The Internet

 The  Internet

What is the Internet?

The internet is a worldwide computer network that transmits a variety of data and media across interconnected devices. It works by using a packet routing network that follows Internet Protocol (IP) and Transport Control Protocol (TCP).

Internet Technologies

Internet Technologies Internet refers to network of networks.

 In this network each computer is recognized by a globally unique address known as IP address. A special computer DNS (Domain Name Server) is used to give name to the IP Address so that user can locate a computer by a name.

The internet helps us with facts and figures, information and knowledge for personal, social and economic development. There are many uses of the internet, however, the use of the internet in our daily life depends on individual requirements and goals.

The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. 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.

Most traditional communication media, including telephone, radio, television, paper mail and newspapers are reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet telephone, 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 services. Online shopping has grown exponentially for major retailers, 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 single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies. 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. In November 2006, the Internet was included on USA Today's list of New Seven Wonders.

Origin   Of Internet

The origins of the Internet date back to the development of independent UK and US packet switching research and experimentation commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s to enable time-sharing of computers. 

The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s. 

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 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.

 Although the Internet was widely used by academia in the 1980s, commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life. 

Advantages of  The  Internet

Connectivity, communication, and sharing

In the past days, if you sent a letter or someone sent you, it could take days and sometimes even months to a reach letter at the destination. In modern times, you can send a letter or important information to anyone in the e-mail all over the world through the Internet. And, it often will be delivered to the destination in less than a minute.

You can also use other forms of communication, such as VOIP and chat, they also enable you to send any information instantly to anyone in the world. With the Internet

, online forums also allow people to connect with each other where they can share common interests and talk about what they enjoy. Furthermore, you can share your ideas or views with anyone by making an online video call through applications like skype, line, etc.

Information, knowledge, and learning

The Internet allows people to learn information about any topic and offers an answer to any type of question, as it contains endless knowledge and information. Using a search engine like Google Chrome,  Mozilla Firefox  and more, they all allow users to ask any question and find a web page with an answer about that question. You can also watch videos about any topic on sites like YouTube, which contain millions of videos of several topics. Also, you can learn online courses in many different subjects. 

Address, mapping, and contact information

The Internet can help users to provide information almost every place in the world on the map with the help of GPS

technology. You can find businesses in your area or the quickest route to your location. Although, today's search engines are most powerful to know the user's location and help offer the relevant searches for your area. Also, it can provide you the contact information or address of any showroom or other services man. For example, if you want to get the address of an electrician, you can search for an electrician and get a list of local electricians in your area with their address.

Selling and making money

If you want to sell products and services or run a business, the Internet is the best place to sell goods. Because anyone can find and access your website all over the world with the help of the Internet. With online business, you are able to sell goods every day at all times as the Internet is always on and always available. Also, the Internet provides the advantage to promote your business online in the world through advertising. Additionally, there are several ways to earn money online by performing other online services.

Banking, bills, and shopping

If you want to view your bank balance without leaving your home, the Internet offers you the benefit to access your bank account to view the balance. Also, you can send money, pay bills electronically, or many other services can complete through the Internet.

Another advantage of the Internet is online shopping, which allows people to find products of interest and buy them without having to visit a store. You can compare prices between companies for any product through the Internet. Also, you can get help to make better purchasing decisions by online reviews, which describes what others think about a product.

Donations and funding

With the help of an Internet connection, anyone can help fund projects and ideas that interest them or quickly donate to their favorite charity. Also, if you want to donate and looking for charity services, you can find many online services on the Internet that help make it easier to support their causes or help donate.

Entertainment

The Internet provides people to access endless entertainment. With the Internet, you can watch movies, videos, play games online, listen to music, etc. There are many sites available on the Internet, which contain different entertainment material like music, videos, and more. Also, you can watch online videos on a platform like YouTube. Furthermore, you can download any movies, videos, or other entertainment material via the Internet on devices like computers or mobile phones that can be played anytime without an Internet connection.

