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[T542]The Internet World Wide Web

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Everyday we log on and get into this strange online world called the web. Now many of us believe that the Internet and web are the same, but though they are related, they are not quite the same thing. The Internet or the Net as we all call it now, is a worldwide system of interconnected computer networks. It transmits data using the Internet protocol. The net has many networks all tied together, carrying out many functions. These functions may be as different as email or pages of information, or even online chat. The Web is a read-write information space. It has resources like text documents, images and multimedia.

It is interesting to see how the web works. Anyone accessing the web will use a web browser like the Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox and the hypertext link to the page or resource is typed in. The address would read like this 'http://www.example.com/mypage.html'. This address is given by the global, distributed Internet database known as the Domain Name System or DNS. To make this sound easier, in the above example, the address of the server is 'http://www.example.com' and there, a request to view "mypage" is being made. HTTP or Hypertext Transfer Protocol helps in accessing the server. The DNS then turns all this into an individualized IP or Internet Protocol address. This will look like a phone number with four numbers between 0 and 255. The IP is a procedure set up by the Internet to find a server anywhere in the world. In fact once the IP address is known, the server can be located through the ISP or Internet Service Provider.

Once the IP address is reached, the web site and all its content becomes available to the user. Almost immediately the html or hypertext markup language code is sent back and the text and graphics are available to the browser. This happens fairly quickly, taking just a few seconds, helping us make the most optimum use of the web.

If things do not go as planned, the viewer will get an error message stating 'the page cannot be displayed'. This could mean that there is an error in the server name or the page being searched for does not exist. Sometimes the server could be busy or the page being searched has moved. It is best to follow the instructions given and continue.

All this sounds very simple, but today there is high degree of sophistication in the programming and solutions offered by a web page. The credit for designing the concept of the web goes to Tim Berners-Lee, when he built the "ENQUIRE". On August 6, 1991, he posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup, using the concept of HTML. This was the debut of the Web as a service on the Internet. He applied the idea of links to the Internet. This meant that the web became an accumulation of pages that could be accessed by clicking on links. Today we have benefited so much from this new communication system which makes the world so much smaller than before and has linked its many peoples as no other means could have ever done.

Today, millions of computers are connected by the World Wide Web. This concept of WWW did not exist before three decades. World Wide Web has now connected every computer scattered across various cities in the globe. Without any effort, a person sitting in one corner of the world can access information present in a server which is physically located in another part of the world. Geographic location is not a consideration if you want to access information. World Wide Web technology has made it possible to gather knowledge about anything and everything. The rules of communication were broken by the advent of World Wide Web where a person can acquire knowledge without conversing with any other human being.

The history

The concept of World Wide Web evolved only in 1990. However, people were interested in connecting different computers right from 1945. A device made of microfilms was used to store and organize huge documents. Anybody who knows the way to access the microfilms can read the information in the documents. This idea was further enhanced in 1968 where the new concept of hypertext was introduced. This is the base of WWW. Hypertext enables linking and organizing documents in an effortless way. Irrespective of the size of the documents, they can be linked and organized within a small amount of time.

The basic step to World Wide Web was put forward by DARPA in 1972 when the agency did a project to connect various research centers. This project was done to centralize document control and facilitate information sharing. The content of the documents is separated from presentation enabling document retrieval in an easier way. This idea was further developed by Tim Berners-Lee from CERN laboratory in 1989. In 1990, he proposed a hypertext system and introduced the term World Wide Web. When the idea was proposed, nobody ever imagined that WWW would become a great success. In 1992, CERN introduced the first portable web browser using which documents were retrieved easily without the use of complex coding techniques.

World Wide Web evolution

The modern World Wide Web has many features including applications, data, API, multimedia, social platform and much more. This technology is improving everyday making more and more additions to the data and services that can be shared. HTML is the hypertext programming language which is used even today to generate web pages. As with any technology, web technology has also seen many changes from the past decade.

Web1.0 was the first web technology which enabled reading of documents. The user was presented with the document he wanted but he cannot make changes or feed any data. The content published on internet is readable only by the humans. Web 2.0 revolutionized internet allowing user interactions. The user can now enter details which the machine can read and manipulate. The need for offline communication reduced with the use of emails. The latest development in the World Wide Web is the Web 3.0 technology which is called the semantic web. This is in the developing phase where there is no centralized data control. It is an open schema using artificial intelligence to mimic human behavior.

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