This article is about the worldwide computer network. For the global system of pages accessed through URLs via the Internet, seeWorld Wide Web. For other uses, seeInternet (disambiguation).
"Interweb" redirects here. For the song by Poppy, seeInterweb (song).
The wordinternetted was used as early as 1849, meaninginterconnected orinterwoven.[3] The wordInternet was used in 1945 by the United States War Department in a radio operator's manual,[4] and in 1974 as the shorthand form of Internetwork.[5][6] Today, the termInternet most commonly refers to the global system of interconnectedcomputer networks, though it may also refer to any group of smaller networks.[7]
The wordInternet may be capitalized as aproper noun, although this is becoming less common.[7] This reflects the tendency in English to capitalize new terms and move them to lowercase as they become familiar.[7][8] The word is sometimes still capitalized to distinguish the global internet from smaller networks, though many publications, including theAP Stylebook since 2016, recommend the lowercase form in every case.[7][8] In 2016, theOxford English Dictionary found that, based on a study of around 2.5 billion printed and online sources, "Internet" was capitalized in 54% of cases.[9]
The termsInternet andWorld Wide Web are often used interchangeably; it is common to speak of "going on the Internet" when using aweb browser to viewweb pages. However, the World Wide Web, orthe Web, is only one of a large number of Internet services.[10] It is the global collection of web pages, documents and otherweb resources linked byhyperlinks andURLs.[11]
In 1982, theInternet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which facilitated worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks. TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when theNational Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access tosupercomputer sites in the United States for researchers, first at speeds of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s.[37]
The NSFNet expanded into academic and research organizations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan in 1988–89.[38][39][40][41] Although other network protocols such asUUCP and PTT public data networks had global reach well before this time, this marked the beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental network. CommercialInternet service providers emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia.[42] The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990.[43]
The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s, as well as the advent of theWorld Wide Web,[44] marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet.[45] Steady advances insemiconductor technology andoptical networking created new economic opportunities for commercial involvement in the expansion of the network in its core and for delivering services to the public. In mid-1989,MCI Mail andCompuserve established connections to the Internet, delivering email and public access products to the half million users of the Internet.[46]
Just months later, on 1 January 1990, PSInet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial use; one of the networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later years. In March 1990, the first high-speed T1 (1.5 Mbit/s) link between the NSFNET and Europe was installed betweenCornell University andCERN, allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites.[47]
In 1991 theCommercial Internet eXchange was founded, allowing PSInet to communicate with the other commercial networksCERFnet and Alternet.Stanford Federal Credit Union was the firstfinancial institution to offer online Internet banking services to all of its members in October 1994.[50] In 1996,OP Financial Group, also acooperative bank, became the second online bank in the world and the first in Europe.[51] By 1995, the Internet was fully commercialized in the U.S. when the NSFNet was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.[52]
As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal growth, the volume ofInternet traffic started experiencing similar characteristics as that of the scaling ofMOS transistors, exemplified byMoore's law, doubling every 18 months. This growth, formalized asEdholm's law, was catalyzed by advances inMOS technology,laser light wave systems, andnoise performance.[53]
Since 1995, the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce, including the rise of near-instant communication by email,instant messaging, telephony (Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP),two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web.[56] Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, or more. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever-greater amounts of online information and knowledge, commerce, entertainment and social networking services.[57]
During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%.[58] This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.[59]
In November 2006, the Internet was included onUSA Today's list of theNew Seven Wonders.[60] As of 31 March 2011[update], the estimated total number of Internet users was 2.095 billion (30% ofworld population).[61] It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the information flowing through two-waytelecommunication. By 2000 this figure had grown to 51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the Internet.[62] Modernsmartphones can access the Internet through cellular carrier networks, and internet usage by mobile and tablet devices exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time in October 2016.[63] As of 2018[update], 80% of the world's population were covered by a4G network.[64]
Mobile communication
Number of mobile cellular subscriptions 2012–2016
