fbpx
Wikipedia

Internet

The Internet (or internet)[a] is a global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP)[b] to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and research commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s to enable time-sharing of computers.[2] The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s to enable resource sharing. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks.[3] The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet,[4] 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 in the 1980s, commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life.

Most traditional communication media, including telephone, radio, television, paper mail, and newspapers, are reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet telephone, Internet television, online music, digital newspapers, and video streaming websites. Newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology or being reshaped into blogging, web feeds, and online news aggregators. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interaction through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking services. Online shopping has grown exponentially for major retailers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "brick 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 single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies.[5] The overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces on the Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the 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.[6] In November 2006, the Internet was included on USA Today's list of New Seven Wonders.[7]

Terminology

 
The Internet Messenger by Buky Schwartz, located in Holon, Israel

The word internetted was used as early as 1849, meaning interconnected or interwoven.[8] The word Internet was used in 1974 as the shorthand form of Internetwork.[9] Today, the term Internet most commonly refers to the global system of interconnected computer networks, though it may also refer to any group of smaller networks.[10]

When it came into common use, most publications treated the word Internet as a capitalized proper noun; this has become less common.[10] This reflects the tendency in English to capitalize new terms and move to lowercase as they become familiar.[10][11] The word is sometimes still capitalized to distinguish the global internet from smaller networks, though many publications, including the AP Stylebook since 2016, recommend the lowercase form in every case.[10][11] In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary found that, based on a study of around 2.5 billion printed and online sources, "Internet" was capitalized in 54% of cases.[12]

The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably; it is common to speak of "going on the Internet" when using a web browser to view web pages. However, the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large number of Internet services,[13] a collection of documents (web pages) and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs.[14]

History

In the 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) funded research into time-sharing of computers.[15][16][17] J. C. R. Licklider proposed the idea of a universal network while leading the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA. Research into packet switching, one of the fundamental Internet technologies, started in the work of Paul Baran in the early 1960s and, independently, Donald Davies in 1965.[2][18] After the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in 1967, packet switching from the proposed NPL network was incorporated into the design for the ARPANET and other resource sharing networks such as the Merit Network and CYCLADES, which were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[19]

ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and SRI International (SRI) on 29 October 1969.[20] The third site was at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of Utah. In a sign of future growth, 15 sites were connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971.[21][22] These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.[23] Thereafter, the ARPANET gradually developed into a decentralized communications network, connecting remote centers and military bases in the United States.[24]

Early international collaborations for the ARPANET were rare. Connections were made in 1973 to the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR),[25] and to University College London which provided a gateway to British academic networks forming the first international resource sharing network.[26] ARPA projects, international working groups and commercial initiatives led to the development of various protocols and standards by which multiple separate networks could become a single network or "a network of networks".[27] In 1974, Bob Kahn at DARPA and Vint Cerf at Stanford University published their ideas for "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication".[28] They used the term internet as a shorthand for internetwork in RFC 675,[9] and later RFCs repeated this use.[29] Kahn and Cerf credit Louis Pouzin with important influences on the resulting TCP/IP design.[30] National PTTs and commercial providers developed the X.25 standard and deployed it on public data networks.[31]

Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks. TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States for researchers, first at speeds of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s.[32] The NSFNet expanded into academic and research organizations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan in 1988–89.[33][34][35][36] Although other network protocols such as UUCP and PTT public data networks had global reach well before this time, this marked the beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental network. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia.[37] The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990.[38]

 
T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992

Steady advances in semiconductor technology and optical networking created new economic opportunities for commercial involvement in the expansion of the network in its core and for delivering services to the public. In mid-1989, MCI Mail and Compuserve established connections to the Internet, delivering email and public access products to the half million users of the Internet.[39] Just months later, on 1 January 1990, PSInet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial use; one of the networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later years. In March 1990, the first high-speed T1 (1.5 Mbit/s) link between the NSFNET and Europe was installed between Cornell University and CERN, allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites.[40] Six months later Tim Berners-Lee would begin writing WorldWideWeb, the first web browser, after two years of lobbying CERN management. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9,[41] the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the first Web browser (which was also an HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server,[42] and the first Web pages that described the project itself. In 1991 the Commercial Internet eXchange was founded, allowing PSInet to communicate with the other commercial networks CERFnet and Alternet. Stanford Federal Credit Union was the first financial institution to offer online Internet banking services to all of its members in October 1994.[43] In 1996, OP Financial Group, also a cooperative bank, became the second online bank in the world and the first in Europe.[44] By 1995, the Internet was fully commercialized in the U.S. when the NSFNet was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.[45]

Worldwide Internet users[46]
Users 2005 2010 2017 2019 2021
World population[47] 6.5 billion 6.9 billion 7.4 billion 7.75 billion 7.9 billion
Worldwide 16% 30% 48% 53.6% 63%
In developing world 8% 21% 41.3% 47% 57%
In developed world 51% 67% 81% 86.6% 90%

As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal growth, the volume of Internet traffic started experiencing similar characteristics as that of the scaling of MOS transistors, exemplified by Moore's law, doubling every 18 months. This growth, formalized as Edholm's law, was catalyzed by advances in MOS technology, laser light wave systems, and noise performance.[48]

Since 1995, the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce, including the rise of near instant communication by email, instant messaging, telephony (Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP), two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web[49] with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking services, and online shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, or more. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information and knowledge, commerce, entertainment and social networking services.[50] During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%.[51] This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.[52] As of 31 March 2011, the estimated total number of Internet users was 2.095 billion (30.2% of world population).[53] It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunication. By 2000 this figure had grown to 51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the Internet.[54]

Governance

 
ICANN headquarters in the Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States

The Internet is a global network that comprises many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body. The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) 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. To maintain interoperability, the principal name spaces of the Internet are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is governed by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and other non-commercial communities. ICANN coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers for use on the Internet, including domain names, IP addresses, application port numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters. Globally unified name spaces are essential for maintaining the global reach of the Internet. This role of ICANN distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body for the global Internet.[55]

Regional Internet registries (RIRs) were established for five regions of the world. The African Network Information Center (AfriNIC) for Africa, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) for North America, the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) for Asia and the Pacific region, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) for Latin America and the Caribbean region, and the Réseaux IP Européens – Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) for Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia were delegated to assign IP address blocks and other Internet parameters to local registries, such as Internet service providers, from a designated pool of addresses set aside for each region.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce, had final approval over changes to the DNS root zone until the IANA stewardship transition on 1 October 2016.[56][57][58][59] The Internet Society (ISOC) was founded in 1992 with a mission to "assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world".[60] Its members include individuals (anyone may join) as well as corporations, organizations, governments, and universities. Among other activities ISOC provides an administrative home for a number of less formally organized groups that are involved in developing and managing the Internet, including: the IETF, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), and Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG). On 16 November 2005, the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues.

Infrastructure

 
2007 map showing submarine fiberoptic telecommunication cables around the world

The communications infrastructure of the Internet consists of its hardware components and a system of software layers that control various aspects of the architecture. As with any computer network, the Internet physically consists of routers, media (such as cabling and radio links), repeaters, modems etc. However, as an example of internetworking, many of the network nodes are not necessarily internet equipment per se, the internet packets are carried by other full-fledged networking protocols with the Internet acting as a homogeneous networking standard, running across heterogeneous hardware, with the packets guided to their destinations by IP routers.

Service tiers

 
Packet routing across the Internet involves several tiers of Internet service providers.

Internet service providers (ISPs) establish the worldwide connectivity between individual networks at various levels of scope. End-users who only access the Internet when needed to perform a function or obtain information, represent the bottom of the routing hierarchy. At the top of the routing hierarchy are the tier 1 networks, large telecommunication companies that exchange traffic directly with each other via very high speed fibre optic cables and governed by peering agreements. Tier 2 and lower-level networks buy Internet transit from other providers to reach at least some parties on the global Internet, though they may also engage in peering. An ISP may use a single upstream provider for connectivity, or implement multihoming to achieve redundancy and load balancing. Internet exchange points are major traffic exchanges with physical connections to multiple ISPs. Large organizations, such as academic institutions, large enterprises, and governments, may perform the same function as ISPs, engaging in peering and purchasing transit on behalf of their internal networks. Research networks tend to interconnect with large subnetworks such as GEANT, GLORIAD, Internet2, and the UK's national research and education network, JANET.

Access

Common methods of Internet access by users include dial-up with a computer modem via telephone circuits, broadband over coaxial cable, fiber optics or copper wires, Wi-Fi, satellite, and cellular telephone technology (e.g. 3G, 4G). The Internet may often be accessed from computers in libraries and Internet cafes. Internet access points exist in many public places such as airport halls and coffee shops. Various terms are used, such as public Internet kiosk, public access terminal, and Web payphone. Many hotels also have public terminals that are usually fee-based. These terminals are widely accessed for various usages, such as ticket booking, bank deposit, or online payment. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to the Internet via local computer networks. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi cafes, where users need to bring their own wireless devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based.

Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial Wi-Fi services that cover large areas are available in many cities, such as New York, London, Vienna, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh, where the Internet can then be accessed from places such as a park bench.[61] Experiments have also been conducted with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular networks, and fixed wireless services. Modern smartphones can also access the Internet through the cellular carrier network. For Web browsing, these devices provide applications such as Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and a wide variety of other Internet software may be installed from app-stores. Internet usage by mobile and tablet devices exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time in October 2016.[62]

Mobile communication

 
Number of mobile cellular subscriptions 2012–2016

World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Global Report 2017/2018

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated that, by the end of 2017, 48% of individual users regularly connect to the Internet, up from 34% in 2012.[63] Mobile Internet connectivity has played an important role in expanding access in recent years especially in Asia and the Pacific and in Africa.[64] The number of unique mobile cellular subscriptions increased from 3.89 billion in 2012 to 4.83 billion in 2016, two-thirds of the world's population, with more than half of subscriptions located in Asia and the Pacific. The number of subscriptions is predicted to rise to 5.69 billion users in 2020.[65] As of 2016, almost 60% of the world's population had access to a 4G broadband cellular network, up from almost 50% in 2015 and 11% in 2012.[disputed ][65] The limits that users face on accessing information via mobile applications coincide with a broader process of fragmentation of the Internet. Fragmentation restricts access to media content and tends to affect poorest users the most.[64]

Zero-rating, the practice of Internet service providers allowing users free connectivity to access specific content or applications without cost, has offered opportunities to surmount economic hurdles, but has also been accused by its critics as creating a two-tiered Internet. To address the issues with zero-rating, an alternative model has emerged in the concept of 'equal rating' and is being tested in experiments by Mozilla and Orange in Africa. Equal rating prevents prioritization of one type of content and zero-rates all content up to a specified data cap. A study published by Chatham House, 15 out of 19 countries researched in Latin America had some kind of hybrid or zero-rated product offered. Some countries in the region had a handful of plans to choose from (across all mobile network operators) while others, such as Colombia, offered as many as 30 pre-paid and 34 post-paid plans.[66]

A study of eight countries in the Global South found that zero-rated data plans exist in every country, although there is a great range in the frequency with which they are offered and actually used in each.[67] The study looked at the top three to five carriers by market share in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru and Philippines. Across the 181 plans examined, 13 per cent were offering zero-rated services. Another study, covering Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, found Facebook's Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero to be the most commonly zero-rated content.[68]

Internet Protocol Suite

The Internet standards describe a framework known as the Internet protocol suite (also called TCP/IP, based on the first two components.) This is a suite of protocols that are ordered into a set of four conceptional layers by the scope of their operation, originally documented in RFC 1122 and RFC 1123. At the top is the application layer, where communication is described in terms of the objects or data structures most appropriate for each application. For example, a web browser operates in a client–server application model and exchanges information with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and an application-germane data structure, such as the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).

Below this top layer, the transport layer connects applications on different hosts with a logical channel through the network. It provides this service with a variety of possible characteristics, such as ordered, reliable delivery (TCP), and an unreliable datagram service (UDP).

Underlying these layers are the networking technologies that interconnect networks at their borders and exchange traffic across them. The Internet layer implements the Internet Protocol (IP) which enables computers to identify and locate each other by IP address, and route their traffic via intermediate (transit) networks.[69] The internet protocol layer code is independent of the type of network that it is physically running over.

At the bottom of the architecture is the link layer, which connects nodes on the same physical link, and contains protocols that do not require routers for traversal to other links. The protocol suite does not explicitly specify hardware methods to transfer bits, or protocols to manage such hardware, but assumes that appropriate technology is available. Examples of that technology include Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and DSL.

 
As user data is processed through the protocol stack, each abstraction layer adds encapsulation information at the sending host. Data is transmitted over the wire at the link level between hosts and routers. Encapsulation is removed by the receiving host. Intermediate relays update link encapsulation at each hop, and inspect the IP layer for routing purposes.

Internet protocol

 
Conceptual data flow in a simple network topology of two hosts (A and B) connected by a link between their respective routers. The application on each host executes read and write operations as if the processes were directly connected to each other by some kind of data pipe. After the establishment of this pipe, most details of the communication are hidden from each process, as the underlying principles of communication are implemented in the lower protocol layers. In analogy, at the transport layer the communication appears as host-to-host, without knowledge of the application data structures and the connecting routers, while at the internetworking layer, individual network boundaries are traversed at each router.

The most prominent component of the Internet model is the Internet Protocol (IP). IP enables internetworking and, in essence, establishes the Internet itself. Two versions of the Internet Protocol exist, IPv4 and IPv6.

IP Addresses

 
A DNS resolver consults three name servers to resolve the domain name user-visible "www.wikipedia.org" to determine the IPv4 Address 207.142.131.234.

For locating individual computers on the network, the Internet provides IP addresses. IP addresses are used by the Internet infrastructure to direct internet packets to their destinations. They consist of fixed-length numbers, which are found within the packet. IP addresses are generally assigned to equipment either automatically via DHCP, or are configured.

However, the network also supports other addressing systems. Users generally enter domain names (e.g. "en.wikipedia.org") instead of IP addresses because they are easier to remember, they are converted by the Domain Name System (DNS) into IP addresses which are more efficient for routing purposes.

IPv4

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a 32-bit number.[69] IPv4 is the initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in dominant use. It was designed to address up to ≈4.3 billion (109) hosts. However, the explosive growth of the Internet has led to IPv4 address exhaustion, which entered its final stage in 2011,[70] when the global IPv4 address allocation pool was exhausted.

IPv6

Because of the growth of the Internet and the depletion of available IPv4 addresses, a new version of IP IPv6, was developed in the mid-1990s, which provides vastly larger addressing capabilities and more efficient routing of Internet traffic. IPv6 uses 128 bits for the IP address and was standardized in 1998.[71][72][73] IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s and is currently in growing deployment around the world, since Internet address registries (RIRs) began to urge all resource managers to plan rapid adoption and conversion.[74]

IPv6 is not directly interoperable by design with IPv4. In essence, it establishes a parallel version of the Internet not directly accessible with IPv4 software. Thus, translation facilities must exist for internetworking or nodes must have duplicate networking software for both networks. Essentially all modern computer operating systems support both versions of the Internet Protocol. Network infrastructure, however, has been lagging in this development. Aside from the complex array of physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts, e.g., peering agreements, and by technical specifications or protocols that describe the exchange of data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is defined by its interconnections and routing policies.

Subnetwork

 
Creating a subnet by dividing the host identifier

A subnetwork or subnet is a logical subdivision of an IP network.[75]: 1, 16  The practice of dividing a network into two or more networks is called subnetting.

Computers that belong to a subnet are addressed with an identical most-significant bit-group in their IP addresses. This results in the logical division of an IP address into two fields, the network number or routing prefix and the rest field or host identifier. The rest field is an identifier for a specific host or network interface.

The routing prefix may be expressed in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation written as the first address of a network, followed by a slash character (/), and ending with the bit-length of the prefix. For example, 198.51.100.0/24 is the prefix of the Internet Protocol version 4 network starting at the given address, having 24 bits allocated for the network prefix, and the remaining 8 bits reserved for host addressing. Addresses in the range 198.51.100.0 to 198.51.100.255 belong to this network. The IPv6 address specification 2001:db8::/32 is a large address block with 296 addresses, having a 32-bit routing prefix.

For IPv4, a network may also be characterized by its subnet mask or netmask, which is the bitmask that when applied by a bitwise AND operation to any IP address in the network, yields the routing prefix. Subnet masks are also expressed in dot-decimal notation like an address. For example, 255.255.255.0 is the subnet mask for the prefix 198.51.100.0/24.

Traffic is exchanged between subnetworks through routers when the routing prefixes of the source address and the destination address differ. A router serves as a logical or physical boundary between the subnets.

The benefits of subnetting an existing network vary with each deployment scenario. In the address allocation architecture of the Internet using CIDR and in large organizations, it is necessary to allocate address space efficiently. Subnetting may also enhance routing efficiency, or have advantages in network management when subnetworks are administratively controlled by different entities in a larger organization. Subnets may be arranged logically in a hierarchical architecture, partitioning an organization's network address space into a tree-like routing structure.

Routing

Computers and routers use routing tables in their operating system to direct IP packets to reach a node on a different subnetwork. Routing tables are maintained by manual configuration or automatically by routing protocols. End-nodes typically use a default route that points toward an ISP providing transit, while ISP routers use the Border Gateway Protocol to establish the most efficient routing across the complex connections of the global Internet. The default gateway is the node that serves as the forwarding host (router) to other networks when no other route specification matches the destination IP address of a packet.[76][77]

IETF

While the hardware components in the Internet infrastructure can often be used to support other software systems, it is the design and the standardization process of the software that characterizes the Internet and provides the foundation for its scalability and success. The responsibility for the architectural design of the Internet software systems has been assumed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).[78] The IETF conducts standard-setting work groups, open to any individual, about the various aspects of Internet architecture. The resulting contributions and standards are published as Request for Comments (RFC) documents on the IETF web site. The principal methods of networking that enable the Internet are contained in specially designated RFCs that constitute the Internet Standards. Other less rigorous documents are simply informative, experimental, or historical, or document the best current practices (BCP) when implementing Internet technologies.

Applications and services

The Internet carries many applications and services, most prominently the World Wide Web, including social media, electronic mail, mobile applications, multiplayer online games, Internet telephony, file sharing, and streaming media services.

Most servers that provide these services are today hosted in data centers, and content is often accessed through high-performance content delivery networks.

World Wide Web

 
This NeXT Computer was used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world's first Web server.

The World Wide Web is a global collection of documents, images, multimedia, applications, and other resources, logically interrelated by hyperlinks and referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), which provide a global system of named references. URIs symbolically identify services, web servers, databases, and the documents and resources that they can provide. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the main access protocol of the World Wide Web. Web services also use HTTP for communication between software systems for information transfer, sharing and exchanging business data and logistic and is one of many languages or protocols that can be used for communication on the Internet.[79]

World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer/Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari, and Google Chrome, lets users navigate from one web page to another via the hyperlinks embedded in the documents. These documents may also contain any combination of computer data, including graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content that runs while the user is interacting with the page. Client-side software can include animations, games, office applications and scientific demonstrations. Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Yahoo!, Bing and Google, users worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to printed media, books, encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled the decentralization of information on a large scale.

The Web has enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and information to a potentially large audience online at greatly reduced expense and time delay. Publishing a web page, a blog, or building a website involves little initial cost and many cost-free services are available. However, publishing and maintaining large, professional web sites with attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition. Many individuals and some companies and groups use web logs or blogs, which are largely used as easily updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to communicate advice in their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result.

Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce, which is the sale of products and services directly via the Web, continues to grow. Online advertising is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.[80]: 19  Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.

When the Web developed in the 1990s, a typical web page was stored in completed form on a web server, formatted in HTML, complete for transmission to a web browser in response to a request. Over time, the process of creating and serving web pages has become dynamic, creating a flexible design, layout, and content. Websites are often created using content management software with, initially, very little content. Contributors to these systems, who may be paid staff, members of an organization or the public, fill underlying databases with content using editing pages designed for that purpose while casual visitors view and read this content in HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the target visitors.

Communication

Email is an important communications service available via the Internet. The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties, analogous to mailing letters or memos, predates the creation of the Internet.[81][82] Pictures, documents, and other files are sent as email attachments. Email messages can be cc-ed to multiple email addresses.

Internet telephony is a common communications service realized with the Internet. The name of the principle internetworking protocol, the Internet Protocol, lends its name to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The idea began in the early 1990s with walkie-talkie-like voice applications for personal computers. VoIP systems now dominate many markets, and are as easy to use and as convenient as a traditional telephone. The benefit has been substantial cost savings over traditional telephone calls, especially over long distances. Cable, ADSL, and mobile data networks provide Internet access in customer premises[83] and inexpensive VoIP network adapters provide the connection for traditional analog telephone sets. The voice quality of VoIP often exceeds that of traditional calls. Remaining problems for VoIP include the situation that emergency services may not be universally available, and that devices rely on a local power supply, while older traditional phones are powered from the local loop, and typically operate during a power failure.

Data transfer

File sharing is an example of transferring large amounts of data across the Internet. A computer file can be emailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a website or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication, the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption, and money may change hands for access to the file. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed—usually fully encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests. These simple features of the Internet, over a worldwide basis, are changing the production, sale, and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of print publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products.

Streaming media is the real-time delivery of digital media for the immediate consumption or enjoyment by end users. Many radio and television broadcasters provide Internet feeds of their live audio and video productions. They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet "broadcasters" who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access online media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. The range of available types of content is much wider, from specialized technical webcasts to on-demand popular multimedia services. Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where—usually audio—material is downloaded and played back on a computer or shifted to a portable media player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual material worldwide.

Digital media streaming increases the demand for network bandwidth. For example, standard image quality needs 1 Mbit/s link speed for SD 480p, HD 720p quality requires 2.5 Mbit/s, and the top-of-the-line HDX quality needs 4.5 Mbit/s for 1080p.[84]

Webcams are a low-cost extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full-frame-rate video, the picture either is usually small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal, traffic at a local roundabout or monitor their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat rooms and video conferencing are also popular with many uses being found for personal webcams, with and without two-way sound. YouTube was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading website for free streaming video with more than two billion users.[85] It uses an HTML5 based web player by default to stream and show video files.[86] Registered users may upload an unlimited amount of video and build their own personal profile. YouTube claims that its users watch hundreds of millions, and upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily.

Social impact

The Internet has enabled new forms of social interaction, activities, and social associations. This phenomenon has given rise to the scholarly study of the sociology of the Internet.

Users

 
Share of population using the Internet.[87] See or edit source data.
 
Internet users per 100 population members and GDP per capita for selected countries
 
Internet users per 100 inhabitants
Source: International Telecommunication Union.[88][89]

From 2000 to 2009, the number of Internet users globally rose from 394 million to 1.858 billion.[90] By 2010, 22 percent of the world's population had access to computers with 1 billion Google searches every day, 300 million Internet users reading blogs, and 2 billion videos viewed daily on YouTube.[91] In 2014 the world's Internet users surpassed 3 billion or 43.6 percent of world population, but two-thirds of the users came from richest countries, with 78.0 percent of Europe countries population using the Internet, followed by 57.4 percent of the Americas.[92] However, by 2018, Asia alone accounted for 51% of all Internet users, with 2.2 billion out of the 4.3 billion Internet users in the world coming from that region. The number of China's Internet users surpassed a major milestone in 2018, when the country's Internet regulatory authority, China Internet Network Information Centre, announced that China had 802 million Internet users.[93] By 2019, China was the world's leading country in terms of Internet users, with more than 800 million users, followed closely by India, with some 700 million users, with the United States a distant third with 275 million users. However, in terms of penetration, China has[when?] a 38.4% penetration rate compared to India's 40% and the United States's 80%.[94] As of 2020, it was estimated that 4.5 billion people use the Internet, more than half of the world's population.[95][96]

The prevalent language for communication via the Internet has always been English. This may be a result of the origin of the Internet, as well as the language's role as a lingua franca and as a world language. Early computer systems were limited to the characters in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), a subset of the Latin alphabet.

After English (27%), the most requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese (25%), Spanish (8%), Japanese (5%), Portuguese and German (4% each), Arabic, French and Russian (3% each), and Korean (2%).[97] By region, 42% of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 24% in Europe, 14% in North America, 10% in Latin America and the Caribbean taken together, 6% in Africa, 3% in the Middle East and 1% in Australia/Oceania.[98] The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years, especially in the use of Unicode, that good facilities are available for development and communication in the world's widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display of some languages' characters) still remain.

In an American study in 2005, the percentage of men using the Internet was very slightly ahead of the percentage of women, although this difference reversed in those under 30. Men logged on more often, spent more time online, and were more likely to be broadband users, whereas women tended to make more use of opportunities to communicate (such as email). Men were more likely to use the Internet to pay bills, participate in auctions, and for recreation such as downloading music and videos. Men and women were equally likely to use the Internet for shopping and banking.[99] More recent studies indicate that in 2008, women significantly outnumbered men on most social networking services, such as Facebook and Myspace, although the ratios varied with age.[100] In addition, women watched more streaming content, whereas men downloaded more.[101] In terms of blogs, men were more likely to blog in the first place; among those who blog, men were more likely to have a professional blog, whereas women were more likely to have a personal blog.[102]

Splitting by country, in 2012 Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark had the highest Internet penetration by the number of users, with 93% or more of the population with access.[103]

Several neologisms exist that refer to Internet users: Netizen (as in "citizen of the net")[104] refers to those actively involved in improving online communities, the Internet in general or surrounding political affairs and rights such as free speech,[105][106] Internaut refers to operators or technically highly capable users of the Internet,[107][108] digital citizen refers to a person using the Internet in order to engage in society, politics, and government participation.[109]

Usage

The Internet allows greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with the spread of unmetered high-speed connections. The Internet can be accessed almost anywhere by numerous means, including through mobile Internet devices. Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet wirelessly. Within the limitations imposed by small screens and other limited facilities of such pocket-sized devices, the services of the Internet, including email and the web, may be available. Service providers may restrict the services offered and mobile data charges may be significantly higher than other access methods.

Educational material at all levels from pre-school to post-doctoral is available from websites. Examples range from CBeebies, through school and high-school revision guides and virtual universities, to access to top-end scholarly literature through the likes of Google Scholar. For distance education, help with homework and other assignments, self-guided learning, whiling away spare time or just looking up more detail on an interesting fact, it has never been easier for people to access educational information at any level from anywhere. The Internet in general and the World Wide Web in particular are important enablers of both formal and informal education. Further, the Internet allows researchers (especially those from the social and behavioral sciences) to conduct research remotely via virtual laboratories, with profound changes in reach and generalizability of findings as well as in communication between scientists and in the publication of results.[113]

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills have made collaborative work dramatically easier, with the help of collaborative software. Not only can a group cheaply communicate and share ideas but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups more easily to form. An example of this is the free software movement, which has produced, among other things, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice.org (later forked into LibreOffice). Internet chat, whether using an IRC chat room, an instant messaging system, or a social networking service, allows colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way while working at their computers during the day. Messages can be exchanged even more quickly and conveniently than via email. These systems may allow files to be exchanged, drawings and images to be shared, or voice and video contact between team members.

Content management systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents simultaneously without accidentally destroying each other's work. Business and project teams can share calendars as well as documents and other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research, software development, conference planning, political activism and creative writing. Social and political collaboration is also becoming more widespread as both Internet access and computer literacy spread.

The Internet allows computer users to remotely access other computers and information stores easily from any access point. Access may be with computer security, i.e. authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements. This is encouraging new ways of remote work, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working bookkeepers, in other remote locations, based on information emailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker away from their desk, perhaps on the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can access their emails, access their data using cloud computing, or open a remote desktop session into their office PC using a secure virtual private network (VPN) connection on the Internet. This can give the worker complete access to all of their normal files and data, including email and other applications, while away from the office. It has been referred to among system administrators as the Virtual Private Nightmare,[114] because it extends the secure perimeter of a corporate network into remote locations and its employees' homes.

By late 2010s Internet has been described as "the main source of scientific information "for the majority of the global North population".[115]: 111 

Social networking and entertainment

Many people use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and book vacations and to pursue their personal interests. People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. Social networking services such as Facebook have created new ways to socialize and interact. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of information to pages, pursue common interests, and connect with others. It is also possible to find existing acquaintances, to allow communication among existing groups of people. Sites like LinkedIn foster commercial and business connections. YouTube and Flickr specialize in users' videos and photographs. Social networking services are also widely used by businesses and other organizations to promote their brands, to market to their customers and to encourage posts to "go viral". "Black hat" social media techniques are also employed by some organizations, such as spam accounts and astroturfing.

A risk for both individuals and organizations writing posts (especially public posts) on social networking services, is that especially foolish or controversial posts occasionally lead to an unexpected and possibly large-scale backlash on social media from other Internet users. This is also a risk in relation to controversial offline behavior, if it is widely made known. The nature of this backlash can range widely from counter-arguments and public mockery, through insults and hate speech, to, in extreme cases, rape and death threats. The online disinhibition effect describes the tendency of many individuals to behave more stridently or offensively online than they would in person. A significant number of feminist women have been the target of various forms of harassment in response to posts they have made on social media, and Twitter in particular has been criticised in the past for not doing enough to aid victims of online abuse.[116]

For organizations, such a backlash can cause overall brand damage, especially if reported by the media. However, this is not always the case, as any brand damage in the eyes of people with an opposing opinion to that presented by the organization could sometimes be outweighed by strengthening the brand in the eyes of others. Furthermore, if an organization or individual gives in to demands that others perceive as wrong-headed, that can then provoke a counter-backlash.

Some websites, such as Reddit, have rules forbidding the posting of personal information of individuals (also known as doxxing), due to concerns about such postings leading to mobs of large numbers of Internet users directing harassment at the specific individuals thereby identified. In particular, the Reddit rule forbidding the posting of personal information is widely understood to imply that all identifying photos and names must be censored in Facebook screenshots posted to Reddit. However, the interpretation of this rule in relation to public Twitter posts is less clear, and in any case, like-minded people online have many other ways they can use to direct each other's attention to public social media posts they disagree with.

Children also face dangers online such as cyberbullying and approaches by sexual predators, who sometimes pose as children themselves. Children may also encounter material which they may find upsetting, or material that their parents consider to be not age-appropriate. Due to naivety, they may also post personal information about themselves online, which could put them or their families at risk unless warned not to do so. Many parents choose to enable Internet filtering or supervise their children's online activities in an attempt to protect their children from inappropriate material on the Internet. The most popular social networking services, such as Facebook and Twitter, commonly forbid users under the age of 13. However, these policies are typically trivial to circumvent by registering an account with a false birth date, and a significant number of children aged under 13 join such sites anyway. Social networking services for younger children, which claim to provide better levels of protection for children, also exist.[117]

The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception, with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much traffic.[citation needed] Many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos.[citation needed] The Internet pornography and online gambling industries have taken advantage of the World Wide Web. Although many governments have attempted to restrict both industries' use of the Internet, in general, this has failed to stop their widespread popularity.[118]

Another area of leisure activity on the Internet is multiplayer gaming.[119] This form of recreation creates communities, where people of all ages and origins enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing video games to online gambling. While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with subscription services such as GameSpy and MPlayer.[120] Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of game play or certain games. Many people use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. Free and fee-based services exist for all of these activities, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies. Some of these sources exercise more care with respect to the original artists' copyrights than others.

Internet usage has been correlated to users' loneliness.[121] Lonely people tend to use the Internet as an outlet for their feelings and to share their stories with others, such as in the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread.

A 2017 book claimed that the Internet consolidates most aspects of human endeavor into singular arenas of which all of humanity are potential members and competitors, with fundamentally negative impacts on mental health as a result. While successes in each field of activity are pervasively visible and trumpeted, they are reserved for an extremely thin sliver of the world's most exceptional, leaving everyone else behind. Whereas, before the Internet, expectations of success in any field were supported by reasonable probabilities of achievement at the village, suburb, city or even state level, the same expectations in the Internet world are virtually certain to bring disappointment today: there is always someone else, somewhere on the planet, who can do better and take the now one-and-only top spot.[122]

Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form which involves: "highly dispersed small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common devotion to a particular leader. Overseas supporters provide funding and support; domestic practitioners distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith, exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in the collective study via email, online chat rooms, and web-based message boards."[123] In particular, the British government has raised concerns about the prospect of young British Muslims being indoctrinated into Islamic extremism by material on the Internet, being persuaded to join terrorist groups such as the so-called "Islamic State", and then potentially committing acts of terrorism on returning to Britain after fighting in Syria or Iraq.

Cyberslacking can become a drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spent 57 minutes a day surfing the Web while at work, according to a 2003 study by Peninsula Business Services.[124] Internet addiction disorder is excessive computer use that interferes with daily life. Nicholas G. Carr believes that Internet use has other effects on individuals, for instance improving skills of scan-reading and interfering with the deep thinking that leads to true creativity.[125]

Electronic business

Electronic business (e-business) encompasses business processes spanning the entire value chain: purchasing, supply chain management, marketing, sales, customer service, and business relationship. E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners. According to International Data Corporation, the size of worldwide e-commerce, when global business-to-business and -consumer transactions are combined, equate to $16 trillion for 2013. A report by Oxford Economics added those two together to estimate the total size of the digital economy at $20.4 trillion, equivalent to roughly 13.8% of global sales.[126]

While much has been written of the economic advantages of Internet-enabled commerce, there is also evidence that some aspects of the Internet such as maps and location-aware services may serve to reinforce economic inequality and the digital divide.[127] Electronic commerce may be responsible for consolidation and the decline of mom-and-pop, brick and mortar businesses resulting in increases in income inequality.[128][129][130]

Author Andrew Keen, a long-time critic of the social transformations caused by the Internet, has focused on the economic effects of consolidation from Internet businesses. Keen cites a 2013 Institute for Local Self-Reliance report saying brick-and-mortar retailers employ 47 people for every $10 million in sales while Amazon employs only 14. Similarly, the 700-employee room rental start-up Airbnb was valued at $10 billion in 2014, about half as much as Hilton Worldwide, which employs 152,000 people. At that time, Uber employed 1,000 full-time employees and was valued at $18.2 billion, about the same valuation as Avis Rent a Car and The Hertz Corporation combined, which together employed almost 60,000 people.[131]

Remote work

Remote work is facilitated by tools such as groupware, virtual private networks, conference calling, videotelephony, and VoIP so that work may be performed from any location, most conveniently the worker's home. It can be efficient and useful for companies as it allows workers to communicate over long distances, saving significant amounts of travel time and cost. More workers have adequate bandwidth at home to use these tools to link their home to their corporate intranet and internal communication networks.

