Episode 2: The Internet

  

http://www.opte.org/

Onward!  We shall now traverse through the Internet!  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Internet is "a computer network consisting of or connecting a number of smaller networks, such as two or more local area networks connected by a shared communications protocol." [1]  But I think we all could have guessed at that by now.  The Internet has been compared to the Universe model many times as it's a network of stars.  The Internet is made up of two basic technology components:  protocols and structure.

The Internet is defined by it's protocols as you saw in the Oxford English Dictionary's definition.  It's based around hardware and software level protocols.  The hardware that builds the Internet (and it's networks) include routers and switches.  You can read more about routers in one of my earlier blog posts.  The main software level protocol is the IP (Internet Protocol), which is defined and maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).  More about the protocol suite can be found here, but basically, it's made up of several layers of protocols and standards.  The structure of the Internet is based around the "scale-free" network, which is mathematically explained here but basically, the frequency of use by each node in the network determines how many connections that node has to other nodes.  The structure of the Internet is still being debated, but the scale-free model appears to be the best-fit.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

The Internet as we know it began development in the late 1960s, early 1970s, with ARPANET and Mark I.  You can find a timeline of events here if you are curious.  Individual groups in education and government worked to develop local area networks that they then interconnected.  With the birth of email in the late 70s, the idea of a public network was introduced.  Then the IP protocol was defined in the early 1980s to standardized all communications.  Also in the early 1980s, the personal desktop became a reality introducing more nodes to the network.  And it has grown in leaps and bounds since then into what we have today.

http://img.labnol.org/di/periodictableoftheinterum5.jpg

More Resources:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-infrastructure.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#Technology