Portal:Internet

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Internet Portal

The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists 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 a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to research that enabled the time-sharing of computer resources and the development of packet switching in the 1960s which led to the design of computer networks for data communication. The set of rules (communication protocols) to enable internetworking on the Internet arose from research and development commissioned in the 1970s by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense in collaboration with universities and researchers across the United States and in the United Kingdom and France. The ARPANET initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the United States to enable resource sharing. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, encouraged worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and the merger of many networks using DARPA's Internet protocol suite. The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s, as well as the advent of the World Wide Web, marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network. Although the Internet was widely used by academia in the 1980s, the subsequent commercialization in the 1990s and beyond incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

edit

Selected article

Bomis (/ˈbɒmɪs/, from Bitter Old Men in Suits; rhyming with "promise") was a dot-com company best known for supporting the creations of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. It was co-founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis. By 2007, the company was inactive, with its Wikipedia-related resources transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation.

The company initially tried a number of ideas for content, including being a directory of information about Chicago. The site subsequently focused on content geared to a male audience, including information on sporting activities, automobiles, and women. Bomis became successful after focusing on pornography. "Bomis Babes" was devoted to erotic images; the "Bomis Babe Report" featured adult pictures. Bomis Premium, available for an additional fee, provided explicit material. "The Babe Engine" helped users find erotic content through a web search engine. The advertising director for Bomis noted that 99 percent of queries on the site were for nude women. (Full article...)

More selected articles

Read more

edit

Selected picture

Credit: A. Fielder

In computer networking, a wireless access point (WAP or AP) is a device that connects wireless communication devices together to form a wireless network. The WAP usually connects to a wired network, and can relay data between wireless devices and wired devices. Several WAPs can link together to form a larger network that allows "roaming".

More selected pictures

Read more

edit

News

Wikinews Internet portal

More at Wikinews

edit

WikiProjects

Main project: WikiProject Internet
Related WikiProjects: Blogging • Websites • Early Web History • Internet culture

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that Julia Allison has been described as one of the first influencers?
... that since 2018, IKEA's stuffed toy shark Blåhaj has become a popular Internet meme and an icon of the online transgender community?
... that Demi Lovato started an Internet feud with a frozen yogurt shop—and lost?
... that two years after Instagram's Dear White Staffers started out as a small meme account, it was credited with kickstarting the unionization of U.S. congressional staff?
... that Davide Soliani, the creator of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, became an Internet meme for crying on stage?
... that Joanna Cherry showed a printed copy of an Internet meme featuring Lily Hoshikawa during a UK parliamentary committee meeting?

edit

Selected biography

William Ford Gibson, born March 17, 1948 (age 76), in Conway, South Carolina is an American-Canadian writer who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. Gibson coined the term cyberspace in 1982, and popularized the concept in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984). In depicting a visualised worldwide communications network before the ubiquity of the Internet, Gibson is credited with anticipating important aspects, and establishing the conceptual foundations, of the Internet and the Web in particular. Although much of Gibson's reputation has remained rooted in Neuromancer, his work has continued to evolve conceptually and stylistically. After expanding on Neuromancer with two more novels to complete the dystopic Sprawl trilogy, Gibson became central to an entirely new science fiction subgenre—steampunk—with the publication in 1990 of the alternate history novel The Difference Engine, written in collaboration with Bruce Sterling. In the 1990s he composed the Bridge trilogy of novels, which focused on sociological observations of near future urban environments and late stage capitalism. His most recent novels—Pattern Recognition (2003), and Spook Country (2007)—are both set in a contemporary universe and have put Gibson's work onto mainstream bestseller lists for the first time.

More selected biographies

Read more

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various internet-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 11997 advertisement in State Magazine by the US State Department Library for sessions introducing the then-unfamiliar Web (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 2First Internet demonstration, linking the ARPANET, PRNET, and SATNET on November 22, 1977 (from History of the Internet)
Image 3Stamped envelope of Russian Post issued in 1993 with stamp and graphics dedicated to first Russian underwater digital optic cable laid in 1993 by Rostelecom from Kingisepp to Copenhagen (from History of the Internet)
Image 4Wi-Fi logo (from Internet access)
Image 5The "message block", designed by Paul Baran in 1962 and refined in 1964, is the first proposal of a data packet. (from History of the Internet)
Image 6
Internet users in 2015 as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 7
Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 8Robert Cailliau, Jean-François Abramatic, and Tim Berners-Lee at the tenth anniversary of the World Wide Web Consortium (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 9
Broadband affordability in 2011
This map presents an overview of broadband affordability, as the relationship between average yearly income per capita and the cost of a broadband subscription (data referring to 2011). Source: Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute. (from Internet access)
Image 10
Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 11T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992 (from History of the Internet)
Image 12
Number of Internet hosts worldwide: 1969–2019
Source: Internet Systems Consortium. (from History of the Internet)
Image 13
Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 14BBN Technologies TCP/IP Internet map of early 1986 (from History of the Internet)
Image 15Satellite Internet access via VSAT in Ghana (from Internet access)
Image 16
Internet users in 2023 as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 17Postage stamp of Azerbaijan (2004): 35 Years of the Internet, 1969–2004 (from History of the Internet)
Image 18Internet Connectivity Access layer (from Internet access)
Image 19The digital divide measured in terms of bandwidth is not closing, but fluctuating up and down. Gini coefficients for telecommunication capacity (in kbit/s) among individuals worldwide (from Internet access)
Image 20Where the WEB was born (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 21The NeXT Computer used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN became the first Web server. (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 22Wi-Fi range diagram (from Internet access)
Image 23The corridor where the World Wide Web was born, on the ground floor of building No. 1 at CERN (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 24
Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 25Map of the TCP/IP test network in February 1982 (from History of the Internet)

edit

Selected quote

Computing is not about computers. It is about life. We are discussing a fundamental cultural change: Being digital is not just being a geek or Internet surfer or mathematically savvy child. It is actually a way of living and is going to impact everything.

— Nicholas Negroponte, 1995

More selected quotes

More at Wikiquote

edit

More Did you know...

... that Erik Möller (pictured), Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, helped to develop both Wikinews and Wikimedia Commons?
...that Egg Banking plc is now the world's largest "pure" Internet bank, meaning it's only accessible from the Internet?
... that anarchist Internet archive Spunk Library was once falsely accused of collaborating with the terrorist guerrilla outfit Red Army Faction?

More did you know facts

edit

Main topics

Internet

Articles: Application layer; ARPANET; Blog; Browsers; CERN; Collaborative software; Computer file; Computer network; Computer networking; DARPA; Data (computing); Electronic commerce; E-mail; English on the Internet; FidoNet; File sharing; History of the Internet; HTML; HyperCard; Hyperlink; ICANN; Instant messaging; Internet access; Internet capitalization conventions; Internet censorship; Internet Control Message Protocol; Internet democracy; Internet Exchange Point; Internet Governance Forum; Internet privacy; Internet Protocol; Internet protocols; Internet research; Internetworking; Massively multiplayer online role-playing game; Mosaic (web browser); National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Net neutrality; Online chat; Peering; Remote access; Transmission Control Protocol; Scale-free network; Search engine; Security; Social network service; Unicode; Uniform resource locator; User agent; User Datagram Protocol; ViolaWWW; Virtual private network; VoIP; Web browser; Web resource; Web service; Wide area network; World Summit on the Information Society; World Wide Web

edit

Featured content

Extended content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Internet}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.