TheInternational Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated that, by the end of 2017, 48% of individual users regularly connect to the Internet, up from 34% in 2012.[65]Mobile Internet connectivity has played an important role in expanding access in recent years, especially inAsia and the Pacific and in Africa.[66] The number of unique mobile cellular subscriptions increased from 3.9 billion in 2012 to 4.8 billion in 2016, two-thirds of the world's population, with more than half of subscriptions located in Asia and the Pacific.[64]
The limits that users face on accessing information via mobile applications coincide with a broader process offragmentation of the Internet. Fragmentation restricts access to media content and tends to affect the poorest users the most.[66] One solution,zero-rating, is the practice of Internet service providers allowing users free connectivity to access specific content or applications without cost.[67]
Social impact
The Internet has enabled new forms of social interaction, activities, and social associations, giving rise to the scholarly study of thesociology of the Internet.[68]
Between 2000 and 2009, the number of Internet users globally rose from 390 million to 1.9 billion.[72] By 2010, 22% of the world's population had access to computers with 1 billionGoogle searches every day, 300 million Internet users reading blogs, and 2 billion videos viewed daily onYouTube.[73] In 2014 the world's Internet users surpassed 3 billion or 44 percent of world population, but two-thirds came from the richest countries, with 78 percent of Europeans using the Internet, followed by 57 percent of the Americas.[74] However, by 2018, Asia alone accounted for 51% of all Internet users, with 2.2 billion out of the 4.3 billion Internet users in the world. China's Internet users surpassed a major milestone in 2018, when the country's Internet regulatory authority, China Internet Network Information Centre, announced that China had 802 million users.[75] China was followed by India, with some 700 million users, with the United States third with 275 million users.
However, in terms of penetration, in 2022, China had a 70% penetration rate compared to India's 60% and the United States's 90%.[76] In 2022, 54% of the world's Internet users were based in Asia, 14% in Europe, 7% in North America, 10% in Latin America and theCaribbean, 11% in Africa, 4% in the Middle East and 1% in Oceania.[77] In 2019, Kuwait, Qatar, the Falkland Islands, Bermuda and Iceland had the highestInternet penetration by the number of users, with 93% or more of the population with access.[78] As of 2022, it was estimated that 5.4 billion people use the Internet, more than two-thirds of the world's population.[79]
Early computer systems were limited to the characters in theAmerican Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), a subset of theLatin alphabet. After English (27%), the most requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese (25%), Spanish (8%), Japanese (5%), Portuguese and German (4% each), Arabic, French and Russian (3% each), and Korean (2%).[80] Modern character encoding standards, such asUnicode, allow for development and communication in the world's widely used languages. However, some glitches such asmojibake (incorrect display of some languages' characters) still remain.
Several neologisms exist that refer to Internet users:Netizen (as in "citizen of the net")[81] refers to thoseactively involved in improvingonline communities, the Internet in general or surrounding political affairs and rights such asfree speech,[82][83]Internaut refers to operators or technically highly capable users of the Internet,[84][85]digital citizen refers to a person using the Internet in order to engage in society, politics, and government participation.[86]
Educational material at all levels from pre-school (e.g.CBeebies) to post-doctoral (e.g. scholarly literature throughGoogle Scholar) is available on websites. The internet has facilitated the development ofvirtual universities anddistance education, enabling bothformal andinformal education. The Internet allows researchers to conduct research remotely via virtual laboratories, with profound changes in reach and generalizability of findings as well as in communication between scientists and in the publication of results.[90] By the late 2010s the Internet had been described as "the main source of scientific information "for the majority of the global North population".[91]: 111
Wikis have also been used in the academic community for sharing and dissemination of information across institutional and international boundaries.[92] In those settings, they have been found useful for collaboration ongrant writing,strategic planning, departmental documentation, and committee work.[93] TheUnited States Patent and Trademark Office uses a wiki to allow the public to collaborate on findingprior art relevant to examination of pending patent applications.Queens, New York has used a wiki to allow citizens to collaborate on the design and planning of a local park.[94] TheEnglish Wikipedia has the largest user base among wikis on the World Wide Web[95] and ranks in the top 10 among all sites in terms of traffic.[96]
Entertainment
The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception, with entertainingsocial experiments such asMUDs andMOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-relatedUsenet groups receiving much traffic.[97] ManyInternet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos.[97]
Another area of leisure activity on the Internet ismultiplayer gaming.[98] This form of recreation creates communities, where people of all ages and origins enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range fromMMORPG tofirst-person shooters, fromrole-playing video games toonline gambling. While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with subscription services such asGameSpy andMPlayer.[99]
Streaming media is the real-time delivery of digital media for immediate consumption or enjoyment by end users. Streaming companies (such asNetflix,Disney+, Amazon'sPrime Video,Mubi,Hulu, andApple TV+) now dominate the entertainment industry, eclipsing traditional broadcasters.[100] Audio streamers such asSpotify andApple Music also have significant market share in the audio entertainment market.