Work from home, collaboration, and access to a global workforce

The Internet offers people benefit to connect with others around the world. There are various online services that help you to communicate and work with other people all over the world. Also, it can make services and producing new products faster.

An Internet connection offers many people an option to create a virtual office by allowing them to work from home. Sometime, there could be a condition for any organization to allow their employees to work from home using their computer. In this condition, the Internet plays the most important role as it provides connectivity between all employees, through which they all can communicate and discuss with each other regarding any project.

Disadvantages of  The Internet

The Internet’s drawbacks can’t be overlooked any longer as numerous teenagers are affected by Internet Addiction Disorder, then many ladies became online shopaholics.

1. Internet Addiction Disorder: Internet addiction is detrimental to not only fitness but also psychological state.  
2. Cyber Crime: Hacker programs a virus that gets into the pc and ruins valuable data. Users’ personal information like name, address, master card, bank details, and other information are often accessed by culprits when used on the web, leading to significant economic loss.
3. Social Alienation: Time spent online flies fast without consciousness. After getting attracted the user is trapped into the trap, users are trapped by a “net”, spending less time with people in the real world. Less interaction and face-to-face communication, actually, may end in a decrease in social abilities.
4. Spam: The unnecessary emails, advertisements, etc. are sometimes said to be spam because they need the power to hamper the system and make the users face many problems.
5. Health issues: Playing games and spending too much time on monitors leads to obesity and an unhealthy lifestyle.  

World Wide Web (WWW)

⬢ The World Wide Web—usually called the Web for short—is a collection of different websites you can access through the Internet. 

⬢ A website is made up of related text, images, and other resources. 

⬢ Websites can resemble other forms of media—like newspaper articles or television programs—or they can be interactive in a way that's unique to computers.

How does the Internet work?

⬢ It's important to realize that the Internet is a global network of physical cables, which can include copper telephone wires, TV cables, and fiber optic cables.

⬢ Even wireless connections like Wi-Fi and 3G/4G rely on these physical cables to access the Internet.

 

⬢ When you visit a website, your computer sends a request over these wires to a server. A server is where websites are stored, and it works a lot like your computer's hard drive. 

⬢ Once the request arrives, the server retrieves the website and sends the correct data back to your computer.

Internet Domain  Name  System

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the hierarchical and decentralized naming system used to identify computers reachable through the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. 

The resource records contained in the DNS associate domain names with other forms of information.

 These are most commonly used to map human-friendly domain names to the numerical IP addresses computers need to locate services and devices using the underlying network protocols, but have been extended over time to perform many other functions as well. 

The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.

IP Address

⬢ IP address is a unique logical address assigned to a machine over the network. An IP address exhibits the following properties: 

⬢ IP address is the unique address assigned to each host present on Internet. ⬢ IP address is 32 bits (4 bytes) long. 

⬢ IP address consists of two components: network component and host component. 

.

⬢ Each of the 4 bytes is represented by a number from 0 to 255, separated with dots.

               For example 137.170.4.124

Uniform  Resource Locator(URL)

URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator and is a reference (an address) to a resource on the Internet. 

A URL has two main components: Protocol identifier: For the URL http://example.com , the protocol identifier is http . Resource name: For the URL http://example.com , the resource name is example.com .

Domain Names

⬢ Domain Name is a symbolic string associated with an IP address. 

⬢ There are several domain names available; some of them are generic such as com, edu , gov, net etc , while some country level domain names such as au, in, za, us etc.

⬢ The following table shows the Generic Top-Level Domain names:

Name	Entity	IDN
.com	commercial	Yes
.org	organization	Yes
.net	network	Yes
.int	international	No

.edu                                      education                             No.gov                                      government                         No

⬢ The following table shows the Country top-level domain names:

Domain Name                                 Meaning 

au                                                    Australia in                                                       India

 lk                                                    Sri Lanka fr                                                      France us                                                United States za                                                   South Africa