What Is the Internet?

The Internet is a worldwide networked computing community with millions of users that links together government, business, research, education, industry, and individuals. The World Wide Web is one portion of the Internet.

Internet ” The global network of networks that enables some or all of the following: exchange of email messages, instant messages, files, newsgroups, and World Wide Web pages.

ISP ” An acronym for Internet service provider ; users access the Internet by dialing into their ISP's computer across a phone line and then connecting to the Internet via the ISP's server. ISP also indicates a local service provider and mail delivery service.

DSL ” An acronym for Digital Subscriber Line ; a service that offers a faster Internet connection than a standard dial-up connection. DSL uses the existing phone line, and in most cases does not require an additional phone line.

Cable modem ” Devices that allow high-speed access to the Internet via a cable television network. More powerful, and capable of delivering data at a much faster rate, than a traditional modem.

The World Wide Web puts pages of information at your disposal. Web sites are your destinations when you surf the World Wide Web. A Web site is either a Web page, or all the documents that together make up the destination to which you surf. A typical Web page contains several files, including the main HTML file and associated graphic, sound, animation, and other files. That HTML file usually contains hypertext links to other HTML documents at the same Web site.

World Wide Web ” A portion of the Internet that contains Web pages. These Web pages are made up of text, graphics, sound, animation, and hyperlinks to other Web pages, thereby creating a spiderweb effect.

Intranet Versus Internet

An intranet is an internal network within a company that is based around the same services as the Internet; an intranet may or may not be accessible to or through the Internet. Intranets are growing in popularity very quickly.

Intranet ” The network of networks at your company that enables some or all of the following: exchange of email messages, files, and World Wide Web pages.

With access to an intranet, you have a mail service, can share files, and have a gateway to the Internet. You can publish your Excel worksheets as Web pages on your Web site by using the company intranet. To do so, you publish the worksheet Web page internally to a folder on your hard drive. Before you publish your Web pages on the Web, make sure other users on the network can access that folder. If other users do not have access to the folder that will contain your Web pages, you can ask your network administrator about creating shared folders.