Internet

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 World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs, such as ), which may be interlinked by hypertext, and are accessible over the Internet.

The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. Research into packet switching, one of the fundamental Internet technologies, started in the early 1960s in the work of Paul Baran, and packet-switched networks such as the NPL network by Donald Davies, ARPANET, the Merit Network, CYCLADES, and Telenet were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet.

The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network.

The Internet is run on computers and it connects hundreds of millions of other computers and their users.

Most traditional communication 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.

An online music store is an online business which sells audio files over the Internet, usually sound recordings of music songs or classical pieces, in which the user pays on a per-song or subscription basis.

Most traditional communication 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.

Streaming television (also known as streaming TV, online TV, Internet TV, or TV streaming) is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming video delivered over the Internet.

The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking.

Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat that offers real-time text transmission over the Internet.

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.

As implemented on the Web, hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.

Newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators.

Websites can be accessed via a public Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network (LAN), by a uniform resource locator (URL) that identifies the site.

The Internet (portmanteau of interconnected network) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide.

The best-known computer network is the Internet.

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.

Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser.

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 Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and decentralized naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network.

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.

This term is usually used to contrast with a transitory business or an Internet-only presence, such as fully online shops, which have no physical presence for shoppers to visit, talk with staff in person, touch and handle products and buy from the firm in person.

The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably in everyday speech; it is common to speak of "going on the Internet" when using a web browser to view web pages.

This is a type of software that can retrieve web pages from the Internet.

When the term Internet is used to refer to the specific global system of interconnected Internet Protocol (IP) networks, the word is a proper noun according to the Chicago Manual of Style that should be written with an initial capital letter.

Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.

Research into packet switching, one of the fundamental Internet technologies, started in the early 1960s in the work of Paul Baran, and packet-switched networks such as the NPL network by Donald Davies, ARPANET, the Merit Network, CYCLADES, and Telenet were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Sprint migrated customers from Telenet to the modern-day Sprintlink IP network, one of many networks composing today's Internet.

Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET).

It played a significant role in spreading awareness of, and access to, national networking and was a major milestone on the path to development of the global Internet.

ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between the Network Measurement Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science directed by Leonard Kleinrock, and the NLS system at SRI International (SRI) by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October 1969.

The school is credited as the birthplace of the Internet, where the first message was sent to a computer at Stanford University on October 29, 1969 by Professor Leonard Kleinrock and his research team at UCLA.

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.

The Hitchhiker's Guide became one of the first help manuals for the Internet.

Research into packet switching, one of the fundamental Internet technologies, started in the early 1960s in the work of Paul Baran, and packet-switched networks such as the NPL network by Donald Davies, ARPANET, the Merit Network, CYCLADES, and Telenet were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Merit's involvement in national networking activities started in the mid-1980s with connections to the national supercomputing centers and work on the 56 kbit/s National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET), the forerunner of today's Internet.

ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between the Network Measurement Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science directed by Leonard Kleinrock, and the NLS system at SRI International (SRI) by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October 1969.

He played an influential role in the development of the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, at UCLA.

Research into packet switching, one of the fundamental Internet technologies, started in the early 1960s in the work of Paul Baran, and packet-switched networks such as the NPL network by Donald Davies, ARPANET, the Merit Network, CYCLADES, and Telenet were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The ARPANET project, a precursor to the Internet, credited Davies for his influence.

Six months later Tim Berners-Lee would begin writing WorldWideWeb, the first web browser after two years of lobbying CERN management.

He made a proposal for an information management system on 12 March 1989, and he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the internet in mid-November the same year.

In 1991 the Commercial Internet eXchange was founded, allowing PSInet to communicate with the other commercial networks CERFnet and Alternet.

It was an important initial effort toward creating the commercial Internet that we know today

As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal growth, the volume of Internet traffic started experiencing similar characteristics as that of the scaling of MOS transistors, exemplified by Moore's law, doubling every 18 months.

Internet traffic is the flow of data within the entire Internet, or in certain network links of its constituent networks.

The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) 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.

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet.