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The internet has revolutionized everything from communication, shopping, and research to travel, job hunting, and even dating. Get up to speed with the basics on:

What the internet is, where it came from, and how to connect to it
Web browsers, search engines, and tools to make your surfing safe and secure
The best websites for shopping, news, reviews, social networking, and more

Internet Basics

The internet is a worldwide network of computer networks. A network is created when two or more computers are connected in order to communicate by sharing data.

How the Internet Works

Though the internet is a network itself, it’s also a network of networks: it’s made up of many smaller networks, such as corporations, universities, the government, and more.

The Web

Much of the internet is comprised of the world wide web, or web. The web is a network that organizes documents, called web pages, that are able to cross-reference one another with links, allowing users to jump from document to document. Web pages, and collections of web pages called websites, can be accessed using a web browser.

URLs

A URL (uniform resource locator) is the address of a web page, such as http://www.quamut.com. A URL contains:

The protocol that the browser uses to communicate with the computer, or server, on which the web page is hosted (most web pages use http, or hypertext transfer protocol, hence the http at the start of many web page addresses)
The name of the server where the web page is found
The name of the web page document

Domain Names

Websites reside in domains that correspond to different spheres of the internet: commercial (.com), educational (.edu), nonprofit (.org), etc. For example, www.quamut.com is a server called “www,” which is part of the domain “quamut,” which lives in the commercial (.com) portion of the internet.

How the Internet Started

The roots of the internet go back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the U.S. Department of Defense funded a project to develop networking technologies by linking researchers at several universities. By the 1980s, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the project had grown into the earliest form of the internet, connecting research and educational sites with the original military sites. As this network grew, private commercial enterprises took over where the government left off, eventually creating the commercially run internet of today.

How the Internet Is Used

The internet is everywhere. It’s one of today’s most important and effective ways of communicating and exchanging information. Using the internet, you can:

Send and receive email: Stay in touch with family and friends using email, or electronic mail.
Browse the web: Explore websites to learn about topics that interest you, read the news, do research, organize your finances, find people or businesses, plan a trip, play games, make purchases, or find a date.
Chat: Converse with far-off friends in real time.
Find and share photos, music, and videos: View photos and videos from all over the world, or share your own photos and videos. Listen to your favorite radio programs whenever you want.