Video sharing websites are also a major factor in the entertainment ecosystem. YouTube was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading website for free streaming video with more than two billion users.[101] It uses a web player to stream and show video files.[102]YouTube users watch hundreds of millions, and upload hundreds of thousands, of videos daily. Other video sharing websites includeVimeo,Instagram andTikTok.[citation needed]
Pornography
Although many governments have attempted to restrict bothInternet pornography andonline gambling, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity.[103]
A number of advertising-funded ostensible video sharing websites known as "tube sites" have been created to host sharedpornographic video content. Due to laws requiring the documentation of the origin of pornography, these websites now largely operate in conjunction with pornographic movie studios and their own independent creator networks, acting as de-facto video streaming services. Major players in this field include the market leaderAylo, the operator ofPornHub and numerous other branded sites, as well as other independent operators such asxHamster andXvideos. As of 2023[update], Internet traffic to pornographic video sites rivalled that of mainstream video streaming and sharing services.[104]
The spread of low-cost Internet access in developing countries has opened up new possibilities forpeer-to-peer charities, which allow individuals to contribute small amounts to charitable projects for other individuals. Websites, such asDonorsChoose andGlobalGiving, allow small-scale donors to direct funds to individual projects of their choice. A popular twist on Internet-based philanthropy is the use ofpeer-to-peer lending for charitable purposes.Kiva pioneered this concept in 2005, offering the first web-based service to publish individual loan profiles for funding.[105][106]
Software
The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills have madecollaborative work dramatically easier, with the help ofcollaborative software, which allow groups to easily form, cheaply communicate, and share ideas. An example of collaborative software is thefree software movement, which has produced, among other things,Linux,Mozilla Firefox, andOpenOffice.org (later forked intoLibreOffice).[citation needed]Content management systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents simultaneously without accidentally destroying each other's work.[citation needed]
Theonline disinhibition effect describes the tendency of many individuals to behave more stridently or offensively online than they would in person. A significant number offeminist women have been the target of various forms ofharassment, including insults andhate speech, to, in extreme cases, rape and deaththreats, in response to posts they have made on social media. Social media companies have been criticized in the past for not doing enough to aid victims of online abuse.[107]
Children also face dangers online such ascyberbullying andapproaches by sexual predators, who sometimes pose as children themselves. Due to naivety, they may also post personal information about themselves online, which could put them or their families at risk unless warned not to do so. Many parents choose to enableInternet filtering or supervise their children's online activities in an attempt to protect their children frompornography orviolent content on the Internet. The most popular social networking services commonly forbid users under the age of 13. However, these policies can be circumvented by registering an account with a false birth date, and a significant number of children aged under 13 join such sites.[citation needed] Social networking services for younger children, which claim to provide better levels of protection for children, also exist.[108]
Internet usage has been correlated to users' loneliness.[109] Lonely people tend to use the Internet as an outlet for their feelings and to share their stories with others, such as in the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread.[citation needed]
Cyberslacking can become a drain on corporate resources; employees spend a significant amount of time surfing the Web while at work.[110]Internet addiction disorder is excessive computer use that interferes with daily life.Nicholas G. Carr believes that Internet use has othereffects on individuals, for instance improving skills of scan-reading andinterfering with the deep thinking that leads to true creativity.[111]
Electronic business encompasses business processes spanning the entirevalue chain: purchasing,supply chain management,marketing,sales,customer service, and business relationship.E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners. According toInternational Data Corporation, the size of worldwide e-commerce, when global business-to-business and -consumer transactions are combined, equate to $16 trillion in 2013. A report by Oxford Economics added those two together to estimate the total size of thedigital economy at $20.4 trillion, equivalent to roughly 13.8% of global sales.[112]
A 2013Institute for Local Self-Reliance report states that brick-and-mortar retailers employ 47 people for every $10 million in sales, while Amazon employs only 14. Similarly, the 700-employee room rental start-upAirbnb was valued at $10 billion in 2014, about half as much asHilton Worldwide, which employs 152,000 people. At that time,Uber employed 1,000 full-time employees and was valued at $18.2 billion, about the same valuation asAvis Rent a Car andThe Hertz Corporation combined, which together employed almost 60,000 people.[117]
Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce. Online advertising is a form ofmarketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliverpromotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing,search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types ofdisplay advertising (includingweb banner advertising), andmobile advertising. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those ofcable television and nearly exceeded those ofbroadcast television.[118]: 19 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.
