Internet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the worldwide computer network. For other uses, see Intern
et (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with the World Wide Web.
Internet users per 100 population members and GDP per capita for selected countr
ies.
Internet
Visualization of Internet routing paths
An Opte Project visualization of routing paths through a portion of the Internet
General[show]
Governance[show]
Information infrastructure[show]
Services[show]
Guides[show]
icon Internet portal
v t e
The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use t
he Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide. It is a network o
f networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government
networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wirele
ss, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range
of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext docum
ents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, newsgroups,
voice over IP telephony, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing.
The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United Sta
tes federal government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communicatio
n via computer networks.[1] The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initiall
y served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military net
works 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 exten
sions, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking techn
ologies, and the merger of many networks.[2] The linking of commercial networks
and enterprises by the early 1990s marks 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, the commercia
lization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect
of modern life.
Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s
in the developing world.[4] In the 20 years since 1995, Internet use has grown
100-times, measured for the period of one year, to over one third of the world p
opulation.[5][6] Most traditional communications media, including telephony, rad
io, television, paper mail and newspapers are being reshaped or redefined by the
Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet telephony, Inter
net television music, digital newspapers, and video streaming websites. Newspape
r, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are r
eshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators (e.g., Google News)
. The entertainment industry was initially the fastest growing segment on the In
ternet.[citation needed] The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of p
ersonal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social netw
orking. Online shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers and sma
ll businesses and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "bricks and
mortar" presence to serve a larger market or even sell goods and services entir
ely online. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect s
upply chains across entire industries.

The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementatio

n or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own polici
es.[7] Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the
Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System (DNS),
are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigne
d Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of t
he 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.[8]