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What is the Internet?

Today, just about everyone has heard of the word Internet, be it a child or and adult. So, what is the Internet?

The Internet, as we all know it, is a worldwide system of interconnected computers. A system here represents any collection of components that interact to accomplish a common goal. Generally, computers that are connected by cables to each other within a defined area is called a computer network. However, technology has grown rapidly and today, a computer network may even be connected without any cable i.e. wireless. The Internet is a network of networks linked by cables right through satellites, where communication is almost instantaneous with one another. An illustration of a computer network is as below.

The Internet can be looked at as different levels. At the highest level, the Internet reflects the people that use it. In other words, it is a global community of users.

At the middle level, the Internet consists of a set of protocols (rules that must be adhered to for the purpose of communicating) that define how different computers will transfer information with one another.

At the lowest level, the Internet encompasses the hardware required to build the computer network. This generally consists of the computers, modems, telephone lines, and cables amongst others that form the backbone of a huge network.

The Internet has no boundaries and no one is in charge of it. There are organizations which develop technical aspects for the linked networks and set standards for creating applications on it. However, no governing body is in control. The Internet backbone, through which Internet traffic flows, is owned by many private and public companies.

It is difficult to precisely conclude how big the Internet is or how many networks are linked. The Internet continues to grow at an exponential rate especially in the developing countries and is the single largest network of computers.

Some of the possibilities of things that you can do on the Internet are as follows:

You have just got a job offer to work in Toronto, Canada. You have never been there and now want to find out the living expenses, standard of living, transportation costs, types of food available, and so on.

A college student runs short of money while studying abroad. He then sends an email to his parents asking for more money. His father then emails him within a few hours that the money has been wired to his bank account abroad.

A person living in Kuala Lumpur manages to locate a friend living in the United States after many years.

A certain charity group appeals for food and medical supplies via email and newsgroup.

Just how are all of the above made possible? Answser, the Internet! The Internet today has become the single largest telecommunications system ever conceived by mankind.

At this stage, it should be noted that the Internet itself does not contain any information. A common misconception that many people say is that "I found this document on the Internet. By right, the sentence should read as I found the document through or using the Internet". In saying this, it implies that the document was actually found on one of the computers linked to the Internet.

Basic history of the Internet

How did the Internet surface? To answer this question, let us track its history back to the late 1950s. At that time, the U.S. government was mailing magnetic tapes back and forth between computers. This became a tedious process and so they decided to link these computers together using cables. Thus, a network was designed and formed. The design of the network should be robust i.e. if a computer was disconnected or it crashed, the other computers in the network will remain connected without any interruptions.

Once the computers were connected, a method of making them communicate using a common network language was needed. This was the basis of a network. An immediate outcome of this was the communication between two or more parties in terms of exchanging information such as mail messages. The illustration below shows an example of the traditional conventional mail (often called snail mail) on the left as compared to the electronic mail (e-mail) on the right.

In order to manage this huge project of transmitting information across the various states, the U.S. government created an organization called Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which is a segment of the Department of Defense. ARPA was formed to ensure U.S. leadership in science and technology with military applications. In 1969, ARPA established ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. It was the first long distance network of computers.

Universities and scientists who saw the advantage of long distance networking soon formed a network used for research and education that connected major computers at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford Research Institute, and the University of Utah. ARPANET was designed to allow continued communication if one or more sites were destroyed in response to the threat of nuclear attack. It served only computer professionals, scientists and engineers who knew its complex workings.

Eventually, businesses and private individuals started connecting and the massive network of networks became known as the Internet, as is known today.

Throughout the 70s, protocols used to transfer information over the Internet were developed. Finally, a new protocol called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) was developed to unify the manner of transferring information. This new network language became popular very quickly.

Computers on the Internet use a client-server architecture. The remote server machine provides the files and services to the user’s local client machine. Software can be downloaded (copied) from the server to the client computer once a connection to the Internet is established. The illustration below shows a server connected to 4 clients.