Banner inBangkok during the2014 Thai coup d'état, informing theThai public that 'like' or 'share' activities on social media could result in imprisonment (observed 30 June 2014)
The Internet has achieved new relevance as a political tool. The presidential campaign ofHoward Dean in 2004 in the United States was notable for its success in soliciting donation via the Internet. Many political groups use the Internet to achieve a new method of organizing for carrying out their mission, having given rise toInternet activism.[119][120]Social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, helped people organize theArab Spring, by helping activists organize protests, communicate grievances, and disseminate information.[121]
Many have understood the Internet as an extension of theHabermasian notion of thepublic sphere, observing how network communication technologies provide something like a global civic forum. However, incidents of politically motivatedInternet censorship have now been recorded in many countries, including western democracies.[122][123]
E-government is the use oftechnological communications devices, such as the Internet, to providepublic services to citizens and other persons in a country or region. E-government offers opportunities for more direct and convenient citizen access to government[124] and for government provision of services directly to citizens.[125]
highly dispersed small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common devotion to a particular leader. Overseas supporters provide funding and support; domestic practitioners distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith, exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in the collective study via email, online chat rooms, and web-based message boards.[126]
In particular, the British government has raised concerns about the prospect of young British Muslims being indoctrinated into Islamic extremism by material on the Internet, being persuaded to jointerrorist groups such as the so-called "Islamic State", and then potentially committing acts of terrorism on returning to Britain after fighting in Syria or Iraq.[citation needed]
The World Wide Web is a global collection ofdocuments,images,multimedia, applications, and other resources, logically interrelated byhyperlinks and referenced withUniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), which provide a global system of named references. URIs symbolically identify services,web servers, databases, and the documents and resources that they can provide.[127]
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the main access protocol of the World Wide Web.Web services also use HTTP for communication between software systems for information transfer, sharing and exchanging business data and logistics and is one of many languages or protocols that can be used for communication on the Internet.[127]
Email is an important communications service available via the Internet. The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties, analogous to mailing letters or memos, predates the creation of the Internet.[128][129]
Internet telephony is a common communications service realized with the Internet. The name of the principal internetworking protocol, theInternet Protocol, lends its name tovoice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).[citation needed] VoIP systems now dominate many markets, being as easy and convenient as a traditional telephone, while having substantial cost savings, especially over long distances.[130]
File sharing
File sharing is the practice of transferring large amounts of data in the form ofcomputer files across the Internet, for example viafile servers. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers orpeer-to-peer networks.
Access to the file may be controlled by userauthentication, the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured byencryption, and money may change hands for access to the file. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed—usually fully encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by adigital signature.[131]
ICANN headquarters in thePlaya Vista neighborhood ofLos Angeles, California, United States
The Internet is aglobal network that comprises many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body.
IETF
The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 andIPv6) is an activity of theInternet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.[132]
While the hardware components in the Internet infrastructure can often be used to support other software systems, it is the design and the standardization process of the software that characterizes the Internet and provides the foundation for its scalability and success. The responsibility for the architectural design of the Internet software systems has been assumed by the IETF.[133]
The IETF conducts standard-setting work groups, open to any individual, about the various aspects of Internet architecture. The resulting contributions and standards are published asRequest for Comments (RFC) documents on the IETF web site. The principal methods of networking that enable the Internet are contained in specially designated RFCs that constitute theInternet Standards. Other less rigorous documents are simply informative, experimental, or historical, or document thebest current practices when implementing Internet technologies.
