page was stored in completed form on a web server, formatted
in HTML, complete for transmission to a web browser in response to a request. Over time, the process of creating and
serving web pages has become dynamic, creating a flexible design, layout, and content. Websites are often created
using content managementsoftware with, initially, very little content. Contributors to these systems, who may be paid
staff, members of an organization or the public, fill underlying databases with content using editing pages designed for
that purpose while casual visitors view and read this content in 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.

Communication
Email is an important communications service available on the Internet. The concept of sending electronic text
messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. [69]
[70]
Pictures, documents, and other files are sent as email attachments. Emails can be cc-ed to multiple email addresses.
Internet telephony is another common communications service made possible by the creation of the
Internet. VoIP stands for Voice-over-Internet Protocol, referring to the protocol that underlies all Internet
communication. The idea began in the early 1990s with walkie-talkie-like voice applications for personal computers.
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 voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a traditional telephone call,
especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on Internet connections such
as cable or ADSL and mobile data.[71] VoIP is maturing into a competitive alternative to traditional telephone service.
Interoperability between different providers has improved and the ability to call or receive a call from a traditional
telephone is available. Simple, inexpensive VoIP network adapters are available that eliminate the need for a personal
computer.
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 dialing and reliability. Currently, a few VoIP
providers provide an emergency service, but it is not universally available. Older traditional phones with no "extra
features" may be line-powered only and operate during a power failure; VoIP can never do so without a backup power
source for the phone equipment and the Internet access devices. VoIP has also become increasingly popular for
gaming applications, as a form of communication between players. Popular VoIP clients for gaming
include Ventrilo and Teamspeak. Modern video game consoles also offer VoIP chat features.

Data transfer
File sharing is an example of transferring large amounts of data across the Internet. A computer file can be emailed to
customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a website or File Transfer Protocol (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 for access to the file. The price can be
paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed – usually 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 worldwide basis, are changing 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.
Streaming media is the real-time delivery of digital media for the immediate consumption or enjoyment by end users.
Many radio and television broadcasters provide Internet feeds of their live audio and video productions. 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 available types of
content is much wider, from specialized technical webcasts to on-demand popular multimedia services. Podcasting is
a variation on this theme, where – usually audio – material is downloaded and played back on a computer or shifted to
a portable media 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 worldwide.
Digital media streaming increases the demand for network bandwidth. For example, standard image quality needs 1
Mbit/s link speed for SD 480p, HD 720p quality requires 2.5 Mbit/s, and the top-of-the-line HDX quality needs 4.5
Mbit/s for 1080p.[72]
Webcams are a low-cost extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full-frame-rate video, the
picture either is usually small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships
in the Panama Canal, traffic at a local roundabout or monitor their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat
rooms and video conferencing are also popular with many uses being found for personal webcams, with and without
two-way sound. YouTube was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading website for free streaming video
with a vast number of users. It uses a HTML5 based web player by default to stream and show video files.
[73]
Registered users may upload an unlimited amount of video and build their own personal profile. YouTube claims
that its users watch hundreds of millions, and upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily.