Internet and World Wide Web - Term Paper Example

Internet and World Wide Web Introduction People from the late forties have been looking for a system of universal information database. The World Wide Web made such system possible where user of one computer can easily access information stored in the others through the worldwide network. The World Wide Web is based on the principle of universal readership according to which if information is available to a single individual it will be available to all. Internet and World Wide Web are two terms that are often used by many individuals interchangeably but in reality, the fact is that the two words though in similar use are not synonymous. They are related but conceptually and essentially might be differentiated. Internet is a massive infrastructure of networks, which might be popularized as the network of networks. Millions of computers are globally connected and communicate with each other through Internet. It forms a network in which any number of computers can communicate with each other as long as they remain connected through the Internet. The variety of languages through which information is transformed in Internet is called protocols. There is no single owner of the Internet. A single firm or an organization does not control it entirely. Internet is rather a virtual framework than a physical entity that relies on the physical infrastructure connecting one network to the other. Different organizations, schools, Governments, private individual citizens, service providers, and corporations build their individual infrastructure. There are some organizations like the National Science Foundation, the Internet engineering task force, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Internet Network Information Centre (InterNIC) and the Internet architecture Board, who oversee and standardize the happenings on the Internet. They also assign IP address and domain names to the networks (Who Owns the Internet? 2010) The way of accessing information over the Internet is on the other hand called the World Wide Web or simply Web. The World Wide Web is more of an information-sharing model that is generally built on the top of the Internet. The one and only language used to transmit data through the Internet by the web is the HTTP protocol. The web is used to share information by the web service-using HTTP in allowing the applications to communicate for exchanging business logic. Documents are accessed on the Web utilizing different applications called web browsers like the Internet Explorer, Firefox, or the Google Chrome, which make the access to the World Wide Web much easy. The web documents linked with each other through hyperlinks containing graphics, sounds, texts and videos are called the Web Pages. The web supports specially formatted documents that are done in the mark up language called the Hyper Text Markup Language. This language helps in supporting the links to the other documents, graphics, and audio and video files. It means that jump over from one document to the other can be easily done by simple clicking on the Hot Spots. The World Wide Web is so designed as to allow an easy navigation using ‘graphical user interfaces’ and hypertext links that connect different addresses. (Boswell, 2004) Thus, the Web is only one of the many ways through which dissemination of information can be done over the Internet. Emails relying on Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, the Usenet news groups, Instant Messaging, and File Transfer protocol are the other different functions for which the Internet is used. Therefore, the World Wide Web is a subset of the Internet and the fact that the two words are not being synonymous might be perceived therefore. The two works together with the Internet providing the underlying structure and the Web offering contents, documents, and multimedia using that underlying structure. (The Difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web, 2010) To summarize the difference between Internet and the World Wide Web it can be said that Internet refers to the hardware connections that consist of all devices like computer, cables, routers, switches, and repeaters etc. It is the name that is collectively given to all global networking devises. The World Wide Web on the other hand is commonly named for the HTTP that is nothing but a single protocol running on the Internet. Thus, there are many other devices that run on the Internet other than the HTTP and hence WWW and Internet are not in any way synonymous. A computer scientist of England named Timothy Berners Lee in the year 1989 first developed the World Wide Web. The main need was to share the information with teams of researchers of European laboratory for Particle Physics, which was internationally existent. It was mainly created for easy sharing of the data related to the physics research; link those with other data and a uniform presentation of the same. The laboratory formerly known as CERN was located near Geneva in Switzerland. The laboratory soon became the platforms for the developments of related software. There was a considerable increase in the number of the computers linked with each other and the users in order to support variety of operations that also includes marketplaces offering large business. A consortium of the World Wide Web was set up in the Massachusetts Institute of technology, located in Cambridge that guided the further development of the World Wide Web (World Wide Web, 2006). After the invention setting up a successful communication between the web browser and the server through the Internet required almost two years. Many researchers from different parts of the world used to travel to CERN in order to perform their own experiments and for that, there was the need of carrying their own computers with them always to interpret the data. Accommodating those incompatible computers was hard for them and they needed to work with the mainframe computer of the CERN. Tim made it easy by helping all the computers and everyone to work together. The task was made lot easier by allowing computers to swap the information directly even when the computers were not communicating with each other. The need for copying data on every computer was required no more and data once stored could be easily made available through the references and linked to the original document. The World Wide Web was available for public from the year 1990. Originally, it was supposed to be created as a part of military strategy and was not for the public use, but it did not remain confined within it. (Greenemeier, 2009: What Year was the World Wide Web created?, 2011) The hypertext was the main component with which the World Wide Web was designed. It makes WWW different from other message transfer system. WWW became different because of the combination of the basic hypertext along with other concepts and technologies that resulted in