What Is Internet

By | May 2, 2022

Internet is the fore most important tool and the prominent resource that is being used by almost every person across the globe.

It connects millions of computers, webpages, websites, and servers. 

Using the internet we can send emails, photos, videos, messages to our loved ones. Or in other words, the internet is a widespread interconnected network of computers and electronics devices(that support internet). 

 It creates a communication medium to share and get information online. If your device is connected to the Internet then only you will be able to access all the applications, websites, social media apps, and many more services. Internet nowadays is considered as the fastest medium for sending and receiving information.

Origin Of Internet:

The internet came in the year 1960 with the creation of the first working model called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency).

It allowed multiple computers to work on a single network that was their biggest achievement at that time. 

ARPANET use packet switching to communicate multiple computer systems under a single network. In October 1969, using ARPANET first message was transferred from one computer to another. After that technology continues to grow. 

How is the Internet set up?

The internet is set up with the help of physical optical fiber data transmission cables or copper wires and various other networking mediums like LAN, WAN, MAN, etc.

For accessing the Internet even the 2g, 3g, and 4g services and the wifi require these physical cable setup to access the Internet.

There is an authority named ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) located in the USA which manages the Internet and protocols related to it like IP addresses.

How does the internet works?

The actual working of the internet takes place with the help of clients and servers. Here the client is a laptop that is directly connected to the internet and servers are the computers connected indirectly to the Internet and they are having all the websites stored in those large computers.

These servers are connected to the internet with the help of ISP (Internet Service Providers) and will be identified with the IP address. Each website has its Domain name as it is difficult for any person to always remember the long numbers or strings. 

So, whenever you search any domain name in the search bar of the browser the request will be sent to the server and that server will try to find the IP address from the Domain name because it cannot understand the domain name.

After getting the IP address the server will try to search the IP address of the Domain name in a Huge phone directory that in networking is known as a DNS server (Domain Name Server). For example, if we have the name of a person and you can easily find the Aadhar number of him/her from the long directory as simple as that.

So after getting the IP address the browser will pass on the further request to the respective server and now the server will process the request to display the content of the website which the client wants.

If you are using a wireless medium of Internet like 3g and 4g or other mobile data then the data will start flowing from the optical cables and will first reach to towers from there the signals will reach your cell phones and Pc’s through electromagnetic waves.

And if you are using routers then optical fiber connecting to your router will help in connecting those light-induced signals into electrical signals and with the help of ethernet cables internet reaches your computers and hence the required information. 

What is an IP address?

IP address stands for internet protocol address. Every PC/Local machine is having an IP address and that IP address is provided by the Internet Service Providers (ISP’s). These are some sets of rules which govern the flow of data whenever a device is connected to the Internet.

It differentiates computers, websites, and routers. Just like human identification cards like Aadhar cards, Pan cards, or any other unique identification documents. Every laptop and desktop has its own unique IP address for identification.

It’s an important part of internet technology. An IP address is displayed as a set of four-digit like 192.154.3.29. Here each number on the set ranges from 0 to 255. Hence, the total IP address range from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. 

You can check the IP address of your Laptop or desktop by clicking on the windows start menu ->then right click and go to network ->in that go to status and then Properties their you can see the IP address. There are four different types of IP addresses are available:

  1. Static IP address
  2. Dynamic IP address
  3. Private IP address
  4. Public IP address

World Wide Web(WWW)

The worldwide web is a collection of all the web pages, web documents that you can see on the Internet by searching their URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) on the Internet. For example, www.geeksforgeeks.org is a URL of the GFG website and all the content of this site like webpages and all the web documents are stored on the worldwide web.

Or in other words, the world wide web is an information retrieval service of the web. It provides users a huge array of documents that are connected to each other by means of hypertext or hypermedia links.

Here, hyperlinks are known as electronic connections that link the related data so that users can easily access the related information and hypertext allows the user to pick a word or phrase from text, and using this keyword or word or phrase can access other documents that contain additional information related to that word or keyword or phrase.

World wide web is a project which is created by Timothy Berner’s Lee in 1989, for researchers to work together effectively at CERN. It is an organization, named World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which was developed for further development in the web.

Difference between Worldwide Web and Internet

The difference between the world wide web and the internet are:

  • All the web pages and web documents are stored there on the World wide web and to find all that stuff you will have a specific URL for each website. Whereas the internet is a global network of computers that is accessed by the World wide web.
  • World wide web is a service whereas the internet is an infrastructure.
  • World wide web is a subset of the internet whereas the internet is the superset of the world wide web.
  • World wide web is software-oriented whereas the internet is hardware-oriented.
  • World wide web uses HTTP whereas the internet uses IP addresses.
  • The Internet can be considered as a Library whereas all the kinds of stuff like books from different topics present over there can be considered as World wide web.

Uses of the Internet

Some of the important usages of the internet are:

  1. Online Businesses (E-commerce): Online shopping websites have made our life easier, e-commerce sites like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra are providing very spectacular services with just one click and this is a great use of the Internet.
  2. Cashless transactions: All the merchandising companies are offering services to their customers to pay the bills of the products online via various digital payment apps like Paytm, Google pay, etc. UPI payment gateway is also increasing day by day. Digital payment industries are growing at a rate of 50% every year too because of the INTERNET.
  3. Education: It is the internet facility that provides a whole bunch of educational material to everyone through any server across the web. Those who are unable to attend physical classes can choose any course from the internet and can have the point-to-point knowledge of it just by sitting at home. High-class faculties are teaching online on digital platforms and providing quality education to students with the help of the Internet.
  4. Social Networking: The purpose of social networking sites and apps is to connect people all over the world. With the help of social networking sites, we can talk, share videos, images with our loved ones when they are far away from us. Also, we can create groups for discussion or for meetings.
  5. Entertainment: The Internet is also used for entertainment. There are numerous entertainment options available on the internet like watching movies, playing games, listening to music, etc. You can also download movies, games, songs, TV Serial, etc., easily from the internet.

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