What is the Internet and WWW?

The Internet is an international global network or "network of networks". The Internet allows its users to interact with each other as well as find or publish all sorts of information.

Initially, the Internet was restricted to government use. Gradually it grew as more educational and commercial organizations connected to it. When access to the Internet became available to everyone a real Internet boom started. The number of users now is about 300 million and it's still growing steadily.

WWW (World Wide Web) is not the same as the Internet. WWW started in the early 1990's when Tim Berners-Lee worked out a practical way to connect documents over the Internet using hypertext. This made it easy to access a document simply by clicking on a link to it. Multimedia capabilities were soon added so sounds, pictures, animations and video could also be linked or added to documents. Although the Web and the Internet is not the same thing, to most people they are synonymous. To oversimplify, the Web is basically a huge collection of files, called web pages and the Internet is how those files get sent from computer to computer.

To view a web page, special software is used called a browser or a client. Browsers access the web files served to the Internet by computers called servers. The browser software interprets and displays the information in these files.

Despite the tremendous benefits of the Internet as an information resource, there are also substantial threats to any computer connected to the Internet. Being on the Internet means that your computer not only can receive data, but also can send data. In other words, any computer connected to the Internet can broadcast as well as receive. Because a link to the Internet is two-way, a user's computer is subject to attacks from pathetic individuals whose self-respect is so low they actually believe they have to upset people in order to feel alive. As well as direct attacks on your computer, there are other types of criminal activities on the Internet. Knowing how to safeguard against these is important. Therefore, to be safe every Internet user should learn about Internet security.