Introduction to the Internet 1

A Breif History:
The Internet started in 1969 as a means of communication for the U.S. Defense Dept., military, and universities to keep in contact and exchange information even during natural disasters and wars. Universities advanced the progress of this "internetworld" quickly by adding additional servers (to the original 4) increasing connections nationwide. For years it funtioned like a huge e-mail system until 1990 when a standardization of information exchange created what is now known as the www (world wide web).

While the internet is a physical entity, the www is more an agreed upon collection of standards governing how to address the packets of information that are sent across the internet. This resulted in the creation of a common language called HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) which is used to create web pages.

It is the same today as when there were only 4 servers except now the information sent across the phone lines can carry data for graphics, animation, sound, even video.

Servers are computers that are connected together via the internet and can exchange data very quickly between one another via broad-band connections.

Computers in homes and businesses can connect to the servers via phone lines. Once the computer is "dialed up" to the server, it can then contact all of the other servers and access the information on them.

As more servers and more compuers are added to the network, information that can be accessed increases until we have a vast ever-growing archive of information that can be accessed quickly and inexpensively. Today there are more than 800 million web pages to visit,... or not.

Which ones get the hits?


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