| What Is "The Internet" |
First:
Today the terms "Internet", and "The World Wide Web" are often considered to be synonymous. "The web", "The net"., "WWW", "W3", "The Information Superhighway", "Cyberspace", are all used somewhat interchangably. A very brief (although somewhat rudimentary) description would be "All the computers in the world connected to each other." At one time most technicians made a great deal of distinction between "The web" and the other "THINGS" connected to the "Net"; however, today those distinctions are less common.In the "Strictest definition"
The Web or WWW are all the computers, services and files which are viewable and useable with the Internet browsers - using "http" (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). Meaning if you can click on it and see it in a program like Netscape or Internet Explorer - It is part of the Web.The Internet is a much broader animal. In 'the old days' (70's and 80's) people would use programs like "telnet" to connect to a BBS (Bulletin Board System), and use "ftp" (file transfer protocol) to download a file from a remote computer to their own PC. All of this involved connecting to other computers over the phone line from a black screen (DOS or UNIX) using commands that you memorized and typed in at the DOS prompt. This was NOT considered part of "The Web" - but the combination of all that cryptic telnet, ftp, ping 206.129.78.17, trace ftp://download.net, route, archie, veronica, gopher, - combined with the governments Department of Defense Mainframes, - The hacker club "ftp server", - as well as all those Web Site servers out there - well folks "THAT is the Internet".
Second:
Many people use Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Netscape and believe
that this is the Internet. That is not entirely accurate! IE
and Netscape are just programs that "read and translate" what is on the
Internet.
IE, AND NETSCAPE ARE PROGRAMS; Programs that translate information or files, called HTML files (Hyper Text Markup Language) in to readable format on your computer screen, so that you can view information and move around on the Internet. You could save an Internet file on your hard drive, and open that file with your "browser", and be using IE or Netscape without even being connected to a phone line. In fact more and more often today the Help Files that come with many programs are written in HTML format because it has become such a 'standard'.These programs that translate files from HTML to something you can see on your computer allow you to "Browse" what is called the WWW (World Wide Web) of the internet, but the internet is much more than that. When you click on a picture or underlined link it takes you to a www webpage, THAT webpage is only 1 file on the internet. The Internet is the entire collection of all computers connected through phone lines, and other physical connections. There are other things available to all through programs like telnet, ftp, bbs, and such that extend beyond those www pages you see in your "Internet Browser".
These programs (IE and Netscape) only 'show' you the files. If you have a file created with the stuff that makes an internet page, you can see that without even being connected. ~ so if you have a file that you saved - or you have a file that has the HTML stuff in it, (and here is an example):
<html>
<head><meta name="Author" content="Charles H. Davi">
<meta name="Description" content="web-friend.com provides Internet, news, and computer resources - and friendly help to all">
<meta name="KeyWords" content="links">
<title>Ched's web-friend.com home ~ Your friend on the Web</title></head>
<BODY>
<B>First and most important:</B><P>Many people use Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Netscape and believe
that this is the Internet
<\html>
You can have a file like the one above on your own computer - and still be able to see it!!! This above example is not information that anyone needs to know to successfully and happily surf the internet, it is just a sample of what is happening below the surface. Depending on what program you use to browse the web - pick one of the underlined links below to jump to the next help file for some more basic tips and information.