The Internet is everywhere these days, being accessed on phones and tablets, tied into our cameras and our TV’s. Wi-Fi is accessible from everywhere these days, overall we can say that internet has become an essential part of our life now.
But it is very hard to believe that it has not been long since internet was launched and within a very short amount of time since its introduction we have already become very much dependent on internet and now it is almost think about our lives without internet.
Hence to celebrate the importance and the legacy created by the internet we celebrates the National Internet Day annually on October 29th in the United States.
The Internet was developed by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf in the 1970s. They began the design of what we today know as the ‘internet.’ It was the result of another research experiment which was called ARPANET, which stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. This was initially supposed to be a communications system for the Defense Team of the United States of America – a network that would also survive a nuclear attack. It eventually became a successful nationwide experimental packet network.
However it is Tim Berners-Lee who is known as the father of the internet as he was the one who led the development of the World Wide Web, the defining of HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), HTML (hypertext markup language) used to create web pages, and URLs (Universal Resource Locators). The development of WWW, HTTP, HTML and URLs took place between 1989 and 1991. Tim Berners-Lee was born in London and he graduated in Physics from Oxford University in 1976. Currently, Tim Berners-Lee is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, the group that sets technical standards for the web.
Although the Internet was developed much earlier, it only became popular in households in the 1990s. The emergence of the Internet can be tracked by how many businesses and homes started changing the way they worked and started connecting their laptops and other devices to the Internet. However, the concept of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) as we know it today, was created only during this time. This meant that people could access the same web pages on their devices now and share information.
There has been a dramatic growth in the number of internet users since its inception. As a result, the number of computer networks that are connected has grown exponentially too. It started with only connecting less than ten computers initially. Today, 440 million computers can be connected directly, making life easier for people across the globe. Sharing information and knowledge has become extremely easy for those that have access to the Internet. Most of the world now is already connected with internet with China having largest number of internet users.
The Internet is a short form for an interconnected network. It has become a vital part of our lives, helping us connect with people all over the world. The Internet is made up of a large number of independently operated networks. It is fully distributed with no central control. Each independently-operated system is motivated to ensure that there is end-to-end connectivity of every part of the network. In simple words, Internet is a wire that runs underground and allows two computers to communicate with each other. A server is a particular computer that is connected directly to the Internet.
Many technologies in the past had promised to connect the world in a way like never before be it be the mail service, telegraph, and the telephone, to name a few but none of them succeeded with such scale and speed as the web. It is very hard to believe that internet only came to commercial usage some thirty years ago and now internet seems like it has been with us for centuries as it is so widespread. Internet has completely revolutionized our world and no other technology had ever created a impact such as internet.
When internet was not there only the world’s wealthiest individuals and premier institutions had access to a library of information comparable with what’s easily available online today. While it’s still not an entirely free process, the price of information access has fallen dramatically with the rise of the internet, putting infinite information into the pockets of billions across the globe. So internet has played a huge a role in educating the world since its inception and it is still making large differences in our world.
National Internet Day celebrates the origin of the very first internet transmission ever sent, and from it the utterly world-changing series of events that followed. People are able to video conference from around the world, and the information is stored and transmitted at unbelievable rates between computers and friends and family. Internet has made our lives very easy may it cones to access to information to entertainment or to any other work and that’s why we celebrates and honors internet on National Internet Day!
Let’s learn about some very interesting facts and figures related to internet to expand our knowledge about it:
1. When is National Internet Day celebrated?
National Internet Day is annually celebrated on October 29th in US.
2. Which country has the largest number of internet users?
China has the largest number of internet users with over one billion users.
3. Who is called father of the Internet?
Tim Berners-Lee is popularly referred as the father of the Internet.