In 1985, the National Science Foundation (NSF) created NSFNET, which is a series of networks for research and education communication. The NSFNET was provided free to any U.S. research and educational institution and was based on ARPANET protocols. At the same time, regional networks were created to link individual institutions with other networks to form a national backbone service.

NSFNET grew rapidly as more people discovered its potential and as new software applications were created to make access easier. However, as commercial firms and other regional network providers took over the operation of the major Internet arteries, NSF withdrew from its core business.

At a later stage, NSF coordinated a service called InterNIC that registered all addresses on the Internet to enable data to be routed to the right system. This service has now been taken over by Network Solutions, Inc. and other registration services in cooperation with NSF.

Who owns or controls the Internet?

No one person or country owns or controls the Internet. It is jointly owned by the thousands of governments, its citizens, corporations, universities, and commercial companies. No one can control it entirely. It is owned, operated and maintained by all of those who use it globally.

In the United States, a group called the National Science Foundation (NSF) overlooks methods of improving the Internet performance. The NSF is supported by a group called the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The committee of IETF has to confirm to the guidelines set by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).

How big is the Internet?

To answer the above, imagine this. As I write this book, there are many out there logging on to the Internet, uploading web pages, and sending out electronic mails. This leads to the following. If you are using the same voice (telephone) line to access the Internet using the dial-up mode, others trying to contact you using the voice line may be unable to do so.

More so, when students gain and hog the voice line without their parents knowledge, parents are unable to contact them should there be an emergency.

If many try to access the Internet using the voice line at the same time, then there is a line congestion problem. This seems to be the current problem in many under developed and developing countries.

Also, as governments throughout the world are trying their best to reduce the digital divide (i.e. those who have access to the Internet compared to those who do not), more cyber cafes are being set up and the cost of communicating is reduced. This leads to more people accessing the Internet and more networks set up to cater for this growing need.

Thus, in this manner, it is quite difficult to judge the exact size of the Internet. However, as at early 2004, it is estimated that the Internet population has crossed the 900 million mark (Source: Computer Industry Almanac). The projected growth of Internet users for 2005 to 2007 is as follows:

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the worldwide population distribution of Internet users is approximately as in the diagram below (Source: Nielsen/NetRatings via CyberAtlas).

Further Internet statistics

The Internet that we know today is undergoing a huge Internet population explosion. As more governments provide better facilities to their population to gain access to the Internet at an affordable rate, more people are going to be jump on the bandwagon. Many first time users are just curious at the aspect of what the Internet is all about; what it can do; how they can perform searches; and most importantly, communicating wirelessly across the borderless world.

Computer Industry Almanac’s worldwide Internet population can be broken up into different country’s access as follows (note that not all countries are displayed). [Source: http//www.clickz.com]

NA : Not Available

The above diagram shows the composition of file type on the Internet based on the year 2003.

The current online language population (as at September 2004) as in the illustration below clearly indicates that English is the preferred mode of communicating on the Internet (at 35.2%). However, China, being one of the largest economy in the world will increase its language population faster than the others due to its huge population and the accessibility to the Internet in the years to come.

Source: http://www.glreach.com/globstats/ as at 30 Sept. 2004)

Lastly, as the online population grows at a different pace different parts of the world, the ISP throughout the world will have to take the high growth factor into consideration and cater for this without disappointing users with congestion or accessibility related problems.

The illustration below clearly indicates that the highest growth rate in the Asia region. Though the Current Index of 62 is low (as compared to the rest), the trend is on the rise.

Source: http://www.internettrafficreport.com as at 18 October 2004

The above illustration can further be analyzed further as in the table below. Note that the Asia has the highest Average Response Time (in ms) and also the highest incidence of packet loss (which indicates that security measures needs to be looked into).

Source: http://www.internettrafficreport.com as at 18 October 2004

How the Internet works

Now that you have some understanding of the basics of the Internet, the next step is for you to learn how the Internet works.

From the early years of computer technology, researchers were trying their best to find means and ways for two computers to communicate i.e. in a sense that data and information can be shared by the two computers.

The simplest way was to