View Source: InterNet - Waikato Linux Users Group

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For the pedants, an internet (lower case "i") is a "network of networks". The InterNet (capital "I") refers to the largest internet in the world.

You are using the Internet now to read this wiki.

Originally known as ArpaNet, it was created so that in the event of catastrophic communication failure, the US Department of Defence could remotely administer their machinery.

Until the WorldWideWeb came about in 1990, the Internet was almost entirely unknown outside universities and corporate
research departments and was accessed mostly via CommandLine interfaces such as [Telnet] and [FTP]. Since then it
has grown to become an almost-ubiquitous aspect of modern information systems, becoming highly commercial and a widely
accepted medium for all sort of customer relations such as advertising, brand building, and online sales and services.
Its original spirit of cooperation and freedom have, to a great extent, survived this explosive transformation with the
result that the vast majority of information available on the Internet is free of charge.

The best known asepcts of the Internet are the WorldWideWeb and ElectronicMail.  Other facilities include UseNet, the global 'news' service (largely [Deprecated] in favour of web based forums and MailingLists, [IRC], FileSharing, etc.  Anything you can do on a network, you can do (albeit probably slower) on the InterNet.

The internet runs on the [TCP]/[IP] protocol, although there are gateways onto it for other networking [Protocol]s.  In order to convert [IP] addresses to names, it offers the [DNS].

The 'governing bodies' of the Internet include the [IETF] and the [IANA].

Version 1, saved on Monday, August 11, 2003 1:13:20 pm by CraigBox

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