WHAT IS INTERNET

The internet
The internet has its roots back in 1969 as DARPANET when the US Government’s
Department of Defense commissioned research into networking. The initial four mainframe computers grew to 23 in 1971 and the system had been renamed ARPANET. Growth has accelerated
ever since: in 1984 there were over a thousand machines connected, in 1989 the 100,000 mark
had been reached, and the latest estimates are in the millions. All the computers on the system,
now known as the internet, speak a set of common languages (protocols); the two most important of these are Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which moves data from A to B, and the Internet
Protocol (IP) which specifies which B is being referred to so that the data goes to the correct place.
Together these protocols are known as TCP/IP. Thus, at its most basic level, the internet is simply
millions of computers connected together and talking to each other. Other protocols then build
on these low-level capabilities to provide services such as electronic mail, in which participants
send messages to each other; news, where articles of interest are posted to a special interest
group and can be read by anyone subscribing to that group; and of course the world wide web