[W/K] :: Internet

5 definitions for Internet

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :


  internet \in"ter*net\ ([i^]n"t[~e]r*n[e^]t), n.
     A large network[3] of numerous computers connected through a
     number of major nodes of high-speed computers having
     high-speed communications channels between the major nodes,
     and numerous minor nodes allowing electronic communication
     among millions of computers around the world; -- usually
     referred to as the internet. It is the basis for the
     World-Wide Web.
     [PJC]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 :


  Internet
       n : a computer network consisting of a worldwide network of
           computer networks that use the TCP/IP network protocols
           to facilitate data transmission and exchange [syn: Net,
            cyberspace]

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) :


  Internet n.The mother of all networks. First incarnated beginning in
     1969 as the ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense research testbed.
     Though it has been widely believed that the goal was to develop a
     network architecture for military command-and-control that could survive
     disruptions up to and including nuclear war, this is a myth; in fact,
     ARPANET was conceived from the start as a way to get most economical use
     out of then-scarce large-computer resources.
  
     As originally imagined, ARPANET's major use would have been to support
     what is now called remote login and more sophisticated forms of
     distributed computing, but the infant technology of electronic mail
     quickly grew to dominate actual usage. Universities, research labs and
     defense contractors early discovered the Internet's potential as a
     medium of communication between _humans_ and linked up in steadily
     increasing numbers, connecting together a quirky mix of academics,
     techies, hippies, SF fans, hackers, and anarchists. The roots of this
     lexicon lie in those early years.
  
     Over the next quarter-century the Internet evolved in many ways. The
     typical machine/OS combination moved from DEC PDP-10s and PDP-20s,
     running TOPS-10 and TOPS-20, to PDP-11s and VAXes and Suns running
     Unix, and in the 1990s to Unix on Intel microcomputers. The Internet's
     protocols grew more capable, most notably in the move from NCP/IP to
     TCP/IP in 1982 and the implementation of Domain Name Service in 1983.
     It was around this time that people began referring to the collection of
     interconnected networks with ARPANET at its core as "the Internet".
  
     The ARPANET had a fairly strict set of participation guidelines -
     connected institutions had to be involved with a DOD-related research
     project. By the mid-80s, many of the organizations clamoring to join
     didn't fit this profile. In 1986, the National Science Foundation built
     NSFnet to open up access to its five regional supercomputing centers;
     NSFnet became the backbone of the Internet, replacing the original
     ARPANET pipes (which were formally shut down in 1990). Between 1990 and
     late 1994 the pieces of NSFnet were sold to major telecommunications
     companies until the Internet backbone had gone completely commercial.
  
     That year, 1994, was also the year the mainstream culture discovered
     the Internet. Once again, the killer app was not the anticipated one -
     rather, what caught the public imagination was the hypertext and
     multimedia features of the World Wide Web. Subsequently the Internet has
     seen off its only serious challenger (the OSI protocol stack favored by
     European telecoms monopolies) and is in the process of absorbing into
     itself many of the proprietary networks built during the second wave of
     wide-area networking after 1980. By 1996 it had become a commonplace
     even in mainstream media to predict that a globally-extended Internet
     would become the key unifying communications technology of the next
     century. See also the network and Internet address.

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) :

Internet

(Note: capital "I"). The Internet is the largest
internet (with a small "i") in the world. It is a three
level hierarchy composed of backbone networks, mid-level
networks, and stub networks. These include commercial
(.com or .co), university (.ac or .edu) and other research
networks (.org, .net) and military (.mil) networks and span
many different physical networks around the world with various
protocols, chiefly the Internet Protocol.

Until the advent of the World-Wide Web in 1990, the Internet
was almost entirely unknown outside universities and corporate
research departments and was accessed mostly via command
line interfaces such as telnet and FTP. Since then it
has grown to become an almost-ubiquitous aspect of modern
information systems, becoming highly commercial and a widely
accepted medium for all sort of customer relations such as
advertising, brand building, and online sales and services.
Its original spirit of cooperation and freedom have, to a
great extent, survived this explosive transformation with the
result that the vast majority of information available on the
Internet is free of charge.

While the web (primarily in the form of HTML and HTTP) is
the best known aspect of the Internet, there are many other
protocols in use, supporting applications such as
electronic mail, Usenet, chat, remote login, and file
transfer.

There were 20,242 unique commercial domains registered with
InterNIC in September 1994, 10% more than in August 1994.
In 1996 there were over 100 Internet access providers in the
US and a few in the UK (e.g. the BBC Networking Club,
Demon, PIPEX).

There are several bodies associated with the running of the
Internet, including the Internet Architecture Board, the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the Internet
Engineering and Planning Group, Internet Engineering
Steering Group, and the Internet Society.