The Differences between the Internet and the World Wide Web - Essay Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : Difference between Internet and World Wide Web Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx @ 2009 Table of Content Title : Difference between Internet and World Wide Web 1 Difference between Internet and World Wide Web 3 Introduction 3 Internet 3 Origin of Internet 4 Internet technology 5 World Wide Web 5 History of the WWW 6 Conclusion 6 Bibliography 7 Difference between Internet and World Wide Web Introduction The terms Internet and World Wide Web are frequently used interchangeably in everyday speech without much difference. The two are however not the same thing. While the internet is a world wide data communications system consisting of hardware and software infrastructure that offers connectivity between computers, the web is a service just like other services which are communicated through the internet. The web consists of interlinked documents and other related resources which are connected by hyperlinks and URLs. This report intends to highlight and explain the difference between Internet and World Wide Web as useful tools of communication in the present world (Jessup & Valacich, 2007). Internet The Internet is a worldwide system consisting of interconnected or interlinked computer networks that apply the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve the many users in the world. It is a network of networks that is composed of many networks which include: private and public ones, business and government networks. The networks can be of local or global scopes that are connected by a wide selection of electronic and optical networking technologies. The Internet consists of a wide collection of information and data resources and related services, the most striking being the inter-linked hypertext resources of the World Wide Web and the appropriate infrastructure to sustain electronic mail. Many traditional communications means for instance the telephone and television services are restructured and modified using the Internet technologies. This has led to inventions of services like the Voice over Internet Protocol and IPTV. Newspaper publishing has been converted into Web sites, blogging or even web feeds. The internet has facilitated or accelerated the invention of new means of human interactions via services such as instant messaging, Internet forums and social networking facilities (Jessup & Valacich, 2007). Origin of Internet The origin of Internet dates back in 1960s when the U.S invested in research projects of its military agencies to construct strong, fault-tolerant and broad computer networks. The research together with the time of civilian funding of a fresh U.S. foundation by the National Science Foundation generated global participation in the establishment of new networking technologies and resulted to the commercialization of global network in the 1990s. As a consequence, several applications emerged and were popularized in almost every aspect of human activities. At the moment, almost a quarter of the world’s population uses the Internet at one instance in their daily activities (Castells, 2001). The Internet has no standard governance in technological establishment or policies for access or application implying that each constituent network has its own policies and standards to govern its operations. A maintainer firm, ICANN, however governs and controls the two main name spaces found in the Internet. These spaces are the Internet Protocol Address and the Domain Name System. The technical control and standardization of the central protocols IPv4 and IPv6 is done by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The IETF is a non-profit firm composed of international affiliates that is open to anyone who contributes some technical expertise to the Internet (Castells, 2001). Internet technology The Internet consists of a complicated communication infrastructure which is composed of hardware resources and a system of software that control all the features of its architecture. Although the Internet hardware can be used to sustain several software system, the design and the unique standardization of software architecture distinguishes the internet and offers the basis for its applicability and success. The role of architectural plan of the Internet software systems has been assigned to IETF which organizes standard-setting work groups about the diverse aspects of Internet architecture. The consequent discussions and ultimate standards are published in the IETF web site. World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW) and usually known as The Web is a system of interconnected hypertext documents found in the Internet. With the aid of a web browser, a user can access web pages that contain information in form of text, images, videos and various other multimedia and transverse through them using hyperlinks. The World Wide Web originated from English Physicist Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s proposal in 1989 which was base on concepts from hypertext systems in application earlier on. In fact, the proposal is what eventually composed The Web. Sir Tim Berners-Lee was later joined by Robert Cailliau, a computer scientist from Belgium and together they proposed HyperText […] to connect and access data of any type as a web of nodes which can be accessed by users at will. The web was released for use in December the same year (Jessup & Valacich, 2007). History of the WWW The French Minitel, which can be accessed via the telephone lines, is taken to be the first and the most successful pre-World Wide Web Internet service in the globe. This service which was launched in 1982 in France later changed to France telecom and La Poste. Burners-Lee used a NeXT Computer as the first web server in the globe and also applied it in writing the first web browser, The Web, in 1990. By the end of 1990, Sir Tim Berners-Lee had constructed all the tools necessary for the functioning of the web. The tools included: web browser, web server and web pages (Rehmeyer, 2007). Operation of the World Wide Web To access a web page on the WWW, a user starts by typing the URL of that particular page into a web browser or by clicking a hyperlink to that resource or page. The web browser then kick offs a sequence of communication messages to search for the page and displays it. The World Wide Web is a means of accessing data over the medium of the Internet (Comer, 2006). Conclusion As mentioned above, the Internet and the World Wide Web is not the same thing. The Internet is a immense network of networks, connecting millions of computers globally. It composes of a network in which computers communicate. The data or information is communicated through the Internet through various languages called protocols. The WWW is merely on of the ways in which the data or information is distributed over the Internet. The Internet is used for e-mail which depends on SMTP, Usenet news groups and instant messaging and FTP. The Web is therefore a part of the Internet and the two are not synonymous (Polo, 2003). Bibliography Castells, M.,2001, “Lessons from the History of Internet”, in “The Internet Galaxy”, Oxford: Oxford University Press Comer, D., 2006. The Internet book. London: Prentice Hall. Jessup, L & Valacich, J., 2007. Information systems today: managing in the digital world. London: Pearson Prentice Hall Polo, L. 2003. "World Wide Web Technology Architecture: A Conceptual Analysis". New Devices. Retrieved on December 12, 2009 from Rehmeyer, J. 2007. Medusa Mapping: The spreads of Internet with the tentacles. Science News 171(June 23):387-388 Read More