Collaborative publishing

Wikis have also been used in the academic community for sharing and dissemination of information across institutional and international boundaries.[132] In those settings, they have been found useful for collaboration on grant writing, strategic planning, departmental documentation, and committee work.[133] The United States Patent and Trademark Office uses a wiki to allow the public to collaborate on finding prior art relevant to examination of pending patent applications. Queens, New York has used a wiki to allow citizens to collaborate on the design and planning of a local park.[134] The English Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis on the World Wide Web[135] and ranks in the top 10 among all Web sites in terms of traffic.[136]

Politics and political revolutions

 
Banner in Bangkok during the 2014 Thai coup d'état, informing the Thai public that 'like' or 'share' activities on social media could result in imprisonment (observed 30 June 2014)

The Internet has achieved new relevance as a political tool. The presidential campaign of Howard Dean in 2004 in the United States was notable for its success in soliciting donation via the Internet. Many political groups use the Internet to achieve a new method of organizing for carrying out their mission, having given rise to Internet activism, most notably practiced by rebels in the Arab Spring.[137][138] The New York Times suggested that social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, helped people organize the political revolutions in Egypt, by helping activists organize protests, communicate grievances, and disseminate information.[139]

Many have understood the Internet as an extension of the Habermasian notion of the public sphere, observing how network communication technologies provide something like a global civic forum. However, incidents of politically motivated Internet censorship have now been recorded in many countries, including western democracies.[140][141]

Philanthropy

The spread of low-cost Internet access in developing countries has opened up new possibilities for peer-to-peer charities, which allow individuals to contribute small amounts to charitable projects for other individuals. Websites, such as DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving, allow small-scale donors to direct funds to individual projects of their choice. A popular twist on Internet-based philanthropy is the use of peer-to-peer lending for charitable purposes. Kiva pioneered this concept in 2005, offering the first web-based service to publish individual loan profiles for funding. Kiva raises funds for local intermediary microfinance organizations that post stories and updates on behalf of the borrowers. Lenders can contribute as little as $25 to loans of their choice, and receive their money back as borrowers repay. Kiva falls short of being a pure peer-to-peer charity, in that loans are disbursed before being funded by lenders and borrowers do not communicate with lenders themselves.[142][143]

Security

Internet resources, hardware, and software components are the target of criminal or malicious attempts to gain unauthorized control to cause interruptions, commit fraud, engage in blackmail or access private information.

Malware

Malware is malicious software used and distributed via the Internet. It includes computer viruses which are copied with the help of humans, computer worms which copy themselves automatically, software for denial of service attacks, ransomware, botnets, and spyware that reports on the activity and typing of users. Usually, these activities constitute cybercrime. Defense theorists have also speculated about the possibilities of hackers using cyber warfare using similar methods on a large scale.[144]

Surveillance

The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the Internet.[145] In the United States for example, under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc.) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by Federal law enforcement agencies.[146][147][148] Packet capture is the monitoring of data traffic on a computer network. Computers communicate over the Internet by breaking up messages (emails, images, videos, web pages, files, etc.) into small chunks called "packets", which are routed through a network of computers, until they reach their destination, where they are assembled back into a complete "message" again. Packet Capture Appliance intercepts these packets as they are traveling through the network, in order to examine their contents using other programs. A packet capture is an information gathering tool, but not an analysis tool. That is it gathers "messages" but it does not analyze them and figure out what they mean. Other programs are needed to perform traffic analysis and sift through intercepted data looking for important/useful information. Under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act all U.S. telecommunications providers are required to install packet sniffing technology to allow Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to intercept all of their customers' broadband Internet and VoIP traffic.[149]

The large amount of data gathered from packet capturing requires surveillance software that filters and reports relevant information, such as the use of certain words or phrases, the access of certain types of web sites, or communicating via email or chat with certain parties.[150] Agencies, such as the Information Awareness Office, NSA, GCHQ and the FBI, spend billions of dollars per year to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems for interception and analysis of data.[151] Similar systems are operated by Iranian secret police to identify and suppress dissidents. The required hardware and software was allegedly installed by German Siemens AG and Finnish Nokia.[152]

Censorship

 
  Unclassified / No data

Some governments, such as those of Burma, Iran, North Korea, Mainland China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, restrict access to content on the Internet within their territories, especially to political and religious content, with domain name and keyword filters.[158]

In Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily agreed to restrict access to sites listed by authorities. While this list of forbidden resources is supposed to contain only known child pornography sites, the content of the list is secret.[159] Many countries, including the United States, have enacted laws against the possession or distribution of certain material, such as child pornography, via the Internet, but do not mandate filter software. Many free or commercially available software programs, called content-control software are available to users to block offensive websites on individual computers or networks, in order to limit access by children to pornographic material or depiction of violence.

Performance

As the Internet is a heterogeneous network, the physical characteristics, including for example the data transfer rates of connections, vary widely. It exhibits emergent phenomena that depend on its large-scale organization.[160]

Traffic volume

Global Internet Traffic

The volume of Internet traffic is difficult to measure, because no single point of measurement exists in the multi-tiered, non-hierarchical topology. Traffic data may be estimated from the aggregate volume through the peering points of the Tier 1 network providers, but traffic that stays local in large provider networks may not be accounted for.

Outages

An Internet blackout or outage can be caused by local signalling interruptions. Disruptions of submarine communications cables may cause blackouts or slowdowns to large areas, such as in the 2008 submarine cable disruption. Less-developed countries are more vulnerable due to a small number of high-capacity links. Land cables are also vulnerable, as in 2011 when a woman digging for scrap metal severed most connectivity for the nation of Armenia.[161] Internet blackouts affecting almost entire countries can be achieved by governments as a form of Internet censorship, as in the blockage of the Internet in Egypt, whereby approximately 93%[162] of networks were without access in 2011 in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests.[163]

Energy use

Estimates of the Internet's electricity usage have been the subject of controversy, according to a 2014 peer-reviewed research paper that found claims differing by a factor of 20,000 published in the literature during the preceding decade, ranging from 0.0064 kilowatt hours per gigabyte transferred (kWh/GB) to 136 kWh/GB.[164] The researchers attributed these discrepancies mainly to the year of reference (i.e. whether efficiency gains over time had been taken into account) and to whether "end devices such as personal computers and servers are included" in the analysis.[164]

In 2011, academic researchers estimated the overall energy used by the Internet to be between 170 and 307 GW, less than two percent of the energy used by humanity. This estimate included the energy needed to build, operate, and periodically replace the estimated 750 million laptops, a billion smart phones and 100 million servers worldwide as well as the energy that routers, cell towers, optical switches, Wi-Fi transmitters and cloud storage devices use when transmitting Internet traffic.[165][166] According to a non-peer reviewed study published in 2018 by The Shift Project (a French think tank funded by corporate sponsors), nearly 4% of global CO2 emissions could be attributed to global data transfer and the necessary infrastructure.[167] The study also said that online video streaming alone accounted for 60% of this data transfer and therefore contributed to over 300 million tons of CO2 emission per year, and argued for new "digital sobriety" regulations restricting the use and size of video files.[168]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ See Capitalization of Internet.
  2. ^ Despite the name, TCP/IP also includes UDP traffic, which is significant.[1]

