FREE ESSAY ON WHAT IS THE INTERNET

WHAT IS THE INTERNET

What Is The Internet
Sometime in the mid 1960's, during the Cold War, it
became apparent that there was a need for a bombproof communications
system. A concept was devised to link computers together throughout
the country. With such a system in place large sections of the country
could be nuked and messages could still get through.
In the beginning, only government think
tanks and a few universities were linked. Basically the Internet
was an emergency military communications system operated by the
Department of Defense's Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). The
whole operation was referred to as ARPANET.
In time, ARPANET computers were installed at every
university in the United States that had defense related funding.
Gradually, the Internet had gone from a military pipeline to a
communications tool for scientists. As more scholars came online, the
administration of the system transferred from ARPA to the National
Science Foundation.
Years later, businesses began using the Internet and
the administrative responsibilities were once again transferred.
At this time no one party operates the
Internet, there are several entities that oversee the
system and the protocols that are involved.
The speed of the Internet has changed the way people
receive information. It combines the immediacy of broadcast with the
in-depth coverage of newspapers...making it a perfect source for news
and weather information.
About The Web
Think of the web as the illustrated
version of the Internet. It began in the late 1980's when physicist Dr. Berners-Lee wrote
a small computer program for his own personal use. This program allowed pages, within
his computer, to be linked together using keywords. It soon became
possible to link documents in different computers, as long as they
were connected to the Internet. The document formatting language used
to link documents is called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language.)
The Web remained primarily text based
until 1992. Two events occurred that year that would forever change
the way the Web looked. Marc Andreesen developed a new computer
program called the NCSA Mosaic (National Center for Supercomputing
Applications at the University of Illinois) and gave it away! The NCSA
Mosaic was the first Web browser. The
browser made it easier to access the different Web sites that had started to appear. Soon
Web sites contained more than just text, they also had sound and video files.
What Is A Webpage
A web page is a part of a web site. Very big web sites made up of many seperate web
sites
are sometimes called mega sites.
A web site is a group of web pages. While a web page is always just ONE page, a web site
can be made up of just one page or many pages. Normally a web site is more than one page,
but the size alone is not all that matters. A web site can be identified by two main
things; scope and content. Scope
describes what the web site is trying to do, be it; educate, entertain, inform or provide
a service. Content describes the way in which information is provided; is it all links,
is it all original work, or is it a combination of both? A web page that only links to
other web sites and has no original content is called a jumpstation and should not be
mistaken for a web site.
The first or main page on a web site is called the home page. All web sites have a home
page. All of the information, games, sounds and picture on a web page are called content.
Web sites and web pages have many things in common which is why they are easy to confuse.
Both are on the internet, both are written in HTML, and both provide information and both
contain links and other content. 
In the case of a web site that is made up of one page it is fair to use web site and web
page interchangeably. But for web sites made up of more than one web page, it is not
correct to describe it as a web page. While you can have a web site that is one page, you
can not have a web page that is more than one page.
It is a bit confusing. The best way to remember is to say that a web page is always a
part of a web site, but a web site is never a part of a web page.