Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) || Information Technology Services (ITS) || [Disclaimer]

What is Internet?

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The Internet is a worldwide collection of computer networks connecting academic, governmental, commercial, and organizational sites. It provides access to communication services and information resources to millions of users around the globe. Internet services include direct communication (e-mail, chat), online conferencing (Usenet News, e-mail discussion lists), distributed information resources (World Wide Web, Gopher), remote login and file transfer (telnet, ftp), and many other valuable tools and resources.

While the networks that make up the Internet are based on a standard set of protocols (a mutually agreed upon method of communication between parties), the Internet also has gateways to networks and services that are based on other protocols.

The Internet connects millions of computers (hosts) worldwide. The underlying protocol with which these systems communicate is called TCP/IP. Any computer system directly connected to the network has a domain name and an IP (numeric) address. The domain names are typically of the form system.site.domain;e.g., nps.navy.mil. The most common domain types are:

.com
commercial organization
.edu
educational organization
.gov
government organization
.mil
military (DoD) organization
.net
network organization
.org
non-profit organization
.au, .uk...
country codes for countries other than the USA

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