References

  1. ^ Amogh Dhamdhere. "Internet Traffic Characterization". Retrieved 6 May 2022.
  2. ^ a b "A Flaw in the Design". The Washington Post. 30 May 2015. from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2020. The Internet was born of a big idea: Messages could be chopped into chunks, sent through a network in a series of transmissions, then reassembled by destination computers quickly and efficiently. Historians credit seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American engineer Paul Baran. ... The most important institutional force ... was the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ... as ARPA began work on a groundbreaking computer network, the agency recruited scientists affiliated with the nation’s top universities.
  3. ^ Stewart, Bill (January 2000). . The Living Internet. Archived from the original on 2 July 2014.
  4. ^ "#3 1982: the ARPANET community grows" in 40 maps that explain the internet 6 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Timothy B. Lee, Vox Conversations, 2 June 2014. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  5. ^ Strickland, Jonathan (3 March 2008). . Archived from the original on 19 June 2014. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  6. ^ Hoffman, P.; Harris, S. (September 2006). The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to Internet Engineering Task Force. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC4677. RFC 4677.
  7. ^ . USA Today. 27 October 2006. Archived from the original on 15 July 2010. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
  8. ^ "Internetted". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.) nineteenth-century use as an adjective.
  9. ^ a b Cerf, Vint; Dalal, Yogen; Sunshine, Carl (December 1974). Specification of Internet Transmission Control Protocol. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC0675. RFC 675.
  10. ^ a b c d Corbett, Philip B. (1 June 2016). "It's Official: The 'Internet' Is Over". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. from the original on 14 October 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  11. ^ a b Herring, Susan C. (19 October 2015). "Should You Be Capitalizing the Word 'Internet'?". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. from the original on 31 October 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  12. ^ Coren, Michael J. (2 June 2016). "One of the internet's inventors thinks it should still be capitalized". Quartz. from the original on 27 September 2020. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  13. ^ "World Wide Web Timeline". Pews Research Center. 11 March 2014. from the original on 29 July 2015. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  14. ^ "HTML 4.01 Specification". World Wide Web Consortium. from the original on 6 October 2008. Retrieved 13 August 2008. [T]he link (or hyperlink, or Web link) [is] the basic hypertext construct. A link is a connection from one Web resource to another. Although a simple concept, the link has been one of the primary forces driving the success of the Web.
  15. ^ Hauben, Michael; Hauben, Ronda (1997). "5 The Vision of Interactive Computing And the Future". Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet (PDF). Wiley. ISBN 978-0-8186-7706-9. (PDF) from the original on 3 January 2021. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  16. ^ Zelnick, Bob; Zelnick, Eva (1 September 2013). The Illusion of Net Neutrality: Political Alarmism, Regulatory Creep and the Real Threat to Internet Freedom. Hoover Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-1596-4. from the original on 10 January 2021. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
  17. ^ Peter, Ian (2004). . The Internet History Project. Archived from the original on 3 September 2011. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  18. ^ . National Inventors Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 6 September 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2017; . National Inventors Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 6 September 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  19. ^ Kim, Byung-Keun (2005). Internationalising the Internet the Co-evolution of Influence and Technology. Edward Elgar. pp. 51–55. ISBN 978-1-84542-675-0.
  20. ^ Gromov, Gregory (1995). . Archived from the original on 27 January 2016.
  21. ^ Hafner, Katie (1998). Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-83267-8.
  22. ^ Hauben, Ronda (2001). "From the ARPANET to the Internet". from the original on 21 July 2009. Retrieved 28 May 2009.
  23. ^ "Internet Pioneers Discuss the Future of Money, Books, and Paper in 1972". Paleofuture. 23 July 2013. from the original on 17 October 2020. Retrieved 31 August 2020.
  24. ^ Townsend, Anthony (2001). "The Internet and the Rise of the New Network Cities, 1969–1999". Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. 28 (1): 39–58. doi:10.1068/b2688. ISSN 0265-8135. S2CID 11574572.
  25. ^ . NORSAR. Archived from the original on 21 January 2013.
  26. ^ Kirstein, P.T. (1999). (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 21 (1): 38–44. doi:10.1109/85.759368. ISSN 1934-1547. S2CID 1558618. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 February 2020.
  27. ^ Leiner, Barry M. . Internet Society. Archived from the original on 9 April 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  28. ^ Cerf, V.; Kahn, R. (1974). "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Communications. 22 (5): 637–648. doi:10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259. ISSN 1558-0857. (PDF) from the original on 13 September 2006. The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.
  29. ^ Leiner, Barry M.; Cerf, Vinton G.; Clark, David D.; Kahn, Robert E.; Kleinrock, Leonard; Lynch, Daniel C.; Postel, Jon; Roberts, Larry G.; Wolff, Stephen (2003). "A Brief History of Internet". Internet Society. p. 1011. arXiv:cs/9901011. Bibcode:1999cs........1011L. from the original on 4 June 2007. Retrieved 28 May 2009.
  30. ^ "The internet's fifth man". The Economist. 30 November 2013. ISSN 0013-0613. from the original on 19 April 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020. In the early 1970s Mr Pouzin created an innovative data network that linked locations in France, Italy and Britain. Its simplicity and efficiency pointed the way to a network that could connect not just dozens of machines, but millions of them. It captured the imagination of Dr Cerf and Dr Kahn, who included aspects of its design in the protocols that now power the internet.
  31. ^ Schatt, Stan (1991). Linking LANs: A Micro Manager's Guide. McGraw-Hill. p. 200. ISBN 0-8306-3755-9.
  32. ^ Frazer, Karen D. (1995). (PDF). Merit Network, Inc. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 February 2015.
  33. ^ Ben Segal (1995). "A Short History of Internet Protocols at CERN". from the original on 19 June 2020. Retrieved 14 October 2011.
  34. ^ Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE)
  35. ^ "Internet History in Asia". 16th APAN Meetings/Advanced Network Conference in Busan. from the original on 1 February 2006. Retrieved 25 December 2005.
  36. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016.
  37. ^ Clarke, Roger. "Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia". from the original on 9 February 2021. Retrieved 21 January 2014.
  38. ^ Zakon, Robert (November 1997). RFC 2235. IETF. p. 8. doi:10.17487/RFC2235. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
  39. ^ Inc, InfoWorld Media Group (25 September 1989). "InfoWorld". from the original on 29 January 2017 – via Google Books.
  40. ^ "INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS". February 1990. Archived from the original on 25 May 2017. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  41. ^ Berners-Lee, Tim. . W3C.org. Archived from the original on 5 June 1997.
  42. ^ . info.cern.ch. Archived from the original on 5 January 2010.
  43. ^ "Stanford Federal Credit Union Pioneers Online Financial Services" (Press release). 21 June 1995. from the original on 21 December 2018. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  44. ^ "History - About us - OP Group". from the original on 21 December 2018. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  45. ^ Harris, Susan R.; Gerich, Elise (April 1996). . ConneXions. 10 (4). Archived from the original on 17 August 2013.
  46. ^ "Measuring digital development: Facts and figures 2021". Telecommunication Development Bureau, International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Retrieved 16 November 2022.
  47. ^ . International Programs Center for Demographic and Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau. Archived from the original on 17 April 2017. Retrieved 28 February 2020.
  48. ^ Jindal, R. P. (2009). . 2009 2nd International Workshop on Electron Devices and Semiconductor Technology: 1–6. doi:10.1109/EDST.2009.5166093. ISBN 978-1-4244-3831-0. S2CID 25112828. Archived from the original on 23 August 2019. Retrieved 24 August 2019.
  49. ^ Ward, Mark (3 August 2006). . Technology Correspondent. BBC News. Archived from the original on 21 November 2011. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
  50. ^ . Clickz.com. Archived from the original on 4 October 2008. Retrieved 28 May 2009.
  51. ^ Coffman, K.G; Odlyzko, A.M. (2 October 1998). (PDF). AT&T Labs. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 June 2007. Retrieved 21 May 2007.
  52. ^ Comer, Douglas (2006). The Internet book. Prentice Hall. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-13-233553-9.
  53. ^ . Internet World Stats. Miniwatts Marketing Group. 22 June 2011. Archived from the original on 23 June 2011. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  54. ^ Hilbert, Martin; López, Priscila (April 2011). "The World's Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information". Science. 332 (6025): 60–65. Bibcode:2011Sci...332...60H. doi:10.1126/science.1200970. PMID 21310967. S2CID 206531385. (PDF) from the original on 31 May 2011.
  55. ^ Klein, Hans (2004). . Internet and Public Policy Project. Georgia Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on 24 May 2013.
  56. ^ Packard, Ashley (2010). Digital Media Law. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-4051-8169-3.
  57. ^ McCarthy, Kieren (1 July 2005). . The Register. Archived from the original on 19 September 2011.
  58. ^ Mueller, Milton L. (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. MIT Press. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-262-01459-5.
  59. ^ "ICG Applauds Transfer of IANA Stewardship". IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG). from the original on 12 July 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  60. ^ . ISOC. Archived from the original on 27 November 2011. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
  61. ^ Pasternak, Sean B. (7 March 2006). "Toronto Hydro to Install Wireless Network in Downtown Toronto". Bloomberg. from the original on 10 April 2006. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  62. ^ . StatCounter: Global Stats, Press Release. 1 November 2016. Archived from the original on 1 November 2016. StatCounter Global Stats finds that mobile and tablet devices accounted for 51.3% of Internet usage worldwide in October compared to 48.7% by desktop.
  63. ^ . International Telecommunication Union (ITU). 2017a. Archived from the original on 21 April 2019. Key ICT indicators for developed and developing countries and the world (totals and penetration rates). World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators database
  64. ^ a b World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Global Report 2017/2018 (PDF). UNESCO. 2018. (PDF) from the original on 20 September 2018. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  65. ^ a b . 11 March 2019. Archived from the original on 11 March 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  66. ^ Galpaya, Helani (12 April 2019). "Zero-rating in Emerging Economies" (PDF). Global Commission on Internet Governance. (PDF) from the original on 12 April 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  67. ^ "Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI). 2015. Models of Mobile Data Services in Developing Countries. Research brief. The Impacts of Emerging Mobile Data Services in Developing Countries".[dead link]
  68. ^ Alison GillwAld, ChenAi ChAir, Ariel Futter, KweKu KorAntenG, FolA oduFuwA, John wAlubenGo (12 September 2016). "Much Ado About Nothing? Zero Rating in the African Context" (PDF). Researchictafrica. (PDF) from the original on 16 December 2020. Retrieved 28 November 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  69. ^ a b J. Postel, ed. (September 1981). Internet Protocol, DARPA Internet Program Protocol Specification. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC0791. RFC 791. Updated by RFC 1349, 2474, 6864
  70. ^ Huston, Geoff. "IPv4 Address Report, daily generated". from the original on 1 April 2009. Retrieved 20 May 2009.
  71. ^ S. Deering; R. Hinden (December 1995). Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC1883. RFC 1883.
  72. ^ S. Deering; R. Hinden (December 1998). Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC2460. RFC 2460.
  73. ^ S. Deering; R. Hinden (July 2017). Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC8200. RFC 8200.
  74. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 January 2010. Retrieved 7 August 2009.
  75. ^ Jeffrey Mogul; Jon Postel (August 1985). Internet Standard Subnetting Procedure. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC0950. RFC 950. Updated by RFC 6918.
  76. ^ Fisher, Tim. "How to Find Your Default Gateway IP Address". Lifewire. from the original on 25 February 2019. Retrieved 25 February 2019.
  77. ^ . techopedia.com. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020.
  78. ^ "IETF Home Page". Ietf.org. from the original on 18 June 2009. Retrieved 20 June 2009.
  79. ^ "The Difference Between the Internet and the World Wide Web". Webopedia.com. QuinStreet Inc. 24 June 2010. from the original on 2 May 2014. Retrieved 1 May 2014.
  80. ^ (PDF). PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet Advertising Bureau. April 2013. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 October 2014. Retrieved 12 June 2013.
  81. ^ Brown, Ron (26 October 1972). "Fax invades the mail market". New Scientist. 56 (817): 218–221.
  82. ^ Luckett, Herbert P. (March 1973). "What's News: Electronic-mail delivery gets started". Popular Science. 202 (3): 85.
  83. ^ Booth, C (2010). "Chapter 2: IP Phones, Software VoIP, and Integrated and Mobile VoIP". Library Technology Reports. 46 (5): 11–19.
  84. ^ Morrison, Geoff (18 November 2010). "What to know before buying a 'connected' TV – Technology & science – Tech and gadgets – Tech Holiday Guide". NBC News. from the original on 12 February 2020. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  85. ^ "Press - YouTube". www.youtube.com. from the original on 11 November 2017. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  86. ^ "YouTube now defaults to HTML5 <video>". YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog. from the original on 10 September 2018. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
  87. ^ Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max (2 October 2017). "Technology Adoption". Our World in Data. from the original on 12 October 2019. Retrieved 12 October 2019.
  88. ^ "Individuals using the Internet 2005 to 2014" 28 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Key ICT indicators for developed and developing countries and the world (totals and penetration rates), International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  89. ^ "Internet users per 100 inhabitants 1997 to 2007" 17 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine, ICT Data and Statistics (IDS), International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  90. ^ Internet users graphs 9 May 2020 at the Wayback Machine, Market Information and Statistics, International Telecommunication Union
  91. ^ "Google Earth demonstrates how technology benefits RI's civil society, govt". Antara News. 26 May 2011. from the original on 29 October 2012. Retrieved 19 November 2012.
  92. ^ Steve Dent. "There are now 3 billion Internet users, mostly in rich countries". from the original on 28 November 2014. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
  93. ^ "Statistical Report on Internet Development in China" (PDF). Cnnic.com. January 2018. (PDF) from the original on 12 April 2019.
  94. ^ "World Internet Users Statistics and 2019 World Population Stats". internetworldstats.com. from the original on 24 November 2017. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  95. ^ "Digital 2020: 3.8 billion people use social media". 30 January 2020. from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  96. ^ "Internet". Encyclopædia Britannica. from the original on 21 March 2021. Retrieved 19 March 2021.
  97. ^ a b . Internet World Stats, Miniwatts Marketing Group. 31 May 2011. Archived from the original on 26 April 2012. Retrieved 22 April 2012.
  98. ^ . 30 June 2010. Archived from the original on 19 March 2017. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
  99. ^ How men and women use the Internet Pew Research Center 28 December 2005
  100. ^ . Archived from the original on 20 March 2009.
  101. ^ "Women Ahead of Men in Online Tv, Dvr, Games, And Social Media". Entrepreneur.com. 1 May 2008. from the original on 16 September 2008. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  102. ^ . Technorati. Archived from the original on 2 October 2009. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  103. ^ a b "Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000–2012" 9 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine, International Telecommunication Union (Geneva), June 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
  104. ^ Seese, Michael (2009). Scrappy Information Security. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-60005-132-6. from the original on 5 September 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
  105. ^ netizen 21 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Dictionary.com
  106. ^ Hauben, Michael. . Columbia University. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011.
  107. ^ . the Internet Society. Archived from the original on 4 June 2007.
  108. ^ . oxforddictionaries.com. Archived from the original on 13 June 2015. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
  109. ^ Mossberger, Karen; Tolbert, Caroline J.; McNeal, Ramona S. (23 November 2011). Digital Citizenship – The Internet, Society and Participation. ISBN 978-0-8194-5606-9.
  110. ^ "Usage of content languages for websites". W3Techs.com. Archived from the original on 31 March 2012. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  111. ^ "Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012" 26 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE, International Telecommunication Union. Retrieved 29 June 2013.
  112. ^ "Active mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012" 26 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Dynamic Report, ITU ITC EYE, International Telecommunication Union. Retrieved 29 June 2013.
  113. ^ Reips, U.-D. (2008). "How Internet-mediated research changes science". . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 268–294. ISBN 9780521694643. Archived from the original on 9 August 2014.
  114. ^ "The Virtual Private Nightmare: VPN". Librenix. 4 August 2004. from the original on 15 May 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2010.
  115. ^ Dariusz Jemielniak; Aleksandra Przegalinska (18 February 2020). Collaborative Society. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-35645-9. from the original on 23 November 2020. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
  116. ^ Moore, Keith (27 July 2013). "Twitter 'report abuse' button calls after rape threats". BBC News. from the original on 4 September 2014. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  117. ^ Kessler, Sarah (11 October 2010). "5 Fun and Safe Social Networks for Children". Mashable. from the original on 20 December 2014. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  118. ^ Goldman, Russell (22 January 2008). . ABC News. Archived from the original on 30 December 2011.
  119. ^ Spohn, Dave (15 December 2009). . About.com. Archived from the original on 29 September 2011.
  120. ^ Spohn, Dave (2 June 2011). . About.com. Archived from the original on 25 April 2006.
  121. ^ Carole Hughes; Boston College. . Boston College. Archived from the original on 7 November 2015. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
  122. ^ Barker, Eric (2017). Barking Up the Wrong Tree. HarperCollins. pp. 235–6. ISBN 9780062416049.
  123. ^ Thornton, Patricia M. (2003). "The New Cybersects: Resistance and Repression in the Reform era". In Perry, Elizabeth; Selden, Mark (eds.). Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance (2 ed.). London and New York: Routledge. pp. 149–150. ISBN 9780415560740.
  124. ^ "Net abuse hits small city firms". The Scotsman. Edinburgh. 11 September 2003. from the original on 20 October 2012. Retrieved 7 August 2009.
  125. ^ Carr, Nicholas G. (7 June 2010). The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. W.W. Norton. p. 276. ISBN 978-0393072228.
  126. ^ (PDF). Oxford Economics. 2 July 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 July 2014.
  127. ^ Badger, Emily (6 February 2013). . The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 11 February 2013. Retrieved 13 February 2013.
  128. ^ . ZDNet. 17 January 2013. Archived from the original on 19 February 2013.
  129. ^ . Comscore. 23 December 2012. Archived from the original on 28 January 2013.
  130. ^ . The Atlantic – Cities. 26 December 2012. Archived from the original on 15 February 2013.
  131. ^ Harris, Michael (2 January 2015). "Book review: 'The Internet Is Not the Answer' by Andrew Keen". The Washington Post. from the original on 20 January 2015. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
  132. ^ MM Wanderley; D Birnbaum; J Malloch (2006). New Interfaces For Musical Expression. IRCAM – Centre Pompidou. p. 180. ISBN 978-2-84426-314-8.
  133. ^ Nancy T. Lombardo (June 2008). "Putting Wikis to Work in Libraries". Medical Reference Services Quarterly. 27 (2): 129–145. doi:10.1080/02763860802114223. PMID 18844087. S2CID 11552140.
  134. ^ Noveck, Beth Simone (March 2007). "Wikipedia and the Future of Legal Education". Journal of Legal Education. 57 (1). from the original on 3 July 2014.(subscription required)
  135. ^ . S23Wiki. 3 April 2008. Archived from the original on 25 August 2014. Retrieved 7 April 2007.
  136. ^ "Alexa Web Search – Top 500". Alexa Internet. from the original on 2 March 2015. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
  137. ^ . Miller-mccune.com. 23 February 2011. Archived from the original on 27 February 2011. Retrieved 27 February 2011.
  138. ^ (PDF). 5 July 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 July 2012., Davit Chokoshvili, Master's Thesis, June 2011
  139. ^ Kirkpatrick, David D. (9 February 2011). "Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians Guide Revolt". The New York Times. from the original on 29 January 2017.
  140. ^ Ronald Deibert; John Palfrey; Rafal Rohozinski; Jonathan Zittrain (25 January 2008). Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-29072-2.
  141. ^ Larry Diamond; Marc F. Plattner (30 July 2012). Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy. JHU Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-0568-1.
  142. ^ Roodman, David (2 October 2009). . Center for Global Development. Archived from the original on 10 February 2010. Retrieved 16 January 2010.
  143. ^ Strom, Stephanie (9 November 2009). "Confusion on Where Money Lent via Kiva Goes". The New York Times. p. 6. from the original on 29 January 2017.
  144. ^ Andriole, Steve. "Cyberwarfare Will Explode In 2020 (Because It's Cheap, Easy And Effective)". Forbes. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  145. ^ Diffie, Whitfield; Susan Landau (August 2008). "Internet Eavesdropping: A Brave New World of Wiretapping". Scientific American. from the original on 13 November 2008. Retrieved 13 March 2009.
  146. ^ . Electronic Frontier Foundation (website). Archived from the original on 25 October 2008. Retrieved 14 March 2009.
  147. ^ "CALEA: The Perils of Wiretapping the Internet". Electronic Frontier Foundation (website). from the original on 16 March 2009. Retrieved 14 March 2009.
  148. ^ "CALEA: Frequently Asked Questions". Electronic Frontier Foundation (website). 20 September 2007. from the original on 1 May 2009. Retrieved 14 March 2009.
  149. ^ (PDF). 9 June 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 September 2012. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  150. ^ Hill, Michael (11 October 2004). "Government funds chat room surveillance research". USA Today. Associated Press. from the original on 11 May 2010. Retrieved 19 March 2009.
  151. ^ McCullagh, Declan (30 January 2007). . ZDNet News. Archived from the original on 7 April 2010. Retrieved 13 March 2009.
  152. ^ . Debkafile. 28 June 2009. Archived from the original on 21 December 2013.
  153. ^ (PDF). Freedom House. November 2018. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 November 2018. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  154. ^ OpenNet Initiative "Summarized global Internet filtering data spreadsheet" 10 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine, 8 November 2011 and "Country Profiles" 26 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine, the OpenNet Initiative is a collaborative partnership of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto; the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; and the SecDev Group, Ottawa
  155. ^ Due to legal concerns the OpenNet Initiative does not check for filtering of child pornography and because their classifications focus on technical filtering, they do not include other types of censorship.
  156. ^ . Reporters Without Borders. Paris. 11 March 2014. Archived from the original on 12 March 2014.
  157. ^ (PDF). Reporters Without Borders. Paris. 12 March 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 July 2017.
  158. ^ Deibert, Ronald J.; Palfrey, John G.; Rohozinski, Rafal; Zittrain, Jonathan (April 2010). . MIT Press. ISBN 9780262514354. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011.
  159. ^ "Finland censors anti-censorship site". The Register. 18 February 2008. from the original on 20 February 2008. Retrieved 19 February 2008.
  160. ^ Albert, Réka; Jeong, Hawoong; Barabási, Albert-László (9 September 1999). "Diameter of the World-Wide Web". Nature. 401 (6749): 130–131. arXiv:cond-mat/9907038. Bibcode:1999Natur.401..130A. doi:10.1038/43601. S2CID 4419938.
  161. ^ "Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia". The Guardian. 6 April 2011. from the original on 25 August 2013. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
  162. ^ Cowie, James. . Renesys. Archived from the original on 28 January 2011. Retrieved 28 January 2011.
  163. ^ "Egypt severs internet connection amid growing unrest". BBC News. 28 January 2011. from the original on 23 January 2012.
  164. ^ a b Coroama, Vlad C.; Hilty, Lorenz M. (February 2014). "Assessing Internet energy intensity: A review of methods and results" (PDF). Environmental Impact Assessment Review. 45: 63–68. doi:10.1016/j.eiar.2013.12.004. (PDF) from the original on 23 September 2020. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
  165. ^ Giles, Jim (26 October 2011). . New Scientist. Archived from the original on 1 October 2014.,
  166. ^ Raghavan, Barath; Ma, Justin (14 November 2011). (PDF). Proceedings of the 10th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks. Cambridge, MA.: ACM SIGCOMM: 1–6. doi:10.1145/2070562.2070571. ISBN 9781450310598. S2CID 6125953. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 August 2014.
  167. ^ Cwienk, Jeannette (11 July 2019). "Is Netflix bad for the environment? How streaming video contributes to climate change | DW | 11.07.2019". Deutsche Welle. from the original on 12 July 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  168. ^ ""Climate crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video" : Our new report". The Shift Project. 10 July 2019. from the original on 21 July 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2019.

Sources

  •   This article incorporates text from a free content work. . Text taken from World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Global Report 2017/2018, 202, UNESCO. To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.

Further reading

  • First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal on the Internet by the University Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago, ISSN 1396-0466
  • The Internet Explained, Vincent Zegna & Mike Pepper, Sonet Digital, November 2005, pp. 1–7.
  • Abram, Cleo (8 January 2020). "How Does the Internet Work?". YouTube. Vox Media. Archived from the original on 27 October 2021. Retrieved 30 August 2020.
  • Castells, Manuel (2010). The Rise of the Network Society. Wiley. ISBN 9781405196864.

External links

  • The Internet Society
  • Living Internet, Internet history and related information, including information from many creators of the Internet

