Computerized Spirit

The Internet (originally short for Interconnected Networks) is a worldwide computer network of independent single computer, all through a system of data connections coupled. It is used for electronic communication and the exchange of information. Each computer of the network can in principle communicate with each other. The communication between the computer via a family of defined protocols for data exchange, which are described mainly on TCP / IP protocol stack. As a non-technical language is called “Internet” is used, however, generally synonymous with the concept of a World Wide Web, which is only one of the possible applications of the Internet.

The Internet was in the late 1960s from the military out ARPANET, a project of the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). It was used later to universities and research institutions, first in the United States and later worldwide. The initial spread of the Internet is closely linked to the development of the Unix operating system combined.

Strong impetus was given the Internet since the early 1990s through the World Wide Web, WWW shortly. It was developed at CERN (Geneva) by Tim Berners-Lee. With Web browsers now have lay people on the network access. With the growing number of users now also many commercial offerings were made through the network. The Internet is an essential catalyst of the digital revolution.

New trends in the Internet are changing the network and attract new user groups to: IP telephony, collaboration software, groupware, such as wikis, broadband access (such as video on demand) and Peer2Peer networking (especially for file sharing).

The structure of the Internet is also a “network of networks” means: it consists of many small networks that are Internet-connected nodes. These networks include, among others:

Corporate networks, on all computers in a company are connected,
Provider networks to which are the PCs of customers of an Internet provider and Connected
University networks.
On the Internet exchanges the various networks with powerful connections (backbone) to be networked together. Such an Internet node can combine principle, any number of networks together, so there are, for example, by DE-CIX, the largest Internet exchange in Frankfurt, Germany with more than a hundred networks.

]]>

Already in the planning of the ARPANET as a decentralized network, which should be as fail-proof, was the reason that there is no central computer in today’s Internet, no Internet nodes, and no place to which concentrate all connections. This decentralization was planned but not at the level of the Internet administrator continuously met. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)), the organization responsible for the care of the assignment of IP addresses to domain names is at least indirectly to the influence of the U.S. Department of Commerce and has so-called root servers in many countries. To limit the influence of the United States on the Domain Name System, a free Open Root Server Network was established.

The net-like structure and the heterogeneity of the Internet make for a very high reliability. For communication between two users of the Internet, there are usually several possible ways of communication, and only at the actual data transmission is decided which path is used. It can pass through two consecutive data packets sent or a request and the response depending on the workload, various communication channels. Therefore, the failure of a physical connection to the Internet usually has no serious effects, but can be compensated by the use of alternative channels of communication.

Private access to the Internet either via a narrowband (eg via modem or ISDN) or broadband access (DSL for example) an Internet provider to see Internet by Call. Companies or government agencies are often connected via leased line to the Internet. The individual workstations get it mostly a private IP address that is masked by NAT. This computer cannot be accessed directly from the Internet, which is generally desirable for security reasons (e.g. Firewalls).

The Internet is based on the standard TCP / IP protocol suite, which sets a standard for addressing and data exchange between different computers and networks. This gives the name Inter-Network (Inter = between in Latin) – that the (over-) network that connects the isolated networks. A big advantage is that communication can be done completely independent of the operating system and network technologies.

The Domain Name System, DNS for short, is an important part of the Internet infrastructure. In order to address a particular computer, it identifies the IP protocol with a unique IP address. It is common today in the IPv4 version by 4 bytes (numbers from 0 to 255), which are separated by periods, such as 214.235.81.190. One can imagine this number as a phone number with the DNS as a phone book. The DNS is a distributed database that provides a translation mechanism for: a good for people memorize domain name (for example, “www.wikipedia.co.uk”) can be translated into an IP address and vice versa. This process happens – invisible to the user – every time he clicks around the web browser on a new link or directly types a Web address. The browser asks him to only one known DNS server for the IP address and then connects to this address to retrieve the contents.

The standards and protocols of the Internet are described in so-called RFCs and set.

On the Internet, you will find the following services:

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used primarily for transmission of websites and other media. Using this protocol, the contents of the World Wide Web are transported.
Through the SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol), electronic letters are sent.
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is used to transfer files, and in contrast to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol used, if many large files to be transmitted, for example, program files, MP3 files or videos
Usenet – Discussion forums on all kinds of topics
Chat – Real-time communication in writing, for example in IRCoder as instant messaging (eg ICQ, AIM)
Telnet or SSH – use remote computers
Gopher – text-based distributed information system in use can hardly, as a precursor to the World Wide Web can be viewed
Archie – search engine for FTP servers, set largely
Veronica – search engine for Gopher, as this hardly in use
WAIS – system for full-text search across distributed databases, also barely used
Web services – XML and HTTP-based services for remote procedure calls
Peer-to-peer systems – best known as file sharing to exchange files. Well known representatives are as eDonkeyoder KaZaA.
Web Radio – Many radio stations send their programs via the Internet.
Web TV, Webcams
E-mail, text messaging, Internet telephone

More Internet Articles