Difference between revisions of "Internet"

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The '''Internet''' (note the capital 'I'; just as there are 'white houses', but only one 'White House', there are many 'internets' - the short form of the term [[internetwork]] - but only one 'Internet') is the world's dominant information network.
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The '''Internet''' (note the capital 'I'; just as there are 'white houses', but only one 'White House', there are many 'internets', but only one 'Internet') is an [[internetwork|internet]] (the short form of the term [[internetwork]]) which is the world's dominant information network.
  
Its most important technical consituent is the [[Internet Protocol]], a [[protocol]] which offers direct [[datagram]] carriage across the entire network, providing an unreliable service which makes no guarantees that [[packet]]s will not be damaged, delayed, duplicated or re-ordered.
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It uses the [[TCP/IP]] [[protocol suite]] for communication.
  
This lack of any delivery guarantees makes the job, and implementation, of [[router]]s, the [[packet switch]]es that form the lowest layer of the networking infrastructure (along with the [[physical network]]s that connect them), '''''much''''' simpler.
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It is to some degree a direct descendant of the ground-breaking [[ARPANET]], but only in the sense that its early dominant application protocols ([[TELNET]], [[FTP]], and [[email]]) were direct clones of those of the ARPANET; and that the technical community which created it was an overlap/descendant of the one which produced the ARPANET. (See the TCP/IP article for more on TCP/IP's antecedants.)
 
 
This means that it is the job of the protocols above the [[internetworking layer]] in the [[TCP/IP]] [[protocol suite]] (the protocol family used in the Internet) to ensure reliable data carriage on an [[end to end]] basis; these do so using [[sequence number]]s, [[timeout]]s, and [[retransmission]].
 
 
 
==History==
 
 
 
It is to some degree a direct descendant of the ground-breaking [[ARPANET]], but only in the sense that its early dominant application protocols ([[TELNET]], [[FTP]], and [[email]]) were direct clones of those of the ARPANET; and that the technical community which created it was an overlap/descendant of the one that produced the ARPANET.
 
 
 
At its bottom layers, the Internet is to some degree ''sui generis'', although it was heavily influenced by the ground-breaking [[CYCLADES]] network.
 
  
 
[[Category: Networking]]
 
[[Category: Networking]]

Revision as of 23:01, 13 June 2018

The Internet (note the capital 'I'; just as there are 'white houses', but only one 'White House', there are many 'internets', but only one 'Internet') is an internet (the short form of the term internetwork) which is the world's dominant information network.

It uses the TCP/IP protocol suite for communication.

It is to some degree a direct descendant of the ground-breaking ARPANET, but only in the sense that its early dominant application protocols (TELNET, FTP, and email) were direct clones of those of the ARPANET; and that the technical community which created it was an overlap/descendant of the one which produced the ARPANET. (See the TCP/IP article for more on TCP/IP's antecedants.)