Lesson 2:

Introduction to Internet
What is 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, of local to
global scope, 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 and other net related applications.
Growth of Internet
• The origins of the Internet reach back to research of the 1960s,
commissioned by the United States government in collaboration with
private commercial interests to build robust, fault-tolerant, and
distributed computer networks. The funding of a new U.S. backbone
by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, as well as
private funding for other commercial backbones, led to worldwide
participation in the development of new networking technologies, and
the merger of many networks. The commercialization of what was by
the 1990s an international network resulted in its popularization and
incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of
2011, more than 2.1 billion people – nearly a third of Earth's
population – use the services of the Internet.
Ownership/Governance
• The Internet is a decentralized, global network made up of
interconnected autonomous networks. While there is no central
governing body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) ensures interoperability by managing the
technical and policy aspects of the core infrastructure, including
domain names, IP addresses, and other unique identifiers. ICANN is
governed by an international board and plays a key role in
maintaining globally unified name spaces. The U.S. government
oversees changes to the DNS root zone. The Internet Governance
Forum (IGF) was established in 2005 to discuss Internet-related
issues.
W3C
• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international
community where Member organizations, a fulltime staff,
and the public work together to develop Web standards.
Led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey
Jaffe, W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential.
INTERNET TERMINOLOGY:
• WWW: A technical definition of the World Wide Web is: all the resources and users on the Internet that are
using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

• WEB PAGE: A web page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World
Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This
information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via
hypertext links. Web pages frequently subsume other resources such as style sheets, scriptsand images into
their final presentation.

• WEB SITE: A website, also written as Web site,[1] web site, or simply site,[2] is a collection of related web
pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server,
accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet address
known as a Uniform Resource Locator:

• URL:Uniform Resource Locator or Universal Resource Locator (URL) is a specific character string
that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource, which is stored on some servers.

• IP Address: Unique 32 bit number given to the machines on a network. It is this IP Address that uniquely
names and identifies a machine on the network. An IP address is mostly mapped as a name(Domain Name),
that is popular and easy to use and the Domain Name has to be mapped to the right IP address to access the
server. This is the work of the DNS Server.

• DNS: Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed 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 participating entities. Most importantly, it translates domain names
meaningful to humans into the numerical identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose
of locating and addressing these devices worldwide.
APPLICATIONS OF THE NET
These are some common applications of the internet Internet :

• www: The world wide web with all its contents and resources become a pool
of data and information. Users are able to find relevant information for
anything that is of interest.

• E-mail: The internet of computers allow communication and message transfer

• FTP: FTP applications, called FTP clients are used to transfer huge files over
the net. Newsgroup: These are discussion forums and groups that come
together on topics of common interest.

• Social Network: This is the most widely used applications in the present
world of the net. These allow interactions and communication as in a real
world –Applications like Twitter, Facebook, etc Multimedia content sharing:
Internet is a pool of massive Audio-Video-Graphic contents. These can be
shared and used keeping the rules attached.

• Data Storage and sharing: Using the applications like Cloud computing and
APPLICATIONS OF THE NET
These are some common applications of the internet Internet :

• E-commerce: E-Com allows online trading of goods for sale and purchase.

• Online Payment And Money Transfer: Money transfer and payments to

• Telephony (VOIP) Video Telephony: This allows voice over the internet
allowing video contents. These are inexpensive compared to existing
telephone networks.

• Tele-medicine: Allows consulting of medical experts and seeking advice of

• Video Conference : This allows conference meet and discussions to be more

• Search Engines: Search engines help a user to collect relevant data and
information from the net.