WHAT IS INTERNET?
Internet, is a system architecture that has revolutionized communications and methods of commerce by allowing various computer networks around the world to interconnect. Sometimes referred to as a “network of networks,” the Internet emerged in the United States in the 1970s but did not become visible to the general public until the early 1990s. By 2020, approximately 4.5 billion people, or more than half of the world’s population, were estimated to have access to the Internet.
The Internet provides a capability so powerful and general that it can be used for almost any purpose that depends on information, and it is accessible by every individual who connects to one of its constituentnetworks. It supports human communication via social media, electronic mail (e-mail), “chat rooms,” newsgroups, and audio and video transmission and allows people to work collaboratively at many different locations. It supports access to digital information by many applications, including the Worldwide web. The Internet has proved to be a spawning ground for a large and growing number of “e-businesses” (including subsidiaries of traditional “brick-and-mortar” companies) that carry out most of their sales and services over the Internet.
Origin and development
A Brief History of the Internet
Sharing Resources
The Internet started in the 1960s as a way for government researchers to share information. Computers in the ’60s were large and immobile and in order to make use of information stored in any one computer, one had to either travel to the site of the computer or have magnetic computer tapes sent through the conventional postal system.
Another catalyst in the formation of the Internet was the heating up of the Cold War. The Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred the U.S. Defense Department to consider ways information could still be disseminated even after a nuclear attack. This eventually led to the formation of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the network that ultimately evolved into what we now know as the Internet. ARPANET was a great success but membership was limited to certain academic and research organizations who had contracts with the Defense Department. In response to this, other networks were created to provide information sharing.
January 1, 1983 is considered the official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. A new communications protocol was established called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP). This allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to “talk” to each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard on January 1, 1983, hence the birth of the Internet. All networks could now be connected by a universal language.
The image above is a scale model of the UNIVAC I (the name stood for Universal Automatic Computer) which was delivered to the Census Bureau in 1951. It weighed some 16,000 pounds, used 5,000 vacuum tubes, and could perform about 1,000 calculations per second. It was the first American commercial computer, as well as the first computer designed for business use. (Business computers like the UNIVAC processed data more slowly than the IAS-type machines, but were designed for fast input and output.) The first few sales were to government agencies, the A.C. Nielsen Company, and the Prudential Insurance Company. The first UNIVAC for business applications was installed at the General Electric Appliance Division, to do payroll, in 1954. By 1957 Remington-Rand (which had purchased the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1950) had sold forty-six machines.
What was the original name of the Internet?
ARPANETThe Internet, then known as ARPANET, was brought online in 1969 under a contract let by the renamed Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which initially connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern US (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UCSB, and the University of Utah
What are the advantages of the Internet?
The Internet is one of the powerful creations that offer people endless knowledge and entertainment. Today the Internet plays a critical role in many areas. There are multiple advantages of the Internet, below is given a list of benefits of the Internet.
Connectivity, communication, and sharing
In the past days, if you sent a letter or someone sent you, it could take days and sometimes even months to a reach letter at the destination. In modern times, you can send a letter or important information to anyone in the e-mail all over the world through the Internet. And, it often will be delivered to the destination in less than a minute.
You can also use other forms of communication, such as VOIP and chat, they also enable you to send any information instantly to anyone in the world. With the internet online forums also allow people to connect with each other where they can share common interests and talk about what they enjoy. Furthermore, you can share your ideas or views with anyone by making an online video call through applications like skype, line, etc.
Information, knowledge, and learning
The Internet allows people to learn information about any topic and offers an answer to any type of question, as it contains endless knowledge and information. Using a search engine like Google chrome,Mozilla Firefox and more, they all allow users to ask any question and find a web page with an answer about that question. You can also watch videos about any topic on sites like YouTube, which contain millions of videos of several topics. Also, you can learn online courses in many different subjects.
Address, mapping, and contact information
The Internet can help users to provide information almost every place in the world on the map with the help of GPS technology. You can find businesses in your area or the quickest route to your location. Although, today’s search engines are most powerful to know the user’s location and help offer the relevant searches for your area. Also, it can provide you the contact information or address of any showroom or other services man. For example, if you want to get the address of an electrician, you can search for an electrician and get a list of local electricians in your area with their address.
Selling and making money
If you want to sell products and services or run a business, the Internet is the best place to sell goods. Because anyone can find and access your website all over the world with the help of the Internet. With online business, you are able to sell goods every day at all times as the Internet is always on and always available. Also, the Internet provides the advantage to promote your business online in the world through advertising. Additionally, there are several ways to earn money online by performing other online services.
Banking, bills, and shopping
If you want to view your bank balance without leaving your home, the Internet offers you the benefit to access your bank account to view the balance. Also, you can send money, pay bills electronically, or many other services can complete through the Internet.
Another advantage of the Internet is online shopping, which allows people to find products of interest and buy them without having to visit a store. You can compare prices between companies for any product through the Internet. Also, you can get help to make better purchasing decisions by online reviews, which describes what others think about a product.
Donations and funding
With the help of an Internet connection, anyone can help fund projects and ideas that interest them or quickly donate to their favorite charity. Also, if you want to donate and looking for charity services, you can find many online services on the Internet that help make it easier to support their causes or help donate.
