313. Net & Web

Net  &  Web

The Difference between the Internet and World Wide Web

 

        Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (aka. the Web) interchangeably, but in fact the two terms are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things.

What is The Internet?

        The Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure.

        It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet.

        Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.

What is The Web (World Wide Web)?

        The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet.

        It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet.

        The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data.

        Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the Web to share information.

        The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks.

        Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.

Question: What Is the Difference Between the Internet and the Web?

People commonly use the words "Internet" and "Web" interchangeably. This usage is technically incorrect.

Answer:

        The Internet and the World Wide Web have a whole-to-part relationship.

        The Internet is the large container, and the Web is a part within the container.

        It is common in daily conversation to abbreviate them as the "Net" and the "Web", and then swap the words interchangeably.

        But to be technically precise, the Net is the restaurant, and the Web is the most popular dish on the menu.


1: The Internet is a Big Collection of Computers and Cables.

The Internet is named for "interconnection of computer networks". It is a massive hardware combination of millions of personal, business, and governmental computers, all connected like roads and highways. The Internet started in the 1960's under the original name "ARPAnet". ARPAnet was originally an experiment in how the US military could maintain communications in case of a possible nuclear strike. With time, ARPAnet became a civilian experiment, connecting university mainframe computers for academic purposes. As personal computers became more mainstream in the 1980's and 1990's, the Internet grew exponentially as more users plugged their computers into the massive network. Today, the Internet has grown into a public spiderweb of millions of personal, government, and commercial computers, all connected by cables and by wireless signals.

No single person owns the Internet.

No single government has authority over its operations.

Some technical rules and hardware/software standards enforce how people plug into the Internet, but for the most part, the Internet is a free and open broadcast medium of hardware networking.

2: The Web Is a Big Collection of HTML Pages on the Internet.

        The World Wide Web, or "Web" for short, is that large software subset of the Internet dedicated to broadcasting HTML pages.

        The Web is viewed by using free software called web browsers.

        Born in 1989, the Web is based on hypertext transfer protocol, the language which allows you and me to "jump" (hyperlink) to any other public web page.

        There are over 40 billion public web pages on the Web today.