Introduction to the Internet

What is the Internet?

A Worldwide Network of Computer Networks

You can think of this as hundreds and hundreds of computers connected around the world with plain-old wires. These wires allow the computers to communicate with each other.

To better understand this definition, it is helpful to learn the basics of what a computer network is....

Networks started over 20 years ago....

As the technology progressed more reliable networks were created. Local Area Networks (LANs) connect computers together.

LANs can connect to each other to form larger networks called Wide Area Networks (WAN) which span large geographic areas.

Local Area Networks and Wide Area Networks became so powerful that more and more of them began to connect to each other. Over the last 10 years, hundreds of thousands of these networks have connected up around the world to form the Internet.

A common language (TCP/IP) was introduced for communicating between computers.

Over 6.6 million host computers (60 million users) currently connected to the Internet.
By October 1999, host computers estimated to reach 105 million. This will result in around 1 billion users world wide.

In order to retrieve information from any of the millions of computers connected to this world wide network all you need is the Internet address for that computer. On the World Wide Web (WWW) this is called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). For example, to retrieve the WWW site for the Stevens NJNIE web site, you need to enter the URL for that web site, http://k12science.stevens-tech.edu

What Do You Need to Get Connected to the Internet?

A Point to Point Protocol (PPP) account from an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
A modem and phone line
Communications software (web browser and email)

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http://k12science.stevens-tech.edu/training/internetintro.html last edited 10-Dec-97