Entertainment
The Internet provides people to access endless entertainment. With the Internet, you can watch movies, videos, play games online, listen to music, etc. There are many sites available on the Internet, which contain different entertainment material like music, videos, and more. Also, you can watch online videos on a platform like YouTube. Furthermore, you can download any movies, videos, or other entertainment material via the Internet on devices like computers or mobile phones that can be played anytime without an Internet connection.
Work from home, collaboration, and access to a global workforce
The Internet offers people benefit to connect with others around the world. There are various online services that help you to communicate and work with other people all over the world. Also, it can make services and producing new products faster.
An Internet connection offers many people an option to create a virtual office by allowing them to work from home. Sometime, there could be a condition for any organization to allow their employees to work from home using their computer. In this condition, the Internet plays the most important role as it provides connectivity between all employees, through which they all can communicate and discuss with each other regarding any project
For example, many offices needed their employees to work from home in the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. To allow work from home can help organization owners to save money by not paying money rent for offices and also help for employees to save them time and money by eliminating the daily travel to and from work every day. Furthermore, if you are running a business and you want to hire employees, there are many online services that can give you access to people looking for a job in the world.
Internet of Things
The Internet makes smarter your device in your home and giving them access to the Internet. For instance, to control the heating and cooling in your home, the Nest thermostat can connect to the Internet. When devices have been connected to the Internet, they can be controlled remotely with the help of your smartphone or computer. The devices can become smarter and more efficient and help save time, money, and energy by connecting Internet of things IoT. The main benefit to connect devices to the Internet of Things is that if you are far from your home, you can control your device remotely.
Cloud computing and cloud storage
One of the biggest advantages of the Internet offers connectivity to your computer and Internet-enabled devices to connect with cloud services, such as cloud storage and CLOUD COMPUTING A device can have access to more powerful computers to perform complex tasks with cloud computing whereas your business work on other tasks.
With cloud computing, you can access your data anywhere as cloud storage synchronizes data across any of your Internet-connected devices. It makes your data more secure because your files are stored in a professionally-maintained server. Therefore, if you are using a cloud storage backup service, you will not lose all your valuable data even if your home or office burned down.
What is phone line network?
A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. … Telephone overhead lines are connected to the public switched telephone network
Phone-line Networks
Phoneline networking takes advantage of unused transmission capacity to transmit data over existing telephone wires. They transmit information at frequencies well above that of plain old telephone service (POTS) or digital services like ISDN and DSL, so the network does not interfere with the normal use of the phone line for voice, fax or Internet services running over the same telephone circuit. Nor do these other phoneline services affect network data transmission quality.
The technology used to divide up shared bandwidth is frequency division multiplexing (FDM). This well-established technique divides up the total bandwidth into different frequency bands, called channels, using frequency-selective filters. Each of the different types of traffic – power, analogue voice and digital information (including data, audio and video) – use different channels.
The initial Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA) specification – released in the autumn of 1998 – adopted the IEEE 802.3 media access method, essentially delivering 1 Mbit/s Ethernet over phone lines. The subsequent HomePNA 2.0 specification – finalised in late 1999 – takes advantage of digital signal processing (DSP) technology embedded in silicon to offer consistently higher performance, better adapt to poor line conditions by continuously boosting signal strength and improve filtering of noise (interference) from nearby appliances. HomePNA 2.0- based products can support transfer speeds of up to 10 Mbit/s, ten times faster than HomePNA 1.0- based products.
In a typical home phoneline network internal or external network adapters are installed in each PC, which are plugged into a nearby phone jack. Printers or other peripherals – including simultaneous access to the Internet via a single 56 Kbit/s analogue, ISDN, cable or DSL modem – can then be shared through a connected PC.
Phoneline networking works best in homes where the computers are located in different rooms near phone jacks on the same circuit – that is, using the same telephone number. The fact that each home has a unique phone circuit from the telephone company’s central office ensures a high level of network security.
What are the similarities and differences between telephone network and Internet?
Both are switched network, circuit switched and packet switched. Communication is established by mean of wire or can be wireless. A telephone network supports voice call only in the 300 Hz to 3400 Hz of audio whereas the internet supports audio, video and data and bandwidth is really not an issue these days.
ADVANTAGES OF PHONE LINE NETWORKS
- It’s easy to install.
- It’s inexpensive.
- It’s standardized.
- It’s reliable.
- It operates at a constant 128 Mbps, even when the phone is in use.
- It requires no additional networking equipment (such as hubs or routers).
- It supports up to 50 devices.
- It is fast enough for bandwidth-intensive applications, such as video.
- It is compatible with other networking technologies.
- It works on Macs and older PCs (in addition to Windows and Linux systems).
HomePNA does have some drawbacks, though. You need a phone jack close to each computer. Otherwise, you will have to run phone extension cords or install new wiring. There is a physical limit of 1,000 feet (304.8 m) of wiring between devices, and the overall area of coverage should not exceed 10,000 square feet (929 m2). Rarely (in fewer than 1 percent of U.S. homes), HomePNA will not work on the existing wiring. And while this author did not notice any interference with voice use, there have been reports of voices sounding “funny” or of a lot of noise on the phone once HomePNA is installed. Later, we will look at these issues and possible solutions.
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