internet, this, article, about, worldwide, computer, network, global, system, pages, accessed, urls, world, wide, other, uses, disambiguation, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, r. This article is about the worldwide computer network For the global system of pages accessed via URLs see World Wide Web For other uses see Internet disambiguation This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Internet news newspapers books scholar JSTOR January 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message The Internet or internet a is a global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite TCP IP b to communicate between networks and devices It is a network of networks that consists of private public academic business and government networks of local to global scope linked by a broad array of electronic wireless and optical networking technologies The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web WWW electronic mail telephony and file sharing The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and research commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s to enable time sharing of computers 2 The primary precursor network the ARPANET initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s to enable resource sharing The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s as well as private funding for other commercial extensions led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and the merger of many networks 3 The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet 4 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 in the 1980s commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life Most traditional communication media including telephone radio television paper mail and newspapers are reshaped redefined or even bypassed by the Internet giving birth to new services such as email Internet telephone Internet television online music digital newspapers and video streaming websites Newspaper book and other print publishing are adapting to website technology or being reshaped into blogging web feeds and online news aggregators The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interaction through instant messaging Internet forums and social networking services Online shopping has grown exponentially for major retailers small businesses and entrepreneurs as it enables firms to extend their brick 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 single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage each constituent network sets its own policies 5 The overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces on the Internet the Internet Protocol address IP address space and the Domain Name System DNS are directed by a maintainer organization the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ICANN The technical underpinning and standardization of the 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 6 In November 2006 the Internet was included on USA Today s list of New Seven Wonders 7 Contents 1 Terminology 2 History 3 Governance 4 Infrastructure 4 1 Service tiers 4 2 Access 4 2 1 Mobile communication 5 Internet Protocol Suite 5 1 Internet protocol 5 1 1 IP Addresses 5 1 2 IPv4 5 1 3 IPv6 5 1 4 Subnetwork 5 1 5 Routing 5 2 IETF 6 Applications and 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 Remote work 7 6 Collaborative publishing 7 7 Politics and political revolutions 7 8 Philanthropy 8 Security 8 1 Malware 8 2 Surveillance 8 3 Censorship 9 Performance 9 1 Traffic volume 9 2 Outages 9 3 Energy use 10 See also 11 Notes 12 References 13 Sources 14 Further reading 15 External linksTerminologyFurther information Capitalization of Internet and internetworking The Internet Messenger by Buky Schwartz located in Holon Israel The word internetted was used as early as 1849 meaning interconnected or interwoven 8 The word Internet was used in 1974 as the shorthand form of Internetwork 9 Today the term Internet most commonly refers to the global system of interconnected computer networks though it may also refer to any group of smaller networks 10 When it came into common use most publications treated the word Internet as a capitalized proper noun this has become less common 10 This reflects the tendency in English to capitalize new terms and move to lowercase as they become familiar 10 11 The word is sometimes still capitalized to distinguish the global internet from smaller networks though many publications including the AP Stylebook since 2016 recommend the lowercase form in every case 10 11 In 2016 the Oxford English Dictionary found that based on a study of around 2 5 billion printed and online sources Internet was capitalized in 54 of cases 12 The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably it is common to speak of going on the Internet when using a web browser to view web pages However the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large number of Internet services 13 a collection of documents web pages and other web resources linked by hyperlinks and URLs 14 HistoryMain articles History of the Internet and History of the World Wide Web In the 1960s the Advanced Research Projects Agency ARPA of the United States Department of Defense DoD funded research into time sharing of computers 15 16 17 J C R Licklider proposed the idea of a universal network while leading the Information Processing Techniques Office IPTO at ARPA Research into packet switching one of the fundamental Internet technologies started in the work of Paul Baran in the early 1960s and independently Donald Davies in 1965 2 18 After the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in 1967 packet switching from the proposed NPL network was incorporated into the design for the ARPANET and other resource sharing networks such as the Merit Network and CYCLADES which were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s 19 ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between the University of California Los Angeles UCLA and SRI International SRI on 29 October 1969 20 The third site was at the University of California Santa Barbara followed by the University of Utah In a sign of future growth 15 sites were connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971 21 22 These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks The Heralds of Resource Sharing 23 Thereafter the ARPANET gradually developed into a decentralized communications network connecting remote centers and military bases in the United States 24 Early international collaborations for the ARPANET were rare Connections were made in 1973 to the Norwegian Seismic Array NORSAR 25 and to University College London which provided a gateway to British academic networks forming the first international resource sharing network 26 ARPA projects international working groups and commercial initiatives led to the development of various protocols and standards by which multiple separate networks could become a single network or a network of networks 27 In 1974 Bob Kahn at DARPA and Vint Cerf at Stanford University published their ideas for A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication 28 They used the term internet as a shorthand for internetwork in RFC 675 9 and later RFCs repeated this use 29 Kahn and Cerf credit Louis Pouzin with important influences on the resulting TCP IP design 30 National PTTs and commercial providers developed the X 25 standard and deployed it on public data networks 31 Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation NSF funded the Computer Science Network CSNET In 1982 the Internet Protocol Suite TCP IP was standardized which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks TCP IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network NSFNet provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States for researchers first at speeds of 56 kbit s and later at 1 5 Mbit s and 45 Mbit s 32 The NSFNet expanded into academic and research organizations in Europe Australia New Zealand and Japan in 1988 89 33 34 35 36 Although other network protocols such as UUCP and PTT public data networks had global reach well before this time this marked the beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental network Commercial Internet service providers ISPs emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia 37 The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990 38 T3 NSFNET Backbone c 1992 Steady advances in semiconductor technology and optical networking created new economic opportunities for commercial involvement in the expansion of the network in its core and for delivering services to the public In mid 1989 MCI Mail and Compuserve established connections to the Internet delivering email and public access products to the half million users of the Internet 39 Just months later on 1 January 1990 PSInet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial use one of the networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later years In March 1990 the first high speed T1 1 5 Mbit s link between the NSFNET and Europe was installed between Cornell University and CERN allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites 40 Six months later Tim Berners Lee would begin writing WorldWideWeb the first web browser after two years of lobbying CERN management By Christmas 1990 Berners Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web the HyperText Transfer Protocol HTTP 0 9 41 the HyperText Markup Language HTML the first Web browser which was also an HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files the first HTTP server software later known as CERN httpd the first web server 42 and the first Web pages that described the project itself In 1991 the Commercial Internet eXchange was founded allowing PSInet to communicate with the other commercial networks CERFnet and Alternet Stanford Federal Credit Union was the first financial institution to offer online Internet banking services to all of its members in October 1994 43 In 1996 OP Financial Group also a cooperative bank became the second online bank in the world and the first in Europe 44 By 1995 the Internet was fully commercialized in the U S when the NSFNet was decommissioned removing the last restrictions on use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic 45 Worldwide Internet users 46 Users 2005 2010 2017 2019 2021World population 47 6 5 billion 6 9 billion 7 4 billion 7 75 billion 7 9 billionWorldwide 16 30 48 53 6 63 In developing world 8 21 41 3 47 57 In developed world 51 67 81 86 6 90 As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal growth the volume of Internet traffic started experiencing similar characteristics as that of the scaling of MOS transistors exemplified by Moore s law doubling every 18 months This growth formalized as Edholm s law was catalyzed by advances in MOS technology laser light wave systems and noise performance 48 Since 1995 the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce including the rise of near instant communication by email instant messaging telephony Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP two way interactive video calls and the World Wide Web 49 with its discussion forums blogs social networking services and online shopping sites Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1 Gbit s 10 Gbit s or more The Internet continues to grow driven by ever greater amounts of online information and knowledge commerce entertainment and social networking services 50 During the late 1990s it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year while the mean annual growth in the number of Internet users was thought to be between 20 and 50 51 This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration which allows organic growth of the network as well as the non proprietary nature of the Internet protocols which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network 52 As of 31 March 2011 update the estimated total number of Internet users was 2 095 billion 30 2 of world population 53 It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1 of the information flowing through two way telecommunication By 2000 this figure had grown to 51 and by 2007 more than 97 of all telecommunicated information was carried over the Internet 54 GovernanceMain article Internet governance ICANN headquarters in the Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles California United States The Internet is a global network that comprises many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks It operates without a central governing body The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols IPv4 and IPv6 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 To maintain interoperability the principal name spaces of the Internet are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ICANN ICANN is governed by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical business academic and other non commercial communities ICANN coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers for use on the Internet including domain names IP addresses application port numbers in the transport protocols and many other parameters Globally unified name spaces are essential for maintaining the global reach of the Internet This role of ICANN distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body for the global Internet 55 Regional Internet registries RIRs were established for five regions of the world The African Network Information Center AfriNIC for Africa the American Registry for Internet Numbers ARIN for North America the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre APNIC for Asia and the Pacific region the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry LACNIC for Latin America and the Caribbean region and the Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre RIPE NCC for Europe the Middle East and Central Asia were delegated to assign IP address blocks and other Internet parameters to local registries such as Internet service providers from a designated pool of addresses set aside for each region The National Telecommunications and Information Administration an agency of the United States Department of Commerce had final approval over changes to the DNS root zone until the IANA stewardship transition on 1 October 2016 56 57 58 59 The Internet Society ISOC was founded in 1992 with a mission to assure the open development evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world 60 Its members include individuals anyone may join as well as corporations organizations governments and universities Among other activities ISOC provides an administrative home for a number of less formally organized groups that are involved in developing and managing the Internet including the IETF Internet Architecture Board IAB Internet Engineering Steering Group IESG Internet Research Task Force IRTF and Internet Research Steering Group IRSG On 16 November 2005 the United Nations sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis established the Internet Governance Forum IGF to discuss Internet related issues InfrastructureSee also List of countries by number of Internet users and List of countries by Internet connection speeds 2007 map showing submarine fiberoptic telecommunication cables around the world The communications infrastructure of the Internet consists of its hardware components and a system of software layers that control various aspects of the architecture As with any computer network the Internet physically consists of routers media such as cabling and radio links repeaters modems etc However as an example of internetworking many of the network nodes are not necessarily internet equipment per se the internet packets are carried by other full fledged networking protocols with the Internet acting as a homogeneous networking standard running across heterogeneous hardware with the packets guided to their destinations by IP routers Service tiers Packet routing across the Internet involves several tiers of Internet service providers Internet service providers ISPs establish the worldwide connectivity between individual networks at various levels of scope End users who only access the Internet when needed to perform a function or obtain information represent the bottom of the routing hierarchy At the top of the routing hierarchy are the tier 1 networks large telecommunication companies that exchange traffic directly with each other via very high speed fibre optic cables and governed by peering agreements Tier 2 and lower level networks buy Internet transit from other providers to reach at least some parties on the global Internet though they may also engage in peering An ISP may use a single upstream provider for connectivity or implement multihoming to achieve redundancy and load balancing Internet exchange points are major traffic exchanges with physical connections to multiple ISPs Large organizations such as academic institutions large enterprises and governments may perform the same function as ISPs engaging in peering and purchasing transit on behalf of their internal networks Research networks tend to interconnect with large subnetworks such as GEANT GLORIAD Internet2 and the UK s national research and education network JANET Access Common methods of Internet access by users include dial up with a computer modem via telephone circuits broadband over coaxial cable fiber optics or copper wires Wi Fi satellite and cellular telephone technology e g 3G 4G The Internet may often be accessed from computers in libraries and Internet cafes Internet access points exist in many public places such as airport halls and coffee shops Various terms are used such as public Internet kiosk public access terminal and Web payphone Many hotels also have public terminals that are usually fee based These terminals are widely accessed for various usages such as ticket booking bank deposit or online payment Wi Fi provides wireless access to the Internet via local computer networks Hotspots providing such access include Wi Fi cafes where users need to bring their own wireless devices such as a laptop or PDA These services may be free to all free to customers only or fee based Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks Commercial Wi Fi services that cover large areas are available in many cities such as New York London Vienna Toronto San Francisco Philadelphia Chicago and Pittsburgh where the Internet can then be accessed from places such as a park bench 61 Experiments have also been conducted with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet various high speed data services over cellular networks and fixed wireless services Modern smartphones can also access the Internet through the cellular carrier network For Web browsing these devices provide applications such as Google Chrome Safari and Firefox and a wide variety of other Internet software may be installed from app stores Internet usage by mobile and tablet devices exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time in October 2016 62 Mobile communication Number of mobile cellular subscriptions 2012 2016 World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Global Report 2017 2018The International Telecommunication Union ITU estimated that by the end of 2017 48 of individual users regularly connect to the Internet up from 34 in 2012 63 Mobile Internet connectivity has played an important role in expanding access in recent years especially in Asia and the Pacific and in Africa 64 The number of unique mobile cellular subscriptions increased from 3 89 billion in 2012 to 4 83 billion in 2016 two thirds of the world s population with more than half of subscriptions located in Asia and the Pacific The number of subscriptions is predicted to rise to 5 69 billion users in 2020 65 As of 2016 update almost 60 of the world s population had access to a 4G broadband cellular network up from almost 50 in 2015 and 11 in 2012 disputed discuss 65 The limits that users face on accessing information via mobile applications coincide with a broader process of fragmentation of the Internet Fragmentation restricts access to media content and tends to affect poorest users the most 64 Zero rating the practice of Internet service providers allowing users free connectivity to access specific content or applications without cost has offered opportunities to surmount economic hurdles but has also been accused by its critics as creating a two tiered Internet To address the issues with zero rating an alternative model has emerged in the concept of equal rating and is being tested in experiments by Mozilla and Orange in Africa Equal rating prevents prioritization of one type of content and zero rates all content up to a specified data cap A study published by Chatham House 15 out of 19 countries researched in Latin America had some kind of hybrid or zero rated product offered Some countries in the region had a handful of plans to choose from across all mobile network operators while others such as Colombia offered as many as 30 pre paid and 34 post paid plans 66 A study of eight countries in the Global South found that zero rated data plans exist in every country although there is a great range in the frequency with which they are offered and actually used in each 67 The study looked at the top three to five carriers by market share in Bangladesh Colombia Ghana India Kenya Nigeria Peru and Philippines Across the 181 plans examined 13 per cent were offering zero rated services Another study covering Ghana Kenya Nigeria and South Africa found Facebook s Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero to be the most commonly zero rated content 68 Internet Protocol SuiteThe Internet standards describe a framework known as the Internet protocol suite also called TCP IP based on the first two components This is a suite of protocols that are ordered into a set of four conceptional layers by the scope of their operation originally documented in RFC 1122 and RFC 1123 At the top is the application layer where communication is described in terms of the objects or data structures most appropriate for each application For example a web browser operates in a client server application model and exchanges information with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP and an application germane data structure such as the Hypertext Markup Language HTML Below this top layer the transport layer connects applications on different hosts with a logical channel through the network It provides this service with a variety of possible characteristics such as ordered reliable delivery TCP and an unreliable datagram service UDP Underlying these layers are the networking technologies that interconnect networks at their borders and exchange traffic across them The Internet layer implements the Internet Protocol IP which enables computers to identify and locate each other by IP address and route their traffic via intermediate transit networks 69 The internet protocol layer code is independent of the type of network that it is physically running over At the bottom of the architecture is the link layer which connects nodes on the same physical link and contains protocols that do not require routers for traversal to other links The protocol suite does not explicitly specify hardware methods to transfer bits or protocols to manage such hardware but assumes that appropriate technology is available Examples of that technology include Wi Fi Ethernet and DSL As user data is processed through the protocol stack each abstraction layer adds encapsulation information at the sending host Data is transmitted over the wire at the link level between hosts and routers Encapsulation is removed by the receiving host Intermediate relays update link encapsulation at each hop and inspect the IP layer for routing purposes Internet protocol Conceptual data flow in a simple network topology of two hosts A and B connected by a link between their respective routers The application on each host executes read and write operations as if the processes were directly connected to each other by some kind of data pipe After the establishment of this pipe most details of the communication are hidden from each process as the underlying principles of communication are implemented in the lower protocol layers In analogy at the transport layer the communication appears as host to host without knowledge of the application data structures and the connecting routers while at the internetworking layer individual network boundaries are traversed at each router The most prominent component of the Internet model is the Internet Protocol IP IP enables internetworking and in essence establishes the Internet itself Two versions of the Internet Protocol exist IPv4 and IPv6 IP Addresses A DNS resolver consults three name servers to resolve the domain name user visible www wikipedia org to determine the IPv4 Address 