The Internet doesn't have to be a scary, mysterious place. The objective of Lesson I is to help you discover why the Internet has taken the world by storm. Learn to tap the Internet and its vast opportunities for personal and business purposes.
A.History of the Internet
ARPANET was the precursor to the current Internet. Designed for the Department of Defense to be a redundant network allowing computers to communicate -- even if one communications line was severed -- this self-healing network became the foundation for the Internet.
Academia and scientific communities led the adoption of the Internet, using a networking standard called TCP/IP. But the big breakout for the Internet was the creation of the World Wide Web. The "Web" is only one of the ways data can pass through the Internet. E-mail, chat, file-sharing, VOIP (telephone over the Internet), games and other new formats have joined older data and communication standards.
B. The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (the Web) is sometimes used synonymously with the word Internet. More accurately, the Web is the portion of the Internet that is formatted to be read in a browser using the HTTP (hyper text transfer protocol) data transmission protocol. Actually, HTTP protocols are used by your browser to both request and receive data. That is why your browser still displays "http" in the address window, even if you don't type that part of an address.
A. History of the Internet
