Internet

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link billions of devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to research and development commissioned by the United States government, the Government of the UK and France in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks.[1] [2] [3] [4] This work, led to the primary precursor networks, the ARPANET, in the United States, Manchester Mark 1 in the United Kingdom and CYCLADES in France. The interconnection of regional academic networks in the 1980s marks the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet.[5] From the early 1990s, the network experienced sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to it.

Although the Internet has been widely used by academia since the 1980s, the commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of contemporary life. Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world. In the 20 years since 1995, Internet use has grown 100-times, measured for the period of one year, to over one third of the world population.[6][7]

Most traditional communications media, including telephony and television, are being reshaped or redefined by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as Internet telephony and Internet television. Newspaper, book, and other print...