Welcome to the Internet

 The World Wide Web is an enormous collection of computing and information resources connected together in a computer network known as the Internet. It is important to understand that the World Wide Web lies "on top of" the Internet. The collection of networks known as the Internet can be used for standard intercommunication and file transfer between computers. Essentially, it is a vast number of computers (most of which run the UNIX operating system) that communicate among each other using the TCP/IP protocol. Virtually every operating system today currently supplies this protocol, thereby making it the de facto non-proprietary standard for computer intercommunication.

The World Wide Web was invented (by CERN in Switzerland) to provide a more visual means of linking these computing resources together. Using a technology known as hypertext, users can click on highlighted links and automatically jump to that topic. The actual text for this topic can reside within the current file, on the current computer, or on a computer anywhere else in the world. The requestor of information is commonly referred to as the client. The holder (and sender) of the information is known as the server. The requirements are as follows:

• Both computers must pass information using the TCP/IP protocol. This means that both computers must be assigned addresses (known as IP addresses).
• Both computers must create connections to each other using the HTTP protocol. This protocol essentially uses the pipe (created by TCP/IP) between the two computers to process send and requestcommands. HTTP will also enable the client to post information to the server.
• Both computers must be visible to each other.

To determine whether you can "see" another computer across the Internet, you can execute the pingcommand. If you are using Windows 95/NT or UNIX, this command can be executed by simply typing ping.