What is the Web?
The Internet
The Internet is a worldwide system of computers. (a bowl of soup, and a car)
The system was developed by the US DOD as a part of ARPA (Advanced
Research Projects Agency). Since its start in the 60's, it has grown to
over 2 million hosts, each of which typically has at least one user.
The internet allows users to communicate in text and pictures and any other
form of information quickly across large distances.
The Web
The Worldwide Web is a project started at CERN in Switzerland in 1990. It has
since grown explosively, and has attracted unusual attention in terms of its
growth rate and popularity.
Why you want to have a presence on the Internet
In all likelyhood, you have heard a lot of media commentary on the upcoming
"Information Superhighway". The Internet is what will become the "Information
Superhighway". When this Infobahn is in place, substantially more information
will be able to transmitted across the net, more quickly. The amount of data
that currently goes over the net is certainly not small though. In a typical
month, 10 Terabytes of data go over the NSF backbone, which carries traffic
over the net between distant points. Ten terabytes is 100,000 encyclopedia
sets. The internet is growing at an enormous rate as well.
There has been a lot of recent media attention to the internet, and for good
reason. Businesses are beginning to establish their presence on the Internet,
providing services and information