2.1 The Concept of Internet

Definition

Literally, the word “Internet” is from ‘inter-networking’. Technically, Internet is a global wide area network that connects computer systems across the world. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. In other words, the Internet is a collection of computers, networked together throughout the world, and communicating with each other through a common language called TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)

TCP is a standard that defines how to establish and maintain a network conversation via which application programs can exchange data. TCP works with the Internet Protocol (IP), which defines how computers send packets of data to each other. Together, TCP and IP are the basic rules defining the Internet.

A Brief History of the Internet

The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network.

The technology continued to grow in the 1983s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, a communications model that set standards for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks.

January 1, 1983 is considered as official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. Thus, the development of TCP/IP allowed the different kinds of computers on different networks to "talk" to each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard on January 1, 1983, hence the birth of the Internet. So now, all networks could be connected by a universal language.

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