ICANN
To maintain interoperability, the principalname spaces of the Internet are administered by theInternet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is governed by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and other non-commercial communities. The organization coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers for use on the Internet, includingdomain names,IP addresses,application port numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters. Globally unified name spaces are essential for maintaining the global reach of the Internet. This role of ICANN distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body for the global Internet.[134]
Regional Internet registries (RIRs) were established for five regions of the world to assign IP address blocks and other Internet parameters to local registries, such asInternet service providers, from a designated pool of addresses set aside for each region:[citation needed]
2007 map showing submarine fiberoptic telecommunication cables around the world
The communications infrastructure of the Internet consists of itshardware components and a system ofsoftware layers that control various aspects of the architecture. As with any computer network, the Internet physically consists ofrouters, media (such as cabling and radio links), repeaters, and modems. However, as an example ofinternetworking, many of the network nodes are not necessarily Internet equipment per se. Internet packets are carried by other full-fledged networking protocols, with the Internet acting as a homogeneous networking standard, running acrossheterogeneous hardware, with the packets guided to their destinations by IP routers.[citation needed]
Service tiers
Packet routing across the Internet involves several tiers of Internet service providers.
Internet service providers (ISPs) establish worldwide connectivity between individual networks at various levels of scope. At the top of the routing hierarchy are thetier 1 networks, large telecommunication companies that exchange traffic directly with each other via very high speedfiber-optic cables and governed bypeering agreements.Tier 2 and lower-level networks buyInternet transit from other providers to reach at least some parties on the global Internet, though they may also engage inpeering. End-users who only access the Internet when needed to perform a function or obtain information, represent the bottom of the routing hierarchy.[citation needed]
An ISP may use a single upstream provider for connectivity, or implementmultihoming to achieve redundancy and load balancing.Internet exchange points are major traffic exchanges with physical connections to multiple ISPs. Large organizations, such as academic institutions, large enterprises, and governments, may perform the same function as ISPs, engaging in peering and purchasing transit on behalf of their internal networks. Research networks tend to interconnect with large subnetworks such asGEANT,GLORIAD,Internet2, and the UK'snational research and education network,JANET.[citation needed]
The Internet standards describe a framework known as theInternet protocol suite (also calledTCP/IP, based on the first two components.) This is a suite of protocols that are ordered into a set of four conceptionallayers by the scope of their operation, originally documented inRFC1122 andRFC1123:[citation needed]
At the top is theapplication layer, where communication is described in terms of the objects or data structures most appropriate for each application. For example, a web browser operates in aclient–server application model and exchanges information with theHyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and an application-germane data structure, such as theHyperText Markup Language (HTML).[citation needed]
Below this top layer, thetransport layer connects applications on different hosts with alogical channel through the network. It provides this service with a variety of possible characteristics, such as ordered, reliable delivery (TCP), and an unreliable datagram service (UDP).[citation needed]
Underlying these layers are the networking technologies that interconnect networks at their borders and exchange traffic across them. TheInternet layer implements theInternet Protocol (IP) which enables computers to identify and locate each other byIP address and route their traffic via intermediate transit networks.[148] The Internet Protocol layer code is independent of the type of network that it is physically running over.[citation needed]
At the bottom of the architecture is thelink layer, which connects nodes on the same physical link, and contains protocols that do not require routers for traversal to other links. The protocol suite does not explicitly specify hardware methods to transfer bits, or protocols to manage such hardware, but assumes that appropriate technology is available. Examples of that technology includeWi-Fi,Ethernet, andDSL.[citation needed]
As user data is processed through the protocol stack, each abstraction layer adds encapsulation information at the sending host. Data is transmittedover the wire at the link level between hosts and routers. Encapsulation is removed by the receiving host. Intermediate relays update link encapsulation at each hop, and inspect the IP layer for routing purposes.
Internet protocol
Conceptual data flow in a simple network topology of two hosts (A andB) connected by a link between their respective routers. The application on each host executes read and write operations as if the processes were directly connected to each other by some kind of data pipe. After the establishment of this pipe, most details of the communication are hidden from each process, as the underlying principles of communication are implemented in the lower protocol layers.
The most prominent component of the Internet model is the Internet Protocol. IP enables internetworking, essentially establishing the Internet itself. Two versions of the Internet Protocol exist,IPv4 andIPv6.[citation needed] Aside from the complex array of physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercialcontracts (e.g.,peering agreements), and by technical specifications or protocols that describe the exchange of data over the network.[citation needed]
IP Addresses
A DNS resolver consults three name servers to resolve the domain name user-visible "www.wikipedia.org" to determine the IPv4 Address 207.142.131.234.