207 142 131 234 For locating individual computers on the network the Internet provides IP addresses IP addresses are used by the Internet infrastructure to direct internet packets to their destinations They consist of fixed length numbers which are found within the packet IP addresses are generally assigned to equipment either automatically via DHCP or are configured However the network also supports other addressing systems Users generally enter domain names e g en wikipedia org instead of IP addresses because they are easier to remember they are converted by the Domain Name System DNS into IP addresses which are more efficient for routing purposes IPv4 Internet Protocol version 4 IPv4 defines an IP address as a 32 bit number 69 IPv4 is the initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in dominant use It was designed to address up to 4 3 billion 109 hosts However the explosive growth of the Internet has led to IPv4 address exhaustion which entered its final stage in 2011 70 when the global IPv4 address allocation pool was exhausted IPv6 Because of the growth of the Internet and the depletion of available IPv4 addresses a new version of IP IPv6 was developed in the mid 1990s which provides vastly larger addressing capabilities and more efficient routing of Internet traffic IPv6 uses 128 bits for the IP address and was standardized in 1998 71 72 73 IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid 2000s and is currently in growing deployment around the world since Internet address registries RIRs began to urge all resource managers to plan rapid adoption and conversion 74 IPv6 is not directly interoperable by design with IPv4 In essence it establishes a parallel version of the Internet not directly accessible with IPv4 software Thus translation facilities must exist for internetworking or nodes must have duplicate networking software for both networks Essentially all modern computer operating systems support both versions of the Internet Protocol Network infrastructure however has been lagging in this development Aside from the complex array of physical connections that make up its infrastructure the Internet is facilitated by bi or multi lateral commercial contracts e g peering agreements and by technical specifications or protocols that describe the exchange of data over the network Indeed the Internet is defined by its interconnections and routing policies Subnetwork Creating a subnet by dividing the host identifier A subnetwork or subnet is a logical subdivision of an IP network 75 1 16 The practice of dividing a network into two or more networks is called subnetting Computers that belong to a subnet are addressed with an identical most significant bit group in their IP addresses This results in the logical division of an IP address into two fields the network number or routing prefix and the rest field or host identifier The rest field is an identifier for a specific host or network interface The routing prefix may be expressed in Classless Inter Domain Routing CIDR notation written as the first address of a network followed by a slash character and ending with the bit length of the prefix For example 198 51 100 0 24 is the prefix of the Internet Protocol version 4 network starting at the given address having 24 bits allocated for the network prefix and the remaining 8 bits reserved for host addressing Addresses in the range 198 51 100 0 to 198 51 100 255 belong to this network The IPv6 address specification 2001 db8 32 is a large address block with 296 addresses having a 32 bit routing prefix For IPv4 a network may also be characterized by its subnet mask or netmask which is the bitmask that when applied by a bitwise AND operation to any IP address in the network yields the routing prefix Subnet masks are also expressed in dot decimal notation like an address For example 255 255 255 0 is the subnet mask for the prefix 198 51 100 0 24 Traffic is exchanged between subnetworks through routers when the routing prefixes of the source address and the destination address differ A router serves as a logical or physical boundary between the subnets The benefits of subnetting an existing network vary with each deployment scenario In the address allocation architecture of the Internet using CIDR and in large organizations it is necessary to allocate address space efficiently Subnetting may also enhance routing efficiency or have advantages in network management when subnetworks are administratively controlled by different entities in a larger organization Subnets may be arranged logically in a hierarchical architecture partitioning an organization s network address space into a tree like routing structure Routing Computers and routers use routing tables in their operating system to direct IP packets to reach a node on a different subnetwork Routing tables are maintained by manual configuration or automatically by routing protocols End nodes typically use a default route that points toward an ISP providing transit while ISP routers use the Border Gateway Protocol to establish the most efficient routing across the complex connections of the global Internet The default gateway is the node that serves as the forwarding host router to other networks when no other route specification matches the destination IP address of a packet 76 77 IETF While the hardware components in the Internet infrastructure can often be used to support other software systems it is the design and the standardization process of the software that characterizes the Internet and provides the foundation for its scalability and success The responsibility for the architectural design of the Internet software systems has been assumed by the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF 78 The IETF conducts standard setting work groups open to any individual about the various aspects of Internet architecture The resulting contributions and standards are published as Request for Comments RFC documents on the IETF web site The principal methods of networking that enable the Internet are contained in specially designated RFCs that constitute the Internet Standards Other less rigorous documents are simply informative experimental or historical or document the best current practices BCP when implementing Internet technologies Applications and servicesThe Internet carries many applications and services most prominently the World Wide Web including social media electronic mail mobile applications multiplayer online games Internet telephony file sharing and streaming media services Most servers that provide these services are today hosted in data centers and content is often accessed through high performance content delivery networks World Wide Web Main article World Wide Web This NeXT Computer was used by Tim Berners Lee at CERN and became the world s first Web server The World Wide Web is a global collection of documents images multimedia applications and other resources logically interrelated by hyperlinks and referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers URIs which provide a global system of named references URIs symbolically identify services web servers databases and the documents and resources that they can provide Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP is the main access protocol of the World Wide Web Web services also use HTTP for communication between software systems for information transfer sharing and exchanging business data and logistic and is one of many languages or protocols that can be used for communication on the Internet 79 World Wide Web browser software such as Microsoft s Internet Explorer Edge Mozilla Firefox Opera Apple s Safari and Google Chrome lets users navigate from one web page to another via the hyperlinks embedded in the documents These documents may also contain any combination of computer data including graphics sounds text video multimedia and interactive content that runs while the user is interacting with the page Client side software can include animations games office applications and scientific demonstrations Through keyword driven Internet research using search engines like Yahoo Bing and Google users worldwide have easy instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information Compared to printed media books encyclopedias and traditional libraries the World Wide Web has enabled the decentralization of information on a large scale The Web has enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and information to a potentially large audience online at greatly reduced expense and time delay Publishing a web page a blog or building a website involves little initial cost and many cost free services are available However publishing and maintaining large professional web sites with attractive diverse and up to date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition Many individuals and some companies and groups use web logs or blogs which are largely used as easily updatable online diaries Some commercial organizations encourage staff to communicate advice in their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information and be attracted to the corporation as a result Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative and e commerce which is the sale of products and services directly via the Web continues to grow Online advertising is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers It includes email marketing search engine marketing SEM social media marketing many types of display advertising including web banner advertising and mobile advertising In 2011 Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television 80 19 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation When the Web developed in the 1990s a typical web page was stored in completed form on a web server formatted in HTML complete for transmission to a web browser in response to a request Over time the process of creating and serving web pages has become dynamic creating a flexible design layout and content Websites are often created using content management software with initially very little content Contributors to these systems who may be paid staff members of an organization or the public fill underlying databases with content using editing pages designed for that purpose while casual visitors view and read this content in HTML form There may or may not be editorial approval and security systems built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the target visitors Communication Email is an important communications service available via the Internet The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet 81 82 Pictures documents and other files are sent as email attachments Email messages can be cc ed to multiple email addresses Internet telephony is a common communications service realized with the Internet The name of the principle internetworking protocol the Internet Protocol lends its name to voice over Internet Protocol VoIP The idea began in the early 1990s with walkie talkie like voice applications for personal computers VoIP systems now dominate many markets and are as easy to use and as convenient as a traditional telephone The benefit has been substantial cost savings over traditional telephone calls especially over long distances Cable ADSL and mobile data networks provide Internet access in customer premises 83 and inexpensive VoIP network adapters provide the connection for traditional analog telephone sets The voice quality of VoIP often exceeds that of traditional calls Remaining problems for VoIP include the situation that emergency services may not be universally available and that devices rely on a local power supply while older traditional phones are powered from the local loop and typically operate during a power failure Data transfer File sharing is an example of transferring large amounts of data across the Internet A computer file can be emailed to customers colleagues and friends as an attachment It can be uploaded to a website or File Transfer Protocol FTP server for easy download by others It can be put into a shared location or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of mirror servers or peer to peer networks In any of these cases access to the file may be controlled by user authentication the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands for access to the file The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from for example a credit card whose details are also passed usually fully encrypted across the Internet The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests These simple features of the Internet over a worldwide basis are changing the production sale and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission This includes all manner of print publications software products news music film video photography graphics and the other arts This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products Streaming media is the real time delivery of digital media for the immediate consumption or enjoyment by end users Many radio and television broadcasters provide Internet feeds of their live audio and video productions They may also allow time shift viewing or listening such as Preview Classic Clips and Listen Again features These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet broadcasters who never had on air licenses This means that an Internet connected device such as a computer or something more specific can be used to access online media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver The range of available types of content is much wider from specialized technical webcasts to on demand popular multimedia services Podcasting is a variation on this theme where usually audio material is downloaded and played back on a computer or shifted to a portable media player to be listened to on the move These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody with little censorship or licensing control to broadcast audio visual material worldwide Digital media streaming increases the demand for network bandwidth For example standard image quality needs 1 Mbit s link speed for SD 480p HD 720p quality requires 2 5 Mbit s and the top of the line HDX quality needs 4 5 Mbit s for 1080p 84 Webcams are a low cost extension of this phenomenon While some webcams can give full frame rate video the picture either is usually small or updates slowly Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole ships in the Panama Canal traffic at a local roundabout or monitor their own premises live and in real time Video chat rooms and video conferencing are also popular with many uses being found for personal webcams with and without two way sound YouTube was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading website for free streaming video with more than two billion users 85 It uses an HTML5 based web player by default to stream and show video files 86 Registered users may upload an unlimited amount of video and build their own personal profile YouTube claims that its users watch hundreds of millions and upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily Social impactThe Internet has enabled new forms of social interaction activities and social associations This phenomenon has given rise to the scholarly study of the sociology of the Internet Users See also Global Internet usage English in computing and Languages used on the Internet Share of population using the Internet 87 See or edit source data Internet users per 100 population members and GDP per capita for selected countries Internet users per 100 inhabitantsSource International Telecommunication Union 88 89 From 2000 to 2009 the number of Internet users globally rose from 394 million to 1 858 billion 90 By 2010 22 percent of the world s population had access to computers with 1 billion Google searches every day 300 million Internet users reading blogs and 2 billion videos viewed daily on YouTube 91 In 2014 the world s Internet users surpassed 3 billion or 43 6 percent of world population but two thirds of the users came from richest countries with 78 0 percent of Europe countries population using the Internet followed by 57 4 percent of the Americas 92 However by 2018 Asia alone accounted for 51 of all Internet users with 2 2 billion out of the 4 3 billion Internet users in the world coming from that region The number of China s Internet users surpassed a major milestone in 2018 when the country s Internet regulatory authority China Internet Network Information Centre announced that China had 802 million Internet users 93 By 2019 China was the world s leading country in terms of Internet users with more than 800 million users followed closely by India with some 700 million users with the United States a distant third with 275 million users However in terms of penetration China has when a 38 4 penetration rate compared to India s 40 and the United States s 80 94 As of 2020 it was estimated that 4 5 billion people use the Internet more than half of the world s population 95 96 The prevalent language for communication via the Internet has always been English This may be a result of the origin of the Internet as well as the language s role as a lingua franca and as a world language Early computer systems were limited to the characters in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange ASCII a subset of the Latin alphabet After English 27 the most requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese 25 Spanish 8 Japanese 5 Portuguese and German 4 each Arabic French and Russian 3 each and Korean 2 97 By region 42 of the world s Internet users are based in Asia 24 in Europe 14 in North America 10 in Latin America and the Caribbean taken together 6 in Africa 3 in the Middle East and 1 in Australia Oceania 98 The Internet s technologies have developed enough in recent years especially in the use of Unicode that good facilities are available for development and communication in the world s widely used languages However some glitches such as mojibake incorrect display of some languages characters still remain In an American study in 2005 the percentage of men using the Internet was very slightly ahead of the percentage of women although this difference reversed in those under 30 Men logged on more often spent more time online and were more likely to be broadband users whereas women tended to make more use of opportunities to communicate such as email Men were more likely to use the Internet to pay bills participate in auctions and for recreation such as downloading music and videos Men and women were equally likely to use the Internet for shopping and banking 99 More recent studies indicate that in 2008 women significantly outnumbered men on most social networking services such as Facebook and Myspace although the ratios varied with age 100 In addition women watched more streaming content whereas men downloaded more 101 In terms of blogs men were more likely to blog in the first place among those who blog men were more likely to have a professional blog whereas women were more likely to have a personal blog 102 Splitting by country in 2012 Iceland Norway Sweden the Netherlands and Denmark had the highest Internet penetration by the number of users with 93 or more of the population with access 103 Several neologisms exist that refer to Internet users Netizen as in citizen of the net 104 refers to those actively involved in improving online communities the Internet in general or surrounding political affairs and rights such as free speech 105 106 Internaut refers to operators or technically highly capable users of the Internet 107 108 digital citizen refers to a person using the Internet in order to engage in society politics and government participation 109 Internet users by language 97 Website content languages 110 Usage Internet users in 2015 as a percentage of a country s populationSource International Telecommunication Union 103 Main articles Global digital divide and Digital divide Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012as a percentage of a country s populationSource International Telecommunication Union 111 Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012as a percentage of a country s populationSource International Telecommunication Union 112 The Internet allows greater flexibility in working hours and location especially with the spread of unmetered high speed connections The Internet can be accessed almost anywhere by numerous means including through mobile Internet devices Mobile phones datacards handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet wirelessly Within the limitations imposed by small screens and other limited facilities of such pocket sized devices the services of the Internet including email and the web may be available Service providers may restrict the services offered and mobile data charges may be significantly higher than other access methods Educational material at all levels from pre school to post doctoral is available from websites Examples range from CBeebies through school and high school revision guides and virtual universities to access to top end scholarly literature through the likes of Google Scholar For distance education help with homework and other assignments self guided learning whiling away spare time or just looking up more detail on an interesting fact it has never been easier for people to access educational information at any level from anywhere The Internet in general and the World Wide Web in particular are important enablers of both formal and informal education Further the Internet allows researchers especially those from the social and behavioral sciences to conduct research remotely via virtual laboratories with profound changes in reach and generalizability of findings as well as in communication between scientists and in the publication of results 113 The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas knowledge and skills have made collaborative work dramatically easier with the help of collaborative software Not only can a group cheaply communicate and share ideas but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups more easily to form An example of this is the free software movement which has produced among other things Linux Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice org later forked into LibreOffice Internet chat whether using an IRC chat room an instant messaging system or a social networking service allows colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way while working at their computers during the day Messages can be exchanged even more quickly and conveniently than via email These systems may allow files to be exchanged drawings and images to be shared or voice and video contact between team members Content management systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents simultaneously without accidentally destroying each other s work Business and project teams can share calendars as well as documents and other information Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research software development conference planning political activism and creative writing Social and political collaboration is also becoming more widespread as both Internet access and computer literacy spread The Internet allows computer users to remotely access other computers and information stores easily from any access point Access may be with computer security i e authentication and encryption technologies depending on the requirements This is encouraging new ways of remote work collaboration and information sharing in many industries An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth These accounts could have been created by home working bookkeepers in other remote locations based on information emailed to them from offices all over the world Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet but the cost of private leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice An office worker away from their desk perhaps on the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday can access their emails access their data using cloud computing or open a remote desktop session into their office PC using a secure virtual private network VPN connection on the Internet This can give the worker complete access to all of their normal files and data including email and other applications while away from the office It has been referred to among system administrators as the Virtual Private Nightmare 114 because it extends the secure perimeter of a corporate network into remote locations and its employees homes By late 2010s Internet has been described as the main source of scientific information for the majority of the global North population 115 111 Social networking and entertainment See also Social networking service Social impact Many people use the World Wide Web to access news weather and sports reports to plan and book vacations and to pursue