Newbie Guides The Internet Guide

Here's, a useful guide for readers who want to learn more about the Internet, from it's origins to the present day.

In the left margin you will find links to all of the pages in the Internet Guide to date. I am considering adding more pages, but have not yet set a time.

The Internet

The WWW, E-mail, FTP, Gopher, Telnet, TCP/IP, DNS, Subnets, Routing, Firewalls, for new users, the Internet might seem like a confusing, alien place, full of odd terms and social practices, made up of technologies which all seem to have their own set of cryptic acronyms.

The Internet isn't just about data; it is an international community of people who share information, interact, and communicate. From the point of view of its users, the Internet is a vast collection of resources namely people, information, and multimedia. The Internet isn't run by any organization, and it isn't owned by any organization. Instead, people grow the Internet when they build computer networks and link their network to others. The resulting patchwork of internetworked computers creates a global system of communication. The Web is about communication. The Web gives a chance for new kinds of roles to exist among people who provide and consume information, communicate, and interact. The Web is a unique kind of medium for communication and is another step in centuries of change in the way people use media.

The Internet has had a relatively brief, but explosive history so far. It grew out of an experiment begun in the 1960's by the U.S. Department of Defense. The DoD wanted to create a computer network that would continue to function in the event of a disaster, such as a nuclear war. If part of the network were damaged or destroyed, the rest of the system still had to work. That network was ARPANET, which linked U.S. scientific and academic researchers. It was the forerunner of today's Internet.

A New Kind of Web

While PCs are now the primary means of accessing the Internet, we're already seeing other Internet-enabled devices, such as pagers and cell phones, which can send and receive e-mail and access the Web. Soon, everything from your car to your refrigerator will be connected to the global network, communicating with each other wirelessly.

So if you ever wonder the who, what, when, where, and whys of the Internet? read on.