For locating individual computers on the network, the Internet providesIP addresses. IP addresses are used by the Internet infrastructure to direct internet packets to their destinations. They consist of fixed-length numbers, which are found within the packet. IP addresses are generally assigned to equipment either automatically viaDynamic Host Configuration Protocol, or are configured.[citation needed]
Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a32-bit number.[148] IPv4 is the initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in dominant use. It was designed in 1981 to address up to ≈4.3 billion (109) hosts. However, the explosive growth of the Internet has led toIPv4 address exhaustion, which entered its final stage in 2011,[149] when the global IPv4 address allocation pool was exhausted.
IPv6
Because of the growth of the Internet and thedepletion of available IPv4 addresses, a new version of IPIPv6, was developed in the mid-1990s, which provides vastly larger addressing capabilities and more efficient routing of Internet traffic. IPv6 uses 128 bits for the IP address and was standardized in 1998.[150][151][152]IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s and is currently in growing deployment around the world, sinceInternet address registries began to urge all resource managers to plan rapid adoption and conversion.[153]
By design, IPv6 is not directly interoperable with IPv4. Instead, it establishes a parallel version of the Internet not directly accessible with IPv4 software. Thus, translation facilities exist for internetworking, and some nodes have duplicate networking software for both networks. Essentially all modern computeroperating systems support both versions of the Internet Protocol.[citation needed] Network infrastructure, however, has been lagging in this development.[citation needed]
Subnets
Creating a subnet by dividing the host identifier
Asubnet or subnetwork is a logical subdivision of anIP network.[154]: 1, 16 Computers that belong to a subnet are addressed with an identicalmost-significant bit-group in their IP addresses. This results in the logical division of an IP address into two fields, the network number or routing prefix and the rest field or host identifier. Therest field is an identifier for a specifichost or network interface.[citation needed]
The routing prefix may be expressed inClassless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation written as the first address of a network, followed by a slash character (/), and ending with the bit-length of the prefix. For example,198.51.100.0/24 is the prefix of theInternet Protocol version 4 network starting at the given address, having 24 bits allocated for the network prefix, and the remaining 8 bits reserved for host addressing. Addresses in the range198.51.100.0 to198.51.100.255 belong to this network. The IPv6 address specification2001:db8::/32 is a large address block with 296 addresses, having a 32-bit routing prefix.[citation needed]
For IPv4, a network may also be characterized by itssubnet mask ornetmask, which is thebitmask that when applied by abitwise AND operation to any IP address in the network, yields the routing prefix. Subnet masks are also expressed indot-decimal notation like an address. For example,255.255.255.0 is the subnet mask for the prefix198.51.100.0/24.[citation needed]
Routing
Computers and routers userouting tables in their operating system to forward IP packets to reach a node on a different subnetwork. Routing tables are maintained by manual configuration or automatically byrouting protocols. End-nodes typically use adefault route that points toward an ISP providing transit, while ISP routers use theBorder Gateway Protocol to establish the most efficient routing across the complex connections of the global Internet.[citation needed]
Thedefault gateway is thenode that serves as the forwarding host (router) to other networks when no other route specification matches the destinationIP address of a packet.[155][156]
Internet resources, hardware, and software components are the target of criminal or malicious attempts to gain unauthorized control to cause interruptions, commit fraud, engage in blackmail or access private information.[157]
Malware poses serious problems to individuals and businesses on the Internet.[159][160] According toSymantec's 2018 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), malware variants number has increased to 669,947,865 in 2017, which is twice as many malware variants as in 2016.[161]Cybercrime, which includes malware attacks as well as other crimes committed by computer, was predicted to cost the world economy US$6 trillion in 2021, and is increasing at a rate of 15% per year.[162] Since 2021, malware has been designed to target computer systems that run critical infrastructure such as theelectricity distribution network.[163][164] Malware can be designed to evade antivirus software detection algorithms.[165][166]
The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring ofdata andtraffic on the Internet.[167] In the United States for example, under theCommunications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc.) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by Federal law enforcement agencies.[168][169][170] Under the Act, all U.S. telecommunications providers are required to installpacket sniffing technology to allow Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to intercept all of their customers'broadband Internet and VoIP traffic.[171][d]