creating a rich and comprehensive mechanism that can be used for interactive communications. The present day system consists of many different concepts and modern varieties of ‘software elements’. It has been so much integrated with other technologies that no two people will now agree on the components of the WWW system. One of the most important causes of the success of the WWW was the combination of the Transmission control Protocol along with the Internet protocol. These two sets of the protocols allow the host computer in connecting to the Internet. The transmission control protocol helps in converting the message into data packets that are transmitted through the network to the destination computers and then again help in reassembling the files that can be read by the user. The Internet Protocol on the other hand helps in the operation of the transmission and proper configuration of the address of the connection to help information in reaching the right place. (What is TCP/IP?,2011). The other important feature of the WWW is the Internet infrastructure that connects together the computers of the world. Since the Internet infrastructure is an important component of the WWW that many people think of the web and the Internet to be synonymous. The functional components of the World Wide Web are the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Uniform resource Identifiers (URIs), Web server hardware and software, Web Client hardware and browser software, and Web hardware and software. (The TCP/IP guide, 2005) A flaw in the current structure of WWW is that there exist many links of Hypertext that had no links with existing original documents. Therefore, the problem is that methods of registering links with documents do not exist with the WWW system. The main reason behind the success of the World Wide Web is that the source codes of the software were opened to the public as soon as the basic structure was completed by CERN. Thus, many commercial and academic parties were encouraged by CERN for their collaboration. Hence, the system got millions of people involved in the success and the growth of the web. Secondly, the requirements for running the system were minimal and hence administrators with limited funds had also provided information. Thirdly, the easy and intuitive nature of the hypertext programming enabled many computer users who were inexperienced to connect to the network. Fourthly, the Hypertext Mark Up Language that was used to create interactive documents was so simple that it allowed general users to contribute to the database of the documents available on the web and expand the availability. Moreover, Computers running on different operating system were also allowed to interconnect through the WWW and informations created in varieties of Media formats that existed could also be displayed through WWW system. Thus, there were huge and endless possibilities of the system of Hypertext in the environment of the World Wide Web. (The World Wide Web, 1995) The World Wide Web was not designed by a single individual or by a single organization. It had been developed by the cooperative efforts of people from all over the world. The World Wide Web now became a resource of the general public upon which individuals, Governments, communities and different companies depend. The system has been protected as if the democrats protect their important channels of communication but with the assurance of the free flow of the information and expression that helped in converting the system into a success of the global nature. Thus, the success of the www system was dependent on three critical factors, unlimited links, open technical standards, and separation of network layers. The World Wide Web started with a single web page and a single web site and in the fifteen years, it has grown to almost 100,000,000 web sites with an estimate of almost 8 billion pages that are publicly accessible as per the data of 2005. Addition of new web pages into the system required minimal additional cost that in some cases may be nil and no coordination with any central authorities. It has the capacity of breaking down geographical boundaries, barriers of language and domain of knowledge. This universality has been the key of the success of the web. It has been the venue of exchange of ideas and variety of services that are free. Moreover, the innovation of the web infrastructure had been on the platform of technical standards that are open and architecture that are flexible and royalty free access to these standards. (Lee, 2007) If the creation of the Web were in the hands of any private organization then the story of the success would have been different. Once a private organization or individual become the inventor, the web would not be opened up to the global people for their assistance and contributions, as the name would otherwise be dispersed. Moreover, the aims of private institutions are the maximization of profit, thus they would have never allowed a royalty free accessibility and rights to contribute to the web pages. Thus, the form of the success the Web gained through its open up to the global individual could never be reached if the innovation and the evolution of the Web were in the hands of a single individual or any private institutions. Conclusion Thus with the path of the success of the World Wide Web it can be concluded that in near future people will be able to access web through diversely growing networks and can access the same from increasing number of devices. It will help in opening up of the human environment spreading knowledge to the global mass and thus gain more and more success in the near future. References Who owns the Internet? (2010) Webopedia, 1 March 2011 from The difference between the Internet and the worldwide web, (2010), Webopedia, 1 March 2011 from http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/Web_vs_Internet.asp Boswell, W, (2004), The World Wide Web, and the Internet, About.com, 1 March 2011, from http://websearch.about.com/od/whatistheInternet/a/worldwideweb.htm World Wide Web, (2006), The Great Idea Finder, 1 March 2011 from Greenemeier, L. (2009) Remembering the day the World Web was born, Scientific American, 1 March 2011 from What Year was the World Wide Web created?, (2011), Business News, 1 March 2011 from, http://www.ehow.com/about_5090994_year-worldwide-created.html What is TCP/IP?, (2011), Wise geek, 1March 2011, from The TCP/IP Guide, World Wide Web system concepts and components, (2005), 1 March 2011, from http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_WorldWideWebSystemConceptsandComponents-3.htm The World Wide Web, (1995) Lenny Zeltser, 1 March 2011, from http://zeltser.com/web-history/ Lee Timothy, B., (2007), The future of the World Wide Web, Massachusetts institute of technology, 1 March 2011, from < http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2007/03/01-ushouse-future-of-the-web.html> Read More