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Internet

This article is about the worldwide computer network. For other uses, see Intern
et (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with the World Wide Web.
Internet users per 100 population members and GDP per capita for selected countr
ies.
Internet
Visualization of Internet routing paths
An Opte Project visualization of routing paths through a portion of the Internet
General
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Governance
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Information infrastructure
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Services
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Guides
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icon Internet portal
v t e
The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use t
he Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide. It is a network o
f networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government
networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wirele
ss, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range
of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext docum
ents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, a
nd peer-to-peer networks for file sharing.
The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United Sta
tes federal government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communicatio
n via computer networks.[1] The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initiall
y served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military net
works in the 1980s. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a
new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial exten
sions, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking techn
ologies, and the merger of many networks.[2] The linking of commercial networks
and enterprises by the early 1990s marks the beginning of the transition to the
modern Internet,[3] and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations
of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network.
Although the Internet was widely used by academia since the 1980s, the commercia
lization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect
of modern life.
Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s
in the developing world.[4] In the 20 years since 1995, Internet use has grown
100-times, measured for the period of one year, to over one third of the world p
opulation.[5][6] Most traditional communications media, including telephony, rad
io, television, paper mail and newspapers are being reshaped or redefined by the
Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet telephony, Inter
net television music, digital newspapers, and video streaming websites. Newspape
r, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are r
eshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators. The entertainment
industry was initially the fastest growing segment on the Internet.[citation nee
ded] The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions
through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Online shopp

ing has grown exponentially both for major retailers and small businesses and en
trepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "bricks and mortar" presence to
serve a larger market or even sell goods and services entirely online. Business
-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across
entire industries.
The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementatio
n or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own polici
es.[7] Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the
Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System (DNS),
are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigne
d Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of t
he core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that
anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.[8]
Contents
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Terminology
History
Governance
Infrastructure
4.1 Routing and service tiers
4.2 Access
4.3 Structure
5 Protocols
6 Services
6.1 World Wide Web
6.2 Communication
6.3 Data transfer
7 Social impact
7.1 Users
7.2 Usage
7.3 Social networking and entertainment
7.4 Electronic business
7.5 Telecommuting
7.6 Crowdsourcing
7.7 Collaborative publishing
7.8 Politics and political revolutions
7.9 Philanthropy
8 Security
8.1 Surveillance
8.2 Censorship
9 Performance
9.1 Outages
9.2 Energy use
10 See also
11 References
12 Further reading
13 External links
Terminology
The Internet Messenger by Buky Schwartz in Holon, Israel
See also: Capitalization of "Internet"
The term Internet, when used to refer to the specific global system of interconn
ected Internet Protocol (IP) networks, is a proper noun[9] and may be written wi
th an initial capital letter. In common use and the media, it is often not capit
alized, viz. the internet. Some guides specify that the word should be capitaliz
ed when used as a noun, but not capitalized when used as an adjective.[10] The I

nternet is also often referred to as the Net, as a short form of network. Histor
ically, as early as 1849, the word internetted was used uncapitalized as an adje
ctive, meaning interconnected or interwoven.[11] The designers of early computer
networks used internet both as a noun and as a verb in shorthand form of intern
etwork or internetworking, meaning interconnecting computer networks.[12]
The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably in everyday
speech; it is common to speak of "going on the Internet" when invoking a web br
owser to view web pages. However, the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a
large number of Internet services. The Web is a collection of interconnected do
cuments (web pages) and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs.[13]
As another point of comparison, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, is the lan
guage used on the Web for information transfer, yet it is just one of many langu
ages or protocols that can be used for communication on the Internet.[14] The te
rm Interweb is a portmanteau of Internet and World Wide Web typically used sarca
stically to parody a technically unsavvy user.

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