The large amount of data gathered from packet capture requires surveillance software that filters and reports relevant information, such as the use of certain words or phrases, the access to certain types of web sites, or communicating via email or chat with certain parties.[172] Agencies, such as theInformation Awareness Office,NSA,GCHQ and theFBI, spend billions of dollars per year to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems for interception and analysis of data.[173] Similar systems are operated byIranian secret police to identify and suppress dissidents. The required hardware and software were allegedly installed by GermanSiemens AG and FinnishNokia.[174]
In Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily agreed to restrict access to sites listed by authorities. While this list of forbidden resources is supposed to contain only known child pornography sites, the content of the list is secret.[180]
Many countries, including the United States, have enacted laws against the possession or distribution of certain material, such aschild pornography, via the Internet but do not mandate filter software. Many free or commercially available software programs, calledcontent-control software are available to users to block offensive specific on individual computers or networks in order to limit access by children to pornographic material or depiction of violence.[citation needed]
Performance
As the Internet is a heterogeneous network, its physical characteristics, including, for example thedata transfer rates of connections, vary widely. It exhibitsemergent phenomena that depend on its large-scale organization.[181]
The volume ofInternet traffic is difficult to measure because no single point of measurement exists in the multi-tiered, non-hierarchical topology. Traffic data may be estimated from the aggregate volume through the peering points of theTier 1 network providers, but traffic that stays local in large provider networks may not be accounted for.[citation needed]
Outages
AnInternet blackout or outage can be caused by local signaling interruptions. Disruptions ofsubmarine communications cables may cause blackouts or slowdowns to large areas, such as in the2008 submarine cable disruption. Less-developed countries are more vulnerable due to the small number of high-capacity links. Land cables are also vulnerable, as in 2011 when a woman digging for scrap metal severed most connectivity for the nation of Armenia.[182] Internet blackouts affecting almost entire countries can be achieved by governments as a form ofInternet censorship, as in the blockage of theInternet in Egypt, whereby approximately 93%[183] of networks were without access in 2011 in an attempt to stop mobilization foranti-government protests.[184]
Energy use
Estimates of the Internet'selectricity usage have been the subject of controversy, according to a 2014 peer-reviewed research paper that found claims differing by a factor of 20,000 published in the literature during the preceding decade, ranging from 0.0064kilowatt hours per gigabyte transferred (kWh/GB) to 136 kWh/GB.[185] The researchers attributed these discrepancies mainly to the year of reference (i.e. whether efficiency gains over time had been taken into account) and to whether "end devices such aspersonal computers and servers are included" in the analysis.[185]
In 2011, academic researchers estimated the overallenergy used by the Internet to be between 170 and 307GW, less than two percent of the energy used by humanity. This estimate included the energy needed to build, operate, and periodically replace the estimated 750 millionlaptops, a billionsmart phones and 100 million servers worldwide as well as the energy that routers,cell towers,optical switches,Wi-Fi transmitters andcloud storage devices use when transmittingInternet traffic.[186][187] According to a non-peer-reviewed study published in 2018 byThe Shift Project (a French think tank funded by corporate sponsors), nearly 4% of globalCO2 emissions could be attributed to globaldata transfer and the necessary infrastructure.[188] The study also said thatonline video streaming alone accounted for 60% of this data transfer and therefore contributed to over 300 million tons of CO2 emission per year, and argued for new "digital sobriety" regulations restricting the use and size of video files.[189]
^Despite the name, TCP/IP also includes UDP traffic, which is significant.[1]
^Computers communicate over the Internet by breaking up messages (emails, images, videos, web pages, files, etc.) into small chunks called packets, which are routed through a network of computers, until they reach their destination, where they are assembled back into a complete message again.
^Packet capture is the monitoring of data traffic on a computer network. A packet capture appliance intercepts these packets as they are traveling through the network, in order to examine their contents using other programs. Other programs are needed to perform traffic analysis and sift through intercepted data looking for important/useful information.
^Due to legal concerns theOpenNet Initiative does not check for filtering ofchild pornography and because their classifications focus on technical filtering, they do not include other types of censorship.
^abcCerf, V.; Kahn, R. (1974)."A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication"(PDF).IEEE Transactions on Communications.22 (5):637–648.Bibcode:1974ITCom..22..637C.doi:10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259.ISSN1558-0857.Archived(PDF) from the original on 13 September 2006.The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.
