So, What Is The Internet, Anyway?
by Eric Alman

Millions of people are flocking to the internet as a public medium for commerce and pleasure. Not long ago, however, the internet was a Cold War defense communications system.

	Eric Alman, son of Glu-Lam's owners Phil and Elaine, is heading into his junior year at the University of Montana as a Physics major. Eric has been working at Glu-Lam-Log as long as he can remember, and has done everything from pulling weeds at the plant to maintaining computers and processing bulk mailings. Now, he's attempting to put some of his college education to use by trying his hand as a contributing author for Glu-Lam-Log Notes.

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With all this talk of the World Wide Web and the Internet, it’s natural to wonder just what the heck they are! Are they the same thing? If not, what’s the difference? Well, when you get on your computer and open Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, you’re looking at the World Wide Web. The web is really a realm of imaginary space. When people create web sites, they are using a small piece of this imaginary space to create doorways that lead you to the information they have to offer. Once you open these doorways, the information itself gets to you through the Internet. While the web is intangible, the Internet is completely real. It is made up of computers, cables, wires and hardware. Basically, the Internet is a huge system of computers that are connected together; it is a vast network of networks.

	Some of the more popular forms of internet communication: e-mail, FTP downloading, and of course, the World-Wide-Web.

It all started back in the late 1960’s, when the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an agency in the United States Department of Defense, wanted to find ways to make it easier to communicate within the Defense Department. Their idea was to find ways to connect separate computer networks, finding a way to let the networks talk to each other. This seemed to be a good idea, so the government gave grants to several universities and private corporations to stimulate research in the area.

Point-to-point protocol (PPP) has become the most common method of using a modem to connect to an internet service provider.

The interest in internetworking grew and grew; by 1986, ARPANET was connected to all the major universities and research facilities in the country, and was even linked via satellite to international locations. In this same year, however, the National Science Foundation created a new network, NSFNET, to connect super-computers across the nation. This network quickly grew to replace the original internetwork established by the Defense Department, and ARPANET quickly became obsolete. When ARPANET was officially dismantled in 1990, NSFNET became the foundation of the Internet in the United States.

Up to this point, access to the Internet had been largely restricted; the average person couldn’t use it. But when the High Performance Computing Act was passed in 1991, businesses and commercial corporations were allowed to connect to the Internet. Now that the public could use the Internet, it grew faster than ever. When NFSNET was dismantled in 1995, commercial networks were left as the roots of the Internet, and this is where things stand today.

The internet is not owned by anyone. Nobody has more of a right to use it than anybody else does. It is, however, directed by a group called the Internet Society, which is made up of volunteers. Most of the people in this society are people who played a role in getting the Internet to where it is. The development of the Internet is guided by the Internet Activities Board, which is appointed by the Internet Society.

	All computers connected to the internet -- even home computers connected through a dialup connection -- require a unique IP address in order to send and receive information.

The true way information is sent across the Internet is pretty complicated. It’s far too complicated for me to understand, and even if I could understand it, I doubt I could explain it. There are just too many big words that sound like they belong in an episode of Star Trek. But the idea is simple. Basically, a file from your computer is taken apart into small bundles of information. Each bundle is stamped with an address and labeled as to where it fits into the original file. Then, each bundle of information takes off across the cables and wires that make up the Internet. During their journey, they meet a bunch of devices called routers. Routers are basically the traffic cops of the Internet; they tell each bundle which way to go, and try to prevent traffic jams. Once all the bundles reach their destination, they are put back together like a puzzle. This whole process usually takes less than one second.

There’s a lot more to the history of the Internet and how it works than is explained in this article, but it’s definitely interesting to scratch the surface like this. With life becoming more and more “global” every day, the Internet will continue to prove its worth as a useful tool in modern society.