What is the Internet ?

The internet is already the deepest collection of human wisdom (and terrible memes… and ridiculous photos) the world has ever seen—and it’s only getting bigger.

If you happen to have bad internet service in your house, here’s another reason to be mad at your provider: there’s actually high-speed internet service on the way up to Mount Everest.

Every technology or activity has its own pros and cons. The trick is to act smart and make effective use of all that is available while ducking from its downsides. A little alertness from the user’s side can improve the productivity and quality of living. We have to teach certain set cyber rules to small kids and teenagers especially so that they can stay away from exploitation and other crimes while on the internet.

In the past decades, internet has found a crucial place in the working of many different fields which includes banks, schools, industries and others. People have benefited from this technology in both their professional and personal lives. With internet around, we can get answers to all our questions in just a matter of seconds. An internet connection these days is quite easy to establish at homes and offices.

he use of internet has been expanded to many fields in recent times. People have become more aware and used to the advantages and disadvantages of internet and its applications. The various fields in which internet is used are as follows

The technology behind the Internet began back in the 1960’s at MIT. The first message ever to be transmitted was LOG.. why? The user had attempted to type LOGIN, but the network crashed after the enormous load of data of the letter G. It was to be a while before Facebook would be developed…

Communication: Internet has effectively altered the way we communicate. Posts and telegrams have been replaced by cellular phones, webcams and messaging applications. These new found methods of communications are more effective and quick.

The Internet began as a single page at the URL http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, which contained information about this new-fangled “WorldWideWeb” project, and how you too could make a hypertext page full of wonderful hyperlinks. Sadly, the original page was never saved,

Education: With the advancement in internet and its reach to all parts of the world, students and other people staying in remote areas can opt for distance learning courses and can also access a wide range of information available on the internet to educate themselves in various subjects.

The first emoticon is commonly credited to Kevin Mackenzie in 1979, but was a rather simple -) and didn’t really look like a face. 3 years later,

Did you know – the Japanese also use emoticons, but theirs are the correct way up instead of on the side, and a lot cuter!

E-commerce: E-commerce is a taking a huge hit these days. With the emergence of various e-commerce websites such as Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and the likes, people have formed an affirmative opinion about shopping online. This is a convenient method as you don’t need to leave the comfort of your home to purchase different things.

Internet Banking: Almost all the banks these days provide options for net banking. Using this feature, you can pay bills online and conduct money transactions effectively. Though while using these features, one has to be aware and alert about the growing cyber-crimes over the internet.

The first webcam was deployed at Cambridge University computer lab – its sole purpose to monitor a particular coffee maker and hence avoid wasted trips to an empty pot.

Entertainment: Along with all the above stated activities, internet provides lots of options for entertainment such as movies, TV series, educational videos, news headlines around the world and anything you need.

Although the MP3 standard was invented in 1991, it wouldn’t be until 1998 that the first music file-sharing service Napster, would go live, and change the way the Internet was used forever.

Ever since the birth of the Internet, file sharing was a problem for the authorities that managed it. In 1989, McGill University shut down their FTP indexing site after finding out that it was responsible for half of the Internet traffic from America into Canada. Fortunately, a number of similar file indexing sites had already been made.

Children should be taught about the pros and cons of using internet so that they can be protected from the evils of cyber-crime. We should stand up against these kinds of crimes and ensure safety. Indulging in such crimes is a punishable offence and one should fear the law of the country.

Sound familiar? Even today file sharing dominates Internet traffic with torrent files accounting for over 50% of upstream bandwidth. However, a larger proportion of download bandwidth is taken up by streaming media services such as Netflix.

Google estimates that the Internet today contains about 5 million terabytes of data (1TB = 1,000GB), and claims it has only indexed a paltry 0.04% of it all! You could fit the whole Internet on just 200 million Blu-Ray disks.

Speaking of search – One THIRD of all Internet searches are specifically for pornography. It is estimated that 80% of all images on the Internet are of naked women.

According to legend, Amazon became the number one shopping site because in the days before the invention of the search giant Google, Yahoo would list the sites in their directory alphabetically!

The first ever banner ad invaded the Internet in 1994, and it was just as bad as today. The ad was part of AT&Ts “you will” campaign, and was placed on the HotWired homepage.

The Internet is constantly changing, and understanding and measuring it is a challenge. We’ve collected a variety of resources for Internet statistics, trends, and demographics.

The Internet, sometimes called simply "the Net," is a worldwide system of computer networks - a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers)