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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. 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...)

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Selected article

The iLoo (short for Internet loo) was a cancelled Microsoft project to develop a Wi-Fi Internet-enabled portable toilet. The iLoo, which was to debut at British summer festivals, was described as being a portable toilet with wireless broadband Internet, an adjustable plasma screen, a membrane wireless keyboard, a six-channel speaker system, and toilet paper embossed with popular web site addresses. The iLoo was also to have an extra screen and keyboard on the outside, and was to be guarded. It was intended as the next in a series of successful initiatives by MSN UK which sought to introduce the internet in unusual locations, including MSN Street, MSN Park Bench and MSN Deckchair.

The project was announced by MSN UK on April 30, 2003, and was widely ridiculed before being declared a hoax by Microsoft on May 12. On May 13, another Microsoft press release stated that although the project had not been a hoax, it had been cancelled because it would do little to promote the MSN brand. There has since been speculation as to whether the project was cancelled for fear of being sued by Andrew Cubitt, who had invented the similarly named product "i-Loo". The iLoo was described as a public relations "debacle" by Online Journalism Review.

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Credit: WiGLE.net

Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks by a person in a moving vehicle using a Wi-Fi-equipped computer, such as a laptop or a PDA. It is similar to using a radio scanner, or to the amateur radio practice of DXing.

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News

Wikinews Internet portal

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WikiProjects

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

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

... that Monique Corzilius did not realize that she was the girl featured in the famous "Daisy" advertisement until the 2000s, when she searched for the commercial on the Internet?
... that the skeleton panda sea squirt was known on the Internet for its skeleton-like appearance years before its formal description?
... that a pro-EU explanation of how Baileys is made, given by British MP Mike Gapes, was described as being "infinitely memeable" and giving him a "bizarre online infamy"?
... that Joanna Cherry showed a printed copy of an Internet meme featuring Lily Hoshikawa during a UK parliamentary committee meeting?
... that the song "Dance the Night" killed a viral meme about Dua Lipa's hip twist, as news about the song replaced it in online search results?
... that Davide Soliani, the creator of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, became an Internet meme for crying on stage?

Selected biography

Douglas C. Engelbart (born January 30, 1925 in Oregon) is an American inventor of Swedish and Norwegian descent. As a World War II naval radio technician based in the Philippines, Engelbart was inspired by Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think". Engelbart received a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University in 1948, a B.Eng. from UC Berkeley in 1952, and a Ph.D. in EECS from UC Berkeley in 1955. At Stanford Research Institute , Engelbart was the primary force behind the design and development of the On-Line System, or NLS. He and his team at the Augmentation Research Center developed computer-interface elements such as bit-mapped screens, groupware, hypertext and precursors to the graphical user interface. In 1967, Engelbart applied for and later received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse). Engelbart later revealed that it was nicknamed the "mouse" because the tail came out the end. He would also work on the ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet. In later years he moved to the private firm Tymshare after SRI was transferred to the company. McDonnell Douglas took over the copany in 1982, and in 1986 he left the company. As of 2007, he is the director of his own company, the Bootstrap Institute, which founded in 1988 and located in Fremont, California.

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

Image 1
Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 2BBN Technologies TCP/IP Internet map of early 1986 (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 range diagram (from Internet access)
Image 5
Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 6T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992 (from History of the Internet)
Image 7Robert 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 8Satellite Internet access via VSAT in Ghana (from Internet access)
Image 9Internet Connectivity Access layer (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 11
Internet users in 2015 as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 121997 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 13Wi-Fi logo (from Internet access)
Image 14
Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 15
Number of Internet hosts worldwide: 1969–2019
Source: Internet Systems Consortium. (from History of the Internet)
Image 16The "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 17
Internet users in 2023 as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 18Map of the TCP/IP test network in February 1982 (from History of the Internet)
Image 19The 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 20First Internet demonstration, linking the ARPANET, PRNET, and SATNET on November 22, 1977 (from History of the Internet)
Image 21The 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 22
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 23The NeXT Computer used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN became the first Web server. (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 24Postage stamp of Azerbaijan (2004): 35 Years of the Internet, 1969–2004 (from History of the Internet)
Image 25Where the WEB was born (from History of the World Wide Web)

Selected quote

I mean, you go to the Internet and you can see all these conversations and arguments that our fans have about our music and that's wonderful to know, that people would take the time to be that involved.

— Alex Lifeson, 1998

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More Did you know...

...that the docu-drama The Road to Guantanamo, depicting the incarceration of three British detainees at Guantanamo Bay, is the first film to be released simultaneously in theatres, on DVD and on the Internet?
... that in 2009, the video sharing website Trilulilu was one of the most visited websites in Romania, with an average of 2.2 million unique visitors per month?
...that the All Sky Automated Survey is a Polish astronomical project based in Chile, controlled remotely from Poland through the Internet, and that it has discovered two comets since 1996 with a tiny budget?