^"HTML 4.01 Specification". World Wide Web Consortium.Archived from the original on 6 October 2008. Retrieved13 August 2008.[T]he link (or hyperlink, or Web link) [is] the basic hypertext construct. A link is a connection from one Web resource to another. Although a simple concept, the link has been one of the primary forces driving the success of the Web.
^ab"A Flaw in the Design".The Washington Post. 30 May 2015.Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved20 February 2020.The Internet was born of a big idea: Messages could be chopped into chunks, sent through a network in a series of transmissions, then reassembled by destination computers quickly and efficiently. Historians credit seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American engineer Paul Baran. ... The most important institutional force ... was the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ... as ARPA began work on a groundbreaking computer network, the agency recruited scientists affiliated with the nation's top universities.
^F. J. Corbató, et al.,The Compatible Time-Sharing System A Programmer's Guide (MIT Press, 1963)ISBN978-0-262-03008-3. "To establish the context of the present work, it is informative to trace the development of time-sharing at MIT. Shortly after the first paper on time-shared computers by C. Strachey at the June 1959 UNESCO Information Processing conference, H.M. Teager and J. McCarthy delivered an unpublished paper "Time-Shared Program Testing" at the August 1959 ACM Meeting."
^Abbate 1999, p. 3 "The manager of the ARPANET project, Lawrence Roberts, assembled a large team of computer scientists ... and he drew on the ideas of network experimenters in the United States and the United Kingdom. Cerf and Kahn also enlisted the help of computer scientists from England, France and the United States"
^by Vinton Cerf, as told to Bernard Aboba (1993)."How the Internet Came to Be". Archived fromthe original on 26 September 2017. Retrieved25 September 2017.We began doing concurrent implementations at Stanford, BBN, and University College London. So effort at developing the Internet protocols was international from the beginning.
^"The internet's fifth man".The Economist. 30 November 2013.ISSN0013-0613.Archived from the original on 19 April 2020. Retrieved22 April 2020.In the early 1970s Mr Pouzin created an innovative data network that linked locations in France, Italy and Britain. Its simplicity and efficiency pointed the way to a network that could connect not just dozens of machines, but millions of them. It captured the imagination of Dr Cerf and Dr Kahn, who included aspects of its design in the protocols that now power the internet.
^"Internet History in Asia".16th APAN Meetings/Advanced Network Conference in Busan.Archived from the original on 1 February 2006. Retrieved25 December 2005.
^Ward, Mark (3 August 2006)."How the web went world wide".Technology Correspondent. BBC News.Archived from the original on 21 November 2011. Retrieved24 January 2011.
^Carlson, Kathie; Flanagin, Michael N.; Martin, Kathleen; et al. (2010). Arm, Karen; Ueda, Kako; Thulin, Anne; et al. (eds.).The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images. Köln:Taschen. p. 518.ISBN978-3-8365-1448-4.
^Leiner, B M.; Cerf, V G.; Clark, D D.; Kahn, R E.; Kleinrock, L; Lynch, D C.; Postel, J; Roberts, L G.; Wolff, S (10 December 2003)."A Brief History of the Internet".the Internet Society. Archived fromthe original on 4 June 2007.
^"internaut".Oxford Dictionaries. Archived fromthe original on 13 June 2015. Retrieved6 June 2015.
^Mossberger, Karen; Tolbert, Caroline J.; McNeal, Ramona S. (2011).Digital Citizenship – The Internet, Society and Participation. SPIE Press.ISBN978-0-8194-5606-9.
^Caves, R. W. (2004).Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 180.
^Thornton, Patricia M. (2003). "The New Cybersects: Resistance and Repression in the Reform era". In Perry, Elizabeth; Selden, Mark (eds.).Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance (2 ed.). London and New York: Routledge. pp. 149–150.ISBN978-0-415-56074-0.
James Gleick, "How the Web Was Lost" (review ofTim Berners-Lee withStephen Witt,This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025, 389 pp.;Joanna Walsh,Amateurs! HowWe Built Internet Culture, and Why It Matters, Verso, 2025, 262 pp.; andCory Doctorow,Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, MCD, 338 pp.),The New York Review of Books, vol. LXXII, no. 19 (4 December 2025), pp. 6, 8, 10.
The Internet Explained, Vincent Zegna & Mike Pepper, Sonet Digital, November 2005, pp. 1–7.
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