their personal interests People use chat messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals Social networking services such as Facebook have created new ways to socialize and interact Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of information to pages pursue common interests and connect with others It is also possible to find existing acquaintances to allow communication among existing groups of people Sites like LinkedIn foster commercial and business connections YouTube and Flickr specialize in users videos and photographs Social networking services are also widely used by businesses and other organizations to promote their brands to market to their customers and to encourage posts to go viral Black hat social media techniques are also employed by some organizations such as spam accounts and astroturfing A risk for both individuals and organizations writing posts especially public posts on social networking services is that especially foolish or controversial posts occasionally lead to an unexpected and possibly large scale backlash on social media from other Internet users This is also a risk in relation to controversial offline behavior if it is widely made known The nature of this backlash can range widely from counter arguments and public mockery through insults and hate speech to in extreme cases rape and death threats The online disinhibition effect describes the tendency of many individuals to behave more stridently or offensively online than they would in person A significant number of feminist women have been the target of various forms of harassment in response to posts they have made on social media and Twitter in particular has been criticised in the past for not doing enough to aid victims of online abuse 116 For organizations such a backlash can cause overall brand damage especially if reported by the media However this is not always the case as any brand damage in the eyes of people with an opposing opinion to that presented by the organization could sometimes be outweighed by strengthening the brand in the eyes of others Furthermore if an organization or individual gives in to demands that others perceive as wrong headed that can then provoke a counter backlash Some websites such as Reddit have rules forbidding the posting of personal information of individuals also known as doxxing due to concerns about such postings leading to mobs of large numbers of Internet users directing harassment at the specific individuals thereby identified In particular the Reddit rule forbidding the posting of personal information is widely understood to imply that all identifying photos and names must be censored in Facebook screenshots posted to Reddit However the interpretation of this rule in relation to public Twitter posts is less clear and in any case like minded people online have many other ways they can use to direct each other s attention to public social media posts they disagree with Children also face dangers online such as cyberbullying and approaches by sexual predators who sometimes pose as children themselves Children may also encounter material which they may find upsetting or material that their parents consider to be not age appropriate Due to naivety they may also post personal information about themselves online which could put them or their families at risk unless warned not to do so Many parents choose to enable Internet filtering or supervise their children s online activities in an attempt to protect their children from inappropriate material on the Internet The most popular social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter commonly forbid users under the age of 13 However these policies are typically trivial to circumvent by registering an account with a false birth date and a significant number of children aged under 13 join such sites anyway Social networking services for younger children which claim to provide better levels of protection for children also exist 117 The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers and humor related Usenet groups receiving much traffic citation needed Many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos citation needed The Internet pornography and online gambling industries have taken advantage of the World Wide Web Although many governments have attempted to restrict both industries use of the Internet in general this has failed to stop their widespread popularity 118 Another area of leisure activity on the Internet is multiplayer gaming 119 This form of recreation creates communities where people of all ages and origins enjoy the fast paced world of multiplayer games These range from MMORPG to first person shooters from role playing video games to online gambling While online gaming has been around since the 1970s modern modes of online gaming began with subscription services such as GameSpy and MPlayer 120 Non subscribers were limited to certain types of game play or certain games Many people use the Internet to access and download music movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation Free and fee based services exist for all of these activities using centralized servers and distributed peer to peer technologies Some of these sources exercise more care with respect to the original artists copyrights than others Internet usage has been correlated to users loneliness 121 Lonely people tend to use the Internet as an outlet for their feelings and to share their stories with others such as in the I am lonely will anyone speak to me thread A 2017 book claimed that the Internet consolidates most aspects of human endeavor into singular arenas of which all of humanity are potential members and competitors with fundamentally negative impacts on mental health as a result While successes in each field of activity are pervasively visible and trumpeted they are reserved for an extremely thin sliver of the world s most exceptional leaving everyone else behind Whereas before the Internet expectations of success in any field were supported by reasonable probabilities of achievement at the village suburb city or even state level the same expectations in the Internet world are virtually certain to bring disappointment today there is always someone else somewhere on the planet who can do better and take the now one and only top spot 122 Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form which involves highly dispersed small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context and operate in relative secrecy while still linked remotely to a larger network of believers who share a set of practices and texts and often a common devotion to a particular leader Overseas supporters provide funding and support domestic practitioners distribute tracts participate in acts of resistance and share information on the internal situation with outsiders Collectively members and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in the collective study via email online chat rooms and web based message boards 123 In particular the British government has raised concerns about the prospect of young British Muslims being indoctrinated into Islamic extremism by material on the Internet being persuaded to join terrorist groups such as the so called Islamic State and then potentially committing acts of terrorism on returning to Britain after fighting in Syria or Iraq Cyberslacking can become a drain on corporate resources the average UK employee spent 57 minutes a day surfing the Web while at work according to a 2003 study by Peninsula Business Services 124 Internet addiction disorder is excessive computer use that interferes with daily life Nicholas G Carr believes that Internet use has other effects on individuals for instance improving skills of scan reading and interfering with the deep thinking that leads to true creativity 125 Electronic business Electronic business e business encompasses business processes spanning the entire value chain purchasing supply chain management marketing sales customer service and business relationship E commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners According to International Data Corporation the size of worldwide e commerce when global business to business and consumer transactions are combined equate to 16 trillion for 2013 A report by Oxford Economics added those two together to estimate the total size of the digital economy at 20 4 trillion equivalent to roughly 13 8 of global sales 126 While much has been written of the economic advantages of Internet enabled commerce there is also evidence that some aspects of the Internet such as maps and location aware services may serve to reinforce economic inequality and the digital divide 127 Electronic commerce may be responsible for consolidation and the decline of mom and pop brick and mortar businesses resulting in increases in income inequality 128 129 130 Author Andrew Keen a long time critic of the social transformations caused by the Internet has focused on the economic effects of consolidation from Internet businesses Keen cites a 2013 Institute for Local Self Reliance report saying brick and mortar retailers employ 47 people for every 10 million in sales while Amazon employs only 14 Similarly the 700 employee room rental start up Airbnb was valued at 10 billion in 2014 about half as much as Hilton Worldwide which employs 152 000 people At that time Uber employed 1 000 full time employees and was valued at 18 2 billion about the same valuation as Avis Rent a Car and The Hertz Corporation combined which together employed almost 60 000 people 131 Remote work Remote work is facilitated by tools such as groupware virtual private networks conference calling videotelephony and VoIP so that work may be performed from any location most conveniently the worker s home It can be efficient and useful for companies as it allows workers to communicate over long distances saving significant amounts of travel time and cost More workers have adequate bandwidth at home to use these tools to link their home to their corporate intranet and internal communication networks Collaborative publishing Wikis have also been used in the academic community for sharing and dissemination of information across institutional and international boundaries 132 In those settings they have been found useful for collaboration on grant writing strategic planning departmental documentation and committee work 133 The United States Patent and Trademark Office uses a wiki to allow the public to collaborate on finding prior art relevant to examination of pending patent applications Queens New York has used a wiki to allow citizens to collaborate on the design and planning of a local park 134 The English Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis on the World Wide Web 135 and ranks in the top 10 among all Web sites in terms of traffic 136 Politics and political revolutions This section needs expansion with E government You can help by adding to it July 2021 See also Internet censorship Mass surveillance and Social media use in politics Banner in Bangkok during the 2014 Thai coup d etat informing the Thai public that like or share activities on social media could result in imprisonment observed 30 June 2014 The Internet has achieved new relevance as a political tool The presidential campaign of Howard Dean in 2004 in the United States was notable for its success in soliciting donation via the Internet Many political groups use the Internet to achieve a new method of organizing for carrying out their mission having given rise to Internet activism most notably practiced by rebels in the Arab Spring 137 138 The New York Times suggested that social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter helped people organize the political revolutions in Egypt by helping activists organize protests communicate grievances and disseminate information 139 Many have understood the Internet as an extension of the Habermasian notion of the public sphere observing how network communication technologies provide something like a global civic forum However incidents of politically motivated Internet censorship have now been recorded in many countries including western democracies 140 141 Philanthropy The spread of low cost Internet access in developing countries has opened up new possibilities for peer to peer charities which allow individuals to contribute small amounts to charitable projects for other individuals Websites such as DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving allow small scale donors to direct funds to individual projects of their choice A popular twist on Internet based philanthropy is the use of peer to peer lending for charitable purposes Kiva pioneered this concept in 2005 offering the first web based service to publish individual loan profiles for funding Kiva raises funds for local intermediary microfinance organizations that post stories and updates on behalf of the borrowers Lenders can contribute as little as 25 to loans of their choice and receive their money back as borrowers repay Kiva falls short of being a pure peer to peer charity in that loans are disbursed before being funded by lenders and borrowers do not communicate with lenders themselves 142 143 SecurityMain article Internet security Internet resources hardware and software components are the target of criminal or malicious attempts to gain unauthorized control to cause interruptions commit fraud engage in blackmail or access private information Malware Malware is malicious software used and distributed via the Internet It includes computer viruses which are copied with the help of humans computer worms which copy themselves automatically software for denial of service attacks ransomware botnets and spyware that reports on the activity and typing of users Usually these activities constitute cybercrime Defense theorists have also speculated about the possibilities of hackers using cyber warfare using similar methods on a large scale 144 Surveillance Main article Computer and network surveillance See also Signals intelligence and Mass surveillance The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the Internet 145 In the United States for example under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic emails web traffic instant messaging etc are required to be available for unimpeded real time monitoring by Federal law enforcement agencies 146 147 148 Packet capture is the monitoring of data traffic on a computer network Computers communicate over the Internet by breaking up messages emails images videos web pages files etc into small chunks called packets which are routed through a network of computers until they reach their destination where they are assembled back into a complete message again Packet Capture Appliance intercepts these packets as they are traveling through the network in order to examine their contents using other programs A packet capture is an information gathering tool but not an analysis tool That is it gathers messages but it does not analyze them and figure out what they mean Other programs are needed to perform traffic analysis and sift through intercepted data looking for important useful information Under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act all U S telecommunications providers are required to install packet sniffing technology to allow Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to intercept all of their customers broadband Internet and VoIP traffic 149 The large amount of data gathered from packet capturing requires surveillance software that filters and reports relevant information such as the use of certain words or phrases the access of certain types of web sites or communicating via email or chat with certain parties 150 Agencies such as the Information Awareness Office NSA GCHQ and the FBI spend billions of dollars per year to develop purchase implement and operate systems for interception and analysis of data 151 Similar systems are operated by Iranian secret police to identify and suppress dissidents The required hardware and software was allegedly installed by German Siemens AG and Finnish Nokia 152 Censorship Main articles Internet censorship and Internet freedom See also Culture of fear and Great Firewall Internet censorship and surveillance by country 2018 153 154 155 156 157 Pervasive Substantial Selective Little or none Unclassified No data Some governments such as those of Burma Iran North Korea Mainland China Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates restrict access to content on the Internet within their territories especially to political and religious content with domain name and keyword filters 158 In Norway Denmark Finland and Sweden major Internet service providers have voluntarily agreed to restrict access to sites listed by authorities While this list of forbidden resources is supposed to contain only known child pornography sites the content of the list is secret 159 Many countries including the United States have enacted laws against the possession or distribution of certain material such as child pornography via the Internet but do not mandate filter software Many free or commercially available software programs called content control software are available to users to block offensive websites on individual computers or networks in order to limit access by children to pornographic material or depiction of violence PerformanceAs the Internet is a heterogeneous network the physical characteristics including for example the data transfer rates of connections vary widely It exhibits emergent phenomena that depend on its large scale organization 160 Traffic volume Global Internet Traffic The volume of Internet traffic is difficult to measure because no single point of measurement exists in the multi tiered non hierarchical topology Traffic data may be estimated from the aggregate volume through the peering points of the Tier 1 network providers but traffic that stays local in large provider networks may not be accounted for Outages An Internet blackout or outage can be caused by local signalling interruptions Disruptions of submarine communications cables may cause blackouts or slowdowns to large areas such as in the 2008 submarine cable disruption Less developed countries are more vulnerable due to a small number of high capacity links Land cables are also vulnerable as in 2011 when a woman digging for scrap metal severed most connectivity for the nation of Armenia 161 Internet blackouts affecting almost entire countries can be achieved by governments as a form of Internet censorship as in the blockage of the Internet in Egypt whereby approximately 93 162 of networks were without access in 2011 in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti government protests 163 Energy use Estimates of the Internet s electricity usage have been the subject of controversy according to a 2014 peer reviewed research paper that found claims differing by a factor of 20 000 published in the literature during the preceding decade ranging from 0 0064 kilowatt hours per gigabyte transferred kWh GB to 136 kWh GB 164 The researchers attributed these discrepancies mainly to the year of reference i e whether efficiency gains over time had been taken into account and to whether end devices such as personal computers and servers are included in the analysis 164 In 2011 academic researchers estimated the overall energy used by the Internet to be between 170 and 307 GW less than two percent of the energy used by humanity This estimate included the energy needed to build operate and periodically replace the estimated 750 million laptops a billion smart phones and 100 million servers worldwide as well as the energy that routers cell towers optical switches Wi Fi transmitters and cloud storage devices use when transmitting Internet traffic 165 166 According to a non peer reviewed study published in 2018 by The Shift Project a French think tank funded by corporate sponsors nearly 4 of global CO2 emissions could be attributed to global data transfer and the necessary infrastructure 167 The study also said that online video streaming alone accounted for 60 of this data transfer and therefore contributed to over 300 million tons of CO2 emission per year and argued for new digital sobriety regulations restricting the use and size of video files 168 See also Internet portal World portalCrowdfunding Crowdsourcing Darknet Deep web Freenet Internet industry jargon Index of Internet related articles Internet metaphors Internet video Internets Open Systems Interconnection Outline of the InternetNotes See Capitalization of Internet Despite the name TCP IP also includes UDP traffic which is significant 1 References Amogh Dhamdhere Internet Traffic Characterization Retrieved 6 May 2022 a b A Flaw in the Design The Washington Post 30 May 2015 Archived from the original on 8 November 2020 Retrieved 20 February 2020 The Internet was born of a big idea Messages could be chopped into chunks sent through a network in a series of transmissions then reassembled by destination computers quickly and efficiently Historians credit seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W Davies and American engineer Paul Baran The most important institutional force was the Pentagon s Advanced Research Projects Agency ARPA as ARPA began work on a groundbreaking computer network the agency recruited scientists affiliated with the nation s top universities Stewart Bill January 2000 Internet History One Page Summary The Living Internet Archived from the original on 2 July 2014 3 1982 the ARPANET community grows in 40 maps that explain the internet Archived 6 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine Timothy B Lee Vox Conversations 2 June 2014 Retrieved 27 June 2014 Strickland Jonathan 3 March 2008 How Stuff Works Who owns the Internet Archived from the original on 19 June 2014 Retrieved 27 June 2014 Hoffman P Harris S September 2006 The Tao of IETF A Novice s Guide to Internet Engineering Task Force IETF doi 10 17487 RFC4677 RFC 4677 New Seven Wonders panel USA Today 27 October 2006 Archived from the original on 15 July 2010 Retrieved 31 July 2010 Internetted Oxford English Dictionary Online ed Oxford University Press Subscription or participating institution membership required nineteenth century use as an adjective a b Cerf Vint Dalal Yogen Sunshine Carl December 1974 Specification of Internet Transmission Control Protocol IETF doi 10 17487 RFC0675 RFC 675 a b c d Corbett Philip B 1 June 2016 It s Official The Internet Is Over The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Archived from the original on 14 October 2020 Retrieved 29 August 2020 a b Herring Susan C 19 October 2015 Should You Be Capitalizing the Word Internet Wired ISSN 1059 1028 Archived from the original on 31 October 2020 Retrieved 29 August 2020 Coren Michael J 2 June 2016 One of the internet s inventors thinks it should still be capitalized Quartz Archived from the original on 27 September 2020 Retrieved 8 September 2020 World Wide Web Timeline Pews Research Center 11 March 2014 Archived from the original on 29 July 2015 Retrieved 1 August 2015 HTML 4 01 Specification World Wide Web Consortium Archived from the original on 6 October 2008 Retrieved 13 August 2008 T he link or hyperlink or Web link is the basic hypertext construct A link is a connection from one Web resource to another Although a simple concept the link has been one of the primary forces driving the success of the Web Hauben Michael Hauben Ronda 1997 5 The Vision of Interactive Computing And the Future Netizens On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet PDF Wiley ISBN 978 0 8186 7706 9 Archived PDF from the original on 3 January 2021 Retrieved 2 March 2020 Zelnick Bob Zelnick Eva 1 September 2013 The Illusion of Net Neutrality Political Alarmism Regulatory Creep and the Real Threat to Internet Freedom Hoover Press ISBN 978 0 8179 1596 4 Archived from the original on 10 January 2021 Retrieved 7 May 2020 Peter Ian 2004 So who really did invent the Internet The Internet History Project Archived from the original on 3 September 2011 Retrieved 27 June 2014 Inductee Details Paul Baran National Inventors Hall of Fame Archived from the original on 6 September 2017 Retrieved 6 September 2017 Inductee Details Donald Watts Davies National Inventors Hall of Fame Archived from the original on 6 September 2017 Retrieved 6 September 2017 Kim Byung Keun 2005 Internationalising the Internet the Co evolution of Influence and Technology Edward Elgar pp 51 55 ISBN 978 1 84542 675 0 Gromov Gregory 1995 Roads and Crossroads of Internet History Archived from the original on 27 January 2016 Hafner Katie 1998 Where Wizards Stay Up Late The Origins of the Internet Simon amp Schuster ISBN 978 0 684 83267 8 Hauben Ronda 2001 From the ARPANET to the Internet Archived from the original on 21 July 2009 Retrieved 28 May 2009 Internet Pioneers