The Internet is a computer network made up of
thousands of networks worldwide. No one knows exactly how many computers are
connected to the Internet. It is certain, however, that these number in the
millions.
No one is in charge of the Internet. There are
organizations which develop technical aspects of this network and set standards
for creating applications on it, but no governing body is in control. The
Internet backbone, through which Internet traffic flows, is owned by private
companies.
All computers on the Internet communicate with
one another using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol suite,
abbreviated to TCP/IP. Computers on the Internet use a client/server
architecture. This means that the remote server machine provides files and
services to the user's local client machine. Software can be installed on a
client computer to take advantage of the latest access technology.
An Internet user has access to a wide variety of
services: electronic mail, file transfer, vast information resources, interest
group membership, interactive collaboration, multimedia displays, real-time
broadcasting, shopping opportunities, breaking news, and much more.
The Internet consists primarily of a variety of
access protocols. Many of these protocols feature programs that allow users to
search for and retrieve material made available by the protocol.
The World Wide Web (abbreviated as the Web or
WWW) is a system of Internet servers that supports hypertext to access several
Internet protocols on a single interface. Almost every protocol type available
on the Internet is accessible on the Web. This includes e-mail, FTP, Telnet,
and Usenet News. In addition to these, the World Wide Web has its own protocol:
HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP. These protocols will be explained later
in this document.
The World Wide Web provides a single interface
for accessing all these protocols. This creates a convenient and user-friendly
environment. It is no longer necessary to be conversant in these protocols
within separate, command-level environments. The Web gathers together these
protocols into a single system. Because of this feature, and because of the
Web's ability to work with multimedia and advanced programming languages, the
Web is the fastest-growing component of the Internet.
The operation of the Web relies primarily on
hypertext as its means of information retrieval. HyperText is a document
containing words that connect to other documents. These words are called links
and are selectable by the user. A single hypertext document can contain links
to many documents. In the context of the Web, words or graphics may serve as
links to other documents, images, video, and sound. Links may or may not follow
a logical path, as each connection is programmed by the creator of the source
document. Overall, the Web contains a complex virtual web of connections among
a vast number of documents, graphics, videos, and sounds.
Producing hypertext for the Web is accomplished
by creating documents with a language called HyperText Markup Language, or
HTML. With HTML, tags are placed within the text to accomplish document
formatting, visual features such as font size, italics and bold, and the
creation of hypertext links. Graphics and multimedia may also be incorporated
into an HTML document. HTML is an evolving language, with new tags being added
as each upgrade of the language is developed and released. The World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), led by Web founder Tim Berners-Lee, coordinates the efforts
of standardizing HTML. The W3C now calls the language XHTML and considers it to
be an application of the XML language standard.
The World Wide Web consists of files, called
pages or home pages, containing links to documents and resources throughout the
Internet.
The Web provides a vast array of experiences including multimedia presentations, real-time collaboration, interactive pages, radio and television broadcasts, and the automatic "push" of information to a client computer. Programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Cold Fusion and XML are extending the capabilities of the Web. A growing amount of information on the Web is served dynamically from content stored in databases. The Web is therefore not a fixed entity, but one that is in a constant state of development and flux.