How Did The Internet Begin?

The Internet was created by the Department of Defense during the Cold War. Its purpose was to have a way to communicate in event of a nuclear attack. This network project was created in 1969 and was named, ARPANET. It allowed the government and research institutions to share information.

Before there was the Internet, there was ARPANET, a project of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the federal government's Department of Defense. ARPANET allowed government and research institutions to share information through "packet switching," which allowed a message on a network to find its way to its destination via any route available. The current Internet grew out of the technology developed for ARPA.

New connections were soon added to the network, bringing the number of "nodes" up to 23 in 1971, 111 in 1977, and up to almost 4 million in 1994. As the size of the network grew so did its capabilities: In its first 25 years, the Internet added features such as FTP (file transfer), email, Usenet news, and HTML. Now, new developments come to the Net one right after the other. It is this explosive growth that captured the imagination of computer users around the world.

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The Internet and World Wide Web are Not the Same!

The Internet is a worldwide network of computers that can share information. You can communicate with other computers as long as both computers are connected to the Internet. The Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail, Usenet news groups, instant messaging, and FTP.

The World Wide Web is also know as the Web. The Internet is the means by which you can access the Web. Web Browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, allow you to access the Internet. These browsers allow you to obtain access to Web pages that are linked to each other using hyperlinks. These Web pages contain text, graphics, sounds, and video.

So the Web is just a part of the Internet. These two terms are not the same and should not be confused.

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