The Internet is one of the fastest growing, dynamic areas of telecommunication.
A simple definition of the Internet is a collection of millions of interconnected computers that have the ability to communicate with one another using a predefined set of protocols. The standard for Internet addressing is the Internet Protocol (IP). IP allows computers to be uniquely addressed so that other computers can address and talk with them. TCP is the transmission protocol that sits on top of the IP protocol. When referred to together they are known as TCP/IP. Most web applications such as email, your web browser, chat client, and ftp program, make extensive use of TCP/IP.
The concept of the Internet was born by the US department of defense in 1960. They decided that they would need a reliable means of communication in the event of a nuclear or atomic disaster. They created what is now referred to as the ARPAnet. The idea was to build a network that would still continue to function if one node was destroyed. This was considered the first incarnation of the Internet.
In 1983 a professor from CERN, named Tim Berners-Lee, made one of the biggest advances in the entire history of the Internet. He came up with 5 protocols for communication, which are now referred to as the W3 protocols, or World Wide Web protocols. These protocols consisted of the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), file transfer protocol (FTP), post office protocol (POP), simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), and the newsgroup protocol (NNTP).
In
the early days we were limited to what the Internet could deliver because of
restrictions in data transfer speeds.
Broadband Internet technology has made the Internet a very rich and dynamic
environment. In addition to just
reading web pages we can now watch online videos, listen to music feeds, make phone
calls with VoIP, send and receive photos, and purchase and download movies and albums. It
seems our only limit is our imagination.