Internet

The term Internet refers to a worldwide network of computers that are interconnected through large backbone operators. The Internet was originally developed by the United States military and by educational institutions. A large number of commercial and private users have since been connected to the Internet. The Internet user base is now estimated to be several hundred million.

The Internet supports many different services. Email is a service that allows people to exchange electronic mail through the Internet. The World Wide Web is a large repository of data. It is essentially a large Internet library of content. The Usenet is a way to distribute news articles to many Internet users. FTP is a file download protocol that works over the Internet. These are just some of the most poplar services offered on the Internet. Many more services are available.

While users have to pay connection fees to access the Internet, the Internet is essentially a free infrastructure. Many Internet services are available free of charge. For other Internet services a charge does apply. However, many users are still hesitant to pay for Internet content, because they believe that all content should be available free of charge on the Internet.

The Internet address system is based on domain name servers. Essentially, every computer connected to the Internet is assigned a unique address, which is called the Internet Protocol address. Because these IP addresses are difficult to remember, plain-text domain names are also used. These need to be translated into Internet Protocol addresses by an Internet DNS server.