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This is the third edition of the series “Learning Web Technologies with Sri”. In First edition or part, we did learn about Networks & in Second edition or part, we did learn about Servers with differences between Application & Web Server. After understanding Networks & Servers, the next question that would arise is WHAT IS INTERNET then? what does it contain etc.. etc.. I will try to answer those question in this part & will try to keep it as sweet & short as possible.

Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite [TCP/IP] to server billions of users world wide. In short it’s networks of networks, meaning this is a network of all millions of private, public, business, academic, government networks in the world. I guess you have question now, how is your computer connected to so called networks of networks [Internet], the answer to that is, you are connected through your ISP [Internet Service Provider]. Your computer is in network of ISP, ISP server’s in network to their ISP and so on so forth. Next question would be how is this networks connected?. These are normally linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless & optical networking technologies. I know at this point you should get lot of questions related signals, transmission of data between networks & other stuff. I guess I don’t have so much patience to explain in detail about all these things. I will leave it to you guys to read about it. There are so many books available on Computer networks.

Alright next the question that definitely arise why go through all hassle to link all these millions of millions computers together, answer to that is, information interchange. Internet carries extensive range of information resources and services, such as inter-linked hypertext documents of the World wide web & it also has infrastructure to support email, media including music, film etc.. The growth of internet is such that even most traditional communications media including television, music, film & television are reshaped or redefined. Internet gave birth to new services like Voice Over Internet Protocol [VOIP] for telephone services, IPTV for television services, News paper, book & other print publishing are adapting to web site technology or reshaped into blogging & web feeds. It has also enabled new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, forums, & social networking like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc.. Online shopping has boomed both for major retail outlets & small artisans, traders etc.. Not only this, business-to-business & financial services on internet affect the supply chains across entire industries. In short I can say it’s heart of all modern day activities which a normal person would do! [I guess we can find still few people in some places that they are not exposed to these maybe cause of not getting all required amenities or lack of knowledge or interest, hope GOD gives them time to know about all these! or are they happily living by not knowing all these!!?!! :)]. I will not bore you guys more & let you read more. I wish I could explain everything in deep,but it would divert our actual topic of learning the web technologies!!. So for further information on internet like history, protocols, structure, data transfer etc.. please read up wikipedia’s topic on Internet or read any popular books on Internet.

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References

• Wikipedia – Internet