"If you type "google" into Google, you'll break the Internet." -The I.T. Crowd
An Overview
As far as getting a definition of the Internet goes: A "worldwide system of interconnected networks and computers" is pretty good and adequate.
Many people have heard that the Internet began with some military computers in the Pentagon called Arpanet in 1969. The theory goes on to suggest that the network was designed to survive a nuclear attack. However, whichever definition of what the Internet is we use, neither the Pentagon nor 1969 hold up as the time and place the Internet was invented.
What Arpanet was really intended for was for time-sharing. Time sharing tried to make it possible for research institutions to use the processing power of other institutions computers when they had large calculations to do that required more power, or when someone else's facility might do the job better.
So we can see that the Internet began as an unanticipated result of an unsuccessful military and academic research program component
BR>
Following on from this, packet switching network standards were developed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the form of X.25 and related standards. In 1974, X.25 formed the basis for the SERCnet network between British academic and research sites, which later became JANET. The initial ITU Standard on X.25 was approved in March 1976. This standard was based on the concept of virtual circuits.
Unlike ARPAnet, X.25 was also commonly available for business use. Telenet offered its Telemail electronic mail service, but this was oriented to enterprise use rather than the general email of ARPANET.
The term "Internet" was adopted in the first RFC published on the TCP protocol (RFC 675: Internet Transmission Control Program, December 1974). It was around the time when ARPANET was interlinked with NSFNet, that the term Internet came into more general use, with "an internet" meaning any network using TCP/IP.
The following diagram is an example of a computer network Establishing Connections
Between 1984 and 1988 CERN began installation and operation of TCP/IP to interconnect its major internal computer systems, workstations, PC's and an accelerator control system. CERN continued to operate a limited self-developed system CERNET internally and several incompatible (typically proprietary) network protocols externally. There was considerable resistance in Europe towards more widespread use of TCP/IP and the CERN TCP/IP intranets remained isolated from the Internet until 1989.
At the same time as the rise of internetworking in Europe, ad hoc networking to ARPA and in-between Australian universities formed, based on various technologies such as X.25 and UUCPNet.
The Internet began to penetrate Asia in the late 1980s. Japan, which had built the UUCP-based network JUNET in 1984, connected to NSFNet in 1989.
Ownership of the Internet
The Internet is a vast network that connects many independent networks spanning over 170 countries in the World. It links computers of many different types, sizes, and operating systems, and, of course, the many people of those countries that use the Internet to communicate.
No one actually owns the Internet, and no single person or organization controls the Internet in its entirety. More of a concept than an actual tangible entity, the Internet relies on a physical infrastructure that connects networks to other networks. There are many organizations, corporations, governments, schools, private citizens and service providers that all own pieces of the infrastructure, but there is no one body that owns it all. There are, however, organizations that oversee and standardize what happens on the Internet and assign IP addresses and domain names.
The Internet Today
The Following is a graph on figures of Illegal Downloading Amongst Kids
Web 2.0
A large part of the development of the internet has been the advent of the Web 2.0. Use of the internet has broadened to what many consider to be a leisure activity and is more popular amongst young people than ever before. There has been positive and negative feedback attributed to social networking sites such as those linked below.