Discuss the Future of Money Books and Paper in 1972 Paleofuture 23 July 2013 Archived from the original on 17 October 2020 Retrieved 31 August 2020 Townsend Anthony 2001 The Internet and the Rise of the New Network Cities 1969 1999 Environment and Planning B Planning and Design 28 1 39 58 doi 10 1068 b2688 ISSN 0265 8135 S2CID 11574572 NORSAR and the Internet NORSAR Archived from the original on 21 January 2013 Kirstein P T 1999 Early experiences with the Arpanet and Internet in the United Kingdom PDF IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 21 1 38 44 doi 10 1109 85 759368 ISSN 1934 1547 S2CID 1558618 Archived from the original PDF on 7 February 2020 Leiner Barry M Brief History of the Internet The Initial Internetting Concepts Internet Society Archived from the original on 9 April 2016 Retrieved 27 June 2014 Cerf V Kahn R 1974 A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication PDF IEEE Transactions on Communications 22 5 637 648 doi 10 1109 TCOM 1974 1092259 ISSN 1558 0857 Archived PDF from the original on 13 September 2006 The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols especially R Metcalfe R Scantlebury D Walden and H Zimmerman D Davies and L Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues and S Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations Leiner Barry M Cerf Vinton G Clark David D Kahn Robert E Kleinrock Leonard Lynch Daniel C Postel Jon Roberts Larry G Wolff Stephen 2003 A Brief History of Internet Internet Society p 1011 arXiv cs 9901011 Bibcode 1999cs 1011L Archived from the original on 4 June 2007 Retrieved 28 May 2009 The internet s fifth man The Economist 30 November 2013 ISSN 0013 0613 Archived from the original on 19 April 2020 Retrieved 22 April 2020 In the early 1970s Mr Pouzin created an innovative data network that linked locations in France Italy and Britain Its simplicity and efficiency pointed the way to a network that could connect not just dozens of machines but millions of them It captured the imagination of Dr Cerf and Dr Kahn who included aspects of its design in the protocols that now power the internet Schatt Stan 1991 Linking LANs A Micro Manager s Guide McGraw Hill p 200 ISBN 0 8306 3755 9 Frazer Karen D 1995 NSFNET A Partnership for High Speed Networking Final Report 1987 1995 PDF Merit Network Inc Archived from the original PDF on 10 February 2015 Ben Segal 1995 A Short History of Internet Protocols at CERN Archived from the original on 19 June 2020 Retrieved 14 October 2011 Reseaux IP Europeens RIPE Internet History in Asia 16th APAN Meetings Advanced Network Conference in Busan Archived from the original on 1 February 2006 Retrieved 25 December 2005 The History of NORDUnet PDF Archived from the original PDF on 4 March 2016 Clarke Roger Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia Archived from the original on 9 February 2021 Retrieved 21 January 2014 Zakon Robert November 1997 RFC 2235 IETF p 8 doi 10 17487 RFC2235 Retrieved 2 December 2020 Inc InfoWorld Media Group 25 September 1989 InfoWorld Archived from the original on 29 January 2017 via Google Books INTERNET MONTHLY REPORTS February 1990 Archived from the original on 25 May 2017 Retrieved 28 November 2020 Berners Lee Tim The Original HTTP as defined in 1991 W3C org Archived from the original on 5 June 1997 The website of the world s first ever web server info cern ch Archived from the original on 5 January 2010 Stanford Federal Credit Union Pioneers Online Financial Services Press release 21 June 1995 Archived from the original on 21 December 2018 Retrieved 21 December 2018 History About us OP Group Archived from the original on 21 December 2018 Retrieved 21 December 2018 Harris Susan R Gerich Elise April 1996 Retiring the NSFNET Backbone Service Chronicling the End of an Era ConneXions 10 4 Archived from the original on 17 August 2013 Measuring digital development Facts and figures 2021 Telecommunication Development Bureau International Telecommunication Union ITU Retrieved 16 November 2022 Total Midyear Population for the World 1950 2050 International Programs Center for Demographic and Economic Studies U S Census Bureau Archived from the original on 17 April 2017 Retrieved 28 February 2020 Jindal R P 2009 From millibits to terabits per second and beyond Over 60 years of innovation 2009 2nd International Workshop on Electron Devices and Semiconductor Technology 1 6 doi 10 1109 EDST 2009 5166093 ISBN 978 1 4244 3831 0 S2CID 25112828 Archived from the original on 23 August 2019 Retrieved 24 August 2019 Ward Mark 3 August 2006 How the web went world wide Technology Correspondent BBC News Archived from the original on 21 November 2011 Retrieved 24 January 2011 Brazil Russia India and China to Lead Internet Growth Through 2011 Clickz com Archived from the original on 4 October 2008 Retrieved 28 May 2009 Coffman K G Odlyzko A M 2 October 1998 The size and growth rate of the Internet PDF AT amp T Labs Archived from the original PDF on 14 June 2007 Retrieved 21 May 2007 Comer Douglas 2006 The Internet book Prentice Hall p 64 ISBN 978 0 13 233553 9 World Internet Users and Population Stats Internet World Stats Miniwatts Marketing Group 22 June 2011 Archived from the original on 23 June 2011 Retrieved 23 June 2011 Hilbert Martin Lopez Priscila April 2011 The World s Technological Capacity to Store Communicate and Compute Information Science 332 6025 60 65 Bibcode 2011Sci 332 60H doi 10 1126 science 1200970 PMID 21310967 S2CID 206531385 Archived PDF from the original on 31 May 2011 Klein Hans 2004 ICANN and Non Territorial Sovereignty Government Without the Nation State Internet and Public Policy Project Georgia Institute of Technology Archived from the original on 24 May 2013 Packard Ashley 2010 Digital Media Law Wiley Blackwell p 65 ISBN 978 1 4051 8169 3 McCarthy Kieren 1 July 2005 Bush administration annexes internet The Register Archived from the original on 19 September 2011 Mueller Milton L 2010 Networks and States The Global Politics of Internet Governance MIT Press p 61 ISBN 978 0 262 01459 5 ICG Applauds Transfer of IANA Stewardship IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group ICG Archived from the original on 12 July 2017 Retrieved 8 June 2017 Internet Society ISOC All About The Internet History of the Internet ISOC Archived from the original on 27 November 2011 Retrieved 19 December 2013 Pasternak Sean B 7 March 2006 Toronto Hydro to Install Wireless Network in Downtown Toronto Bloomberg Archived from the original on 10 April 2006 Retrieved 8 August 2011 Mobile and Tablet Internet Usage Exceeds Desktop for First Time Worldwide StatCounter Global Stats Press Release 1 November 2016 Archived from the original on 1 November 2016 StatCounter Global Stats finds that mobile and tablet devices accounted for 51 3 of Internet usage worldwide in October compared to 48 7 by desktop World Telecommunication ICT Indicators Database 2020 24th Edition July 2020 International Telecommunication Union ITU 2017a Archived from the original on 21 April 2019 Key ICT indicators for developed and developing countries and the world totals and penetration rates World Telecommunication ICT Indicators database a b World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Global Report 2017 2018 PDF UNESCO 2018 Archived PDF from the original on 20 September 2018 Retrieved 29 May 2018 a b GSMA The Mobile Economy 2019 The Mobile Economy 11 March 2019 Archived from the original on 11 March 2019 Retrieved 28 November 2020 Galpaya Helani 12 April 2019 Zero rating in Emerging Economies PDF Global Commission on Internet Governance Archived PDF from the original on 12 April 2019 Retrieved 28 November 2020 Alliance for Affordable Internet A4AI 2015 Models of Mobile Data Services in Developing Countries Research brief The Impacts of Emerging Mobile Data Services in Developing Countries dead link Alison GillwAld ChenAi ChAir Ariel Futter KweKu KorAntenG FolA oduFuwA John wAlubenGo 12 September 2016 Much Ado About Nothing Zero Rating in the African Context PDF Researchictafrica Archived PDF from the original on 16 December 2020 Retrieved 28 November 2020 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link a b J Postel ed September 1981 Internet Protocol DARPA Internet Program Protocol Specification IETF doi 10 17487 RFC0791 RFC 791 Updated by RFC 1349 2474 6864 Huston Geoff IPv4 Address Report daily generated Archived from the original on 1 April 2009 Retrieved 20 May 2009 S Deering R Hinden December 1995 Internet Protocol Version 6 IPv6 Specification Network Working Group doi 10 17487 RFC1883 RFC 1883 S Deering R Hinden December 1998 Internet Protocol Version 6 IPv6 Specification Network Working Group doi 10 17487 RFC2460 RFC 2460 S Deering R Hinden July 2017 Internet Protocol Version 6 IPv6 Specification IETF doi 10 17487 RFC8200 RFC 8200 Notice of Internet Protocol version 4 IPv4 Address Depletion PDF Archived from the original PDF on 7 January 2010 Retrieved 7 August 2009 Jeffrey Mogul Jon Postel August 1985 Internet Standard Subnetting Procedure IETF doi 10 17487 RFC0950 RFC 950 Updated by RFC 6918 Fisher Tim How to Find Your Default Gateway IP Address Lifewire Archived from the original on 25 February 2019 Retrieved 25 February 2019 Default Gateway techopedia com Archived from the original on 26 October 2020 IETF Home Page Ietf org Archived from the original on 18 June 2009 Retrieved 20 June 2009 The Difference Between the Internet and the World Wide Web Webopedia com QuinStreet Inc 24 June 2010 Archived from the original on 2 May 2014 Retrieved 1 May 2014 IAB Internet advertising revenue report 2012 full year results PDF PricewaterhouseCoopers Internet Advertising Bureau April 2013 Archived from the original PDF on 4 October 2014 Retrieved 12 June 2013 Brown Ron 26 October 1972 Fax invades the mail market New Scientist 56 817 218 221 Luckett Herbert P March 1973 What s News Electronic mail delivery gets started Popular Science 202 3 85 Booth C 2010 Chapter 2 IP Phones Software VoIP and Integrated and Mobile VoIP Library Technology Reports 46 5 11 19 Morrison Geoff 18 November 2010 What to know before buying a connected TV Technology amp science Tech and gadgets Tech Holiday Guide NBC News Archived from the original on 12 February 2020 Retrieved 8 August 2011 Press YouTube www youtube com Archived from the original on 11 November 2017 Retrieved 19 August 2020 YouTube now defaults to HTML5 lt video gt YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog Archived from the original on 10 September 2018 Retrieved 10 September 2018 Ritchie Hannah Roser Max 2 October 2017 Technology Adoption Our World in Data Archived from the original on 12 October 2019 Retrieved 12 October 2019 Individuals using the Internet 2005 to 2014 Archived 28 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine Key ICT indicators for developed and developing countries and the world totals and penetration rates International Telecommunication Union ITU Retrieved 25 May 2015 Internet users per 100 inhabitants 1997 to 2007 Archived 17 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine ICT Data and Statistics IDS International Telecommunication Union ITU Retrieved 25 May 2015 Internet users graphs Archived 9 May 2020 at the Wayback Machine Market Information and Statistics International Telecommunication Union Google Earth demonstrates how technology benefits RI s civil society govt Antara News 26 May 2011 Archived from the original on 29 October 2012 Retrieved 19 November 2012 Steve Dent There are now 3 billion Internet users mostly in rich countries Archived from the original on 28 November 2014 Retrieved 25 November 2014 Statistical Report on Internet Development in China PDF Cnnic com January 2018 Archived PDF from the original on 12 April 2019 World Internet Users Statistics and 2019 World Population Stats internetworldstats com Archived from the original on 24 November 2017 Retrieved 17 March 2019 Digital 2020 3 8 billion people use social media 30 January 2020 Archived from the original on 17 April 2020 Retrieved 25 April 2020 Internet Encyclopaedia Britannica Archived from the original on 21 March 2021 Retrieved 19 March 2021 a b Number of Internet Users by Language Internet World Stats Miniwatts Marketing Group 31 May 2011 Archived from the original on 26 April 2012 Retrieved 22 April 2012 World Internet Usage Statistics News and Population Stats 30 June 2010 Archived from the original on 19 March 2017 Retrieved 20 February 2011 How men and women use the Internet Pew Research Center 28 December 2005 Rapleaf Study on Social Network Users Archived from the original on 20 March 2009 Women Ahead of Men in Online Tv Dvr Games And Social Media Entrepreneur com 1 May 2008 Archived from the original on 16 September 2008 Retrieved 8 August 2011 Technorati s State of the Blogosphere Technorati Archived from the original on 2 October 2009 Retrieved 8 August 2011 a b Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000 2012 Archived 9 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine International Telecommunication Union Geneva June 2013 Retrieved 22 June 2013 Seese Michael 2009 Scrappy Information Security p 130 ISBN 978 1 60005 132 6 Archived from the original on 5 September 2017 Retrieved 5 June 2015 netizen Archived 21 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine Dictionary com Hauben Michael The Net and Netizens Columbia University Archived from the original on 4 June 2011 A Brief History of the Internet the Internet Society Archived from the original on 4 June 2007 Oxford Dictionaries internaut oxforddictionaries com Archived from the original on 13 June 2015 Retrieved 6 June 2015 Mossberger Karen Tolbert Caroline J McNeal Ramona S 23 November 2011 Digital Citizenship The Internet Society and Participation ISBN 978 0 8194 5606 9 Usage of content languages for websites W3Techs com Archived from the original on 31 March 2012 Retrieved 26 April 2013 Fixed wired broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012 Archived 26 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine Dynamic Report ITU ITC EYE International Telecommunication Union Retrieved 29 June 2013 Active mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants 2012 Archived 26 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine Dynamic Report ITU ITC EYE International Telecommunication Union Retrieved 29 June 2013 Reips U D 2008 How Internet mediated research changes science Psychological aspects of cyberspace Theory research applications Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 268 294 ISBN 9780521694643 Archived from the original on 9 August 2014 The Virtual Private Nightmare VPN Librenix 4 August 2004 Archived from the original on 15 May 2011 Retrieved 21 July 2010 Dariusz Jemielniak Aleksandra Przegalinska 18 February 2020 Collaborative Society MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 35645 9 Archived from the original on 23 November 2020 Retrieved 26 November 2020 Moore Keith 27 July 2013 Twitter report abuse button calls after rape threats BBC News Archived from the original on 4 September 2014 Retrieved 7 December 2014 Kessler Sarah 11 October 2010 5 Fun and Safe Social Networks for Children Mashable Archived from the original on 20 December 2014 Retrieved 7 December 2014 Goldman Russell 22 January 2008 Do It Yourself Amateur Porn Stars Make Bank ABC News Archived from the original on 30 December 2011 Spohn Dave 15 December 2009 Top Online Game Trends of the Decade About com Archived from the original on 29 September 2011 Spohn Dave 2 June 2011 Internet Game Timeline 1963 2004 About com Archived from the original on 25 April 2006 Carole Hughes Boston College The Relationship Between Internet Use and Loneliness Among College Students Boston College Archived from the original on 7 November 2015 Retrieved 11 August 2011 Barker Eric 2017 Barking Up the Wrong Tree HarperCollins pp 235 6 ISBN 9780062416049 Thornton Patricia M 2003 The New Cybersects Resistance and Repression in the Reform era In Perry Elizabeth Selden Mark eds Chinese Society Change Conflict and Resistance 2 ed London and New York Routledge pp 149 150 ISBN 9780415560740 Net abuse hits small city firms The Scotsman Edinburgh 11 September 2003 Archived from the original on 20 October 2012 Retrieved 7 August 2009 Carr Nicholas G 7 June 2010 The Shallows What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains W W Norton p 276 ISBN 978 0393072228 The New Digital Economy How it will transform business PDF Oxford Economics 2 July 2011 Archived from the original PDF on 6 July 2014 Badger Emily 6 February 2013 How the Internet Reinforces Inequality in the Real World The Atlantic Archived from the original on 11 February 2013 Retrieved 13 February 2013 E commerce will make the shopping mall a retail wasteland ZDNet 17 January 2013 Archived from the original on 19 February 2013 Free Shipping Day Promotion Spurs Late Season Online Spending Surge Improving Season to Date Growth Rate to 16 Percent vs Year Ago Comscore 23 December 2012 Archived from the original on 28 January 2013 The Death of the American Shopping Mall The Atlantic Cities 26 December 2012 Archived from the original on 15 February 2013 Harris Michael 2 January 2015 Book review The Internet Is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen The Washington Post Archived from the original on 20 January 2015 Retrieved 25 January 2015 MM Wanderley D Birnbaum J Malloch 2006 New Interfaces For Musical Expression IRCAM Centre Pompidou p 180 ISBN 978 2 84426 314 8 Nancy T Lombardo June 2008 Putting Wikis to Work in Libraries Medical Reference Services Quarterly 27 2 129 145 doi 10 1080 02763860802114223 PMID 18844087 S2CID 11552140 Noveck Beth Simone March 2007 Wikipedia and the Future of Legal Education Journal of Legal Education 57 1 Archived from the original on 3 July 2014 subscription required WikiStats by S23 S23Wiki 3 April 2008 Archived from the original on 25 August 2014 Retrieved 7 April 2007 Alexa Web Search Top 500 Alexa Internet Archived from the original on 2 March 2015 Retrieved 2 March 2015 The Arab Uprising s Cascading Effects Miller mccune com 23 February 2011 Archived from the original on 27 February 2011 Retrieved 27 February 2011 The Role of the Internet in Democratic Transition Case Study of the Arab Spring PDF 5 July 2012 Archived from the original PDF on 5 July 2012 Davit Chokoshvili Master s Thesis June 2011 Kirkpatrick David D 9 February 2011 Wired and Shrewd Young Egyptians Guide Revolt The New York Times Archived from the original on 29 January 2017 Ronald Deibert John Palfrey Rafal Rohozinski Jonathan Zittrain 25 January 2008 Access Denied The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 29072 2 Larry Diamond Marc F Plattner 30 July 2012 Liberation Technology Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy JHU Press ISBN 978 1 4214 0568 1 Roodman David 2 October 2009 Kiva Is Not Quite What It Seems Center for Global Development Archived from the original on 10 February 2010 Retrieved 16 January 2010 Strom Stephanie 9 November 2009 Confusion on Where Money Lent via Kiva Goes The New York Times p 6 Archived from the original on 29 January 2017 Andriole Steve Cyberwarfare Will Explode In 2020 Because It s Cheap Easy And Effective Forbes Retrieved 18 May 2021 Diffie Whitfield Susan Landau August 2008 Internet Eavesdropping A Brave New World of Wiretapping Scientific American Archived from the original on 13 November 2008 Retrieved 13 March 2009 CALEA Archive Electronic Frontier Foundation website Archived from the original on 25 October 2008 Retrieved 14 March 2009 CALEA The Perils of Wiretapping the Internet Electronic Frontier Foundation website Archived from the original on 16 March 2009 Retrieved 14 March 2009 CALEA Frequently Asked Questions Electronic Frontier Foundation website 20 September 2007 Archived from the original on 1 May 2009 Retrieved 14 March 2009 American Council on Education vs FCC Decision United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit PDF 9 June 2006 Archived from the original PDF on 7 September 2012 Retrieved 8 September 2013 Hill Michael 11 October 2004 Government funds chat room surveillance research USA Today Associated Press Archived from the original on 11 May 2010 Retrieved 19 March 2009 McCullagh Declan 30 January 2007 FBI turns to broad new wiretap method ZDNet News Archived from the original on 7 April 2010 Retrieved 13 March 2009 First round in Internet war goes to Iranian intelligence Debkafile 28 June 2009 Archived from the original on 21 December 2013 Freedom on the Net 2018 PDF Freedom House November 2018 Archived from the original PDF on 1 November 2018 Retrieved 1 November 2018 OpenNet Initiative Summarized global Internet filtering data spreadsheet Archived 10 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine 8 November 2011 and Country Profiles Archived 26 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine the OpenNet Initiative is a collaborative partnership of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs University of Toronto the Berkman Center for Internet amp Society at Harvard University and the SecDev Group Ottawa Due to legal concerns the OpenNet Initiative does not check for filtering of child pornography and because their classifications focus on technical filtering they do not include other types of censorship Enemies of the Internet 2014 Entities at the heart of censorship and surveillance Reporters Without Borders Paris 11 March 2014 Archived from the original on 12 March 2014 Internet Enemies PDF Reporters Without Borders Paris 12 March 2012 Archived from the original PDF on 3 July 2017 Deibert Ronald J Palfrey John G Rohozinski Rafal Zittrain Jonathan April 2010 Access Controlled The Shaping of Power Rights and Rule in Cyberspace MIT Press ISBN 9780262514354 Archived from the original on 4 June 2011 Finland censors anti censorship site The Register 18 February 2008 Archived from the original on 20 February 2008 Retrieved 19 February 2008 Albert Reka Jeong Hawoong Barabasi Albert Laszlo 9 September 1999 Diameter of the World Wide Web Nature 401 6749 130 131 arXiv cond mat 9907038 Bibcode 1999Natur 401 130A doi 10 1038 43601 S2CID 4419938 Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia The Guardian 6 April 2011 Archived from the original on 25 August 2013 Retrieved 11 April 2012 Cowie James Egypt Leaves the Internet Renesys Archived from the original on 28 January 2011 Retrieved 28 January 2011 Egypt severs internet connection amid growing unrest BBC News 28 January 2011 Archived from the original on 23 January 2012 a b Coroama Vlad C Hilty Lorenz M February 2014 Assessing Internet energy intensity A review of methods and results PDF Environmental Impact Assessment Review 45 63 68 doi 10 1016 j eiar 2013 12 004 Archived PDF from the original on 23 September 2020 Retrieved 9 March 2020 Giles Jim 26 October 2011 Internet responsible for 2 per cent of global energy usage New Scientist Archived from the original on 1 October 2014 Raghavan Barath Ma Justin 14 November 2011 The Energy and Emergy of the Internet PDF Proceedings of the 10th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks Cambridge MA ACM SIGCOMM 1 6 doi 10 1145 2070562 2070571 ISBN 9781450310598 S2CID 6125953 Archived from the original PDF on 10 August 2014 Cwienk Jeannette 11 July 2019 Is Netflix bad for the environment How streaming video contributes to climate change DW 11 07 2019 Deutsche Welle Archived from the original on 12 July 2019 Retrieved 19 July 2019 Climate crisis The Unsustainable Use of Online Video Our new report The Shift Project 10 July 2019 Archived from the original on 21 July 2019 Retrieved 19 July 2019 Sources This article incorporates text from a free content work Text taken from World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Global Report 2017 2018 202 UNESCO To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles please see this how to page For information on reusing text from Wikipedia please see the terms of use Further readingFirst Monday a peer reviewed journal on the Internet by the University Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago ISSN 1396 0466 The Internet Explained Vincent Zegna amp Mike Pepper Sonet Digital November 2005 pp 1 7 Abram Cleo 8 January 2020 How Does the Internet Work YouTube Vox Media Archived from the original on 27 October 2021 Retrieved 30 August 2020 Castells Manuel 2010 The Rise of the Network Society Wiley ISBN 9781405196864 External linksInternet at Wikipedia s sister projects Definitions from Wiktionary Media from Commons News from Wikinews Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource Textbooks from Wikibooks Resources from Wikiversity The Internet Society Living Internet Internet history and related information including information from many creators of the Internet Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Internet amp oldid 1132451472, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.