What Is the Internet?
| Like many inventions, the Internet began as the solution to a problem. It began with the government's need to find a way to link several computer networks together so that files could be shared. In other words, it created a network of networks. These computer networks were located all over the world and sharing information the old-fashioned way took a long time. Today, the idea of sharing files with people around the world doesn't sound like such a big deal when almost everyone has the modem, e-mail, and dial-up connections that make Wide Area Networks (WANs) commonplace. Back then, however, no one had even considered the idea. So, how did they do it? Well, researchers working for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) created ARPAnet, which became the first WAN. Eventually, this led to an Internet Protocol (IP)a common computer languageenabling all computers to talk to each other. Internet Protocol (IP)
This protocol and the new network of networks made exchanging information much easier than ever before, but it still wasn't simple. To find information on the Internet, you had to know where it was stored. You first had to understand how all the computers were connected, and then you had to navigate through the network to find the data you were looking for. All that changed in the early 1990s. At that time, a new protocol was created. That protocol, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), enabled information on the Internet to be accessed from anywhere, by anyone. It's what allows you to jump from one Web page to another by pointing and clicking. The code that makes up the HTTP was a breakthrough, but it can't do everything by itself. The information stored on the computers in the network (the documents and data) must include its own set of communication tools so that the other computers in the network can interpret it. In the case of the World Wide Web, the communication tool is HTML. HTML
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EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 151