Portal:Internet

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The Internet Portal

An Internet kiosk

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks, consisting of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other technologies. The Internet appears to its users as a single worldwide network accessible to the general public. The protocol that makes it possible to use the millions of networks composing the Internet as if they were one network is a special type of packet switching known as IP or The Internet Protocol.

A computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast number of servers and other computers. An Internet connection also allows the computer to send information through the network; that information may be saved and ultimately accessed by a variety of servers and other computers. Much of the information widely accessible through use of the Internet consists of the interlinked hypertext documents and other resources of the World Wide Web (WWW). Web users typically send and receive information using a web browser. Other software for interacting with computer networks includes specialized programs for electronic mail, online chat, file transfer and file sharing.

Information is moved around the Internet by packet switching using the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP)which defines how packets are moving in any platform especially the transport layer. The Internet Protocol Suite consists of several layers of protocols. The lowest layer (the link layer) deals with protocols that transmit data over specific technologies, such as Ethernet or Wi-Fi. The highest layer (the application layer) supports specific applications, such as e-mail and file transfer. In between are the Internet layer, which provides for transmitting packets over any conceivable technology, and the transport layer, which provides for various services such as reliable delivery of packets or real-time streaming of packets.

Selected article

YouTube headquarters in San Bruno
YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in mid-February 2005 by three former PayPal employees. The San Bruno-based service uses Adobe Flash technology to display a wide variety of video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging and short original videos. In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for US$1.65 billion in Google stock. The deal closed on November 13, 2006. Unregistered users can watch most videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Some videos are available only to users of age 18 or older (e.g. videos containing potentially offensive content). The uploading of pornography or videos containing nudity is prohibited. Related videos, determined by title and tags, appear onscreen to the right of a given video. In YouTube's second year, functions were added to enhance user ability to post video 'responses' and subscribe to content feeds. Few statistics are publicly available regarding the number of videos on YouTube. However, in July 2006 the company revealed that more than 100 million videos were being watched every day, and 2.5 billion videos were watched in June 2006.

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Photo taken in Århus, modified to read "All your base are belong to us"
Credit: Benutzer:Benson.by

"All your base are belong to us" (often shortened to "All Your Base", "AYBABTU", or simply "AYB") is a broken English phrase (see Engrish) that sparked an Internet phenomenon in 2001 and 2002, with the spread of a Flash animation that depicted the slogan. The text is taken from the opening cut scene of the European Sega Mega Drive version of Zero Wing, a Japanese video game by Toaplan.

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WikiProjects

Main project: WikiProject Internet

WikiProjects

Related WikiProjects: Blogging • Websites • Early Web History • Internet culture

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Selected biography

Vint Cerf in 2007
Vinton Gray Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist who is the "person most often called 'the father of the Internet'." His contributions have been recognized repeatedly, with honorary degrees and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Cerf's first job after getting his B.S. in mathematics from Stanford University was at IBM, where he worked for less than two years as a systems engineer supporting QUIKTRAN. He left IBM to become a principal programmer at UCLA; he then became an assistant professor at Stanford University where he co-designed the Department of Defense TCP/IP protocol suite with Robert E. Kahn. Cerf joined the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1999, and is serving a term until the end of 2007; he previously served as the ICANN Chair.

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J. Michael Straczynski

Categories

Selected quote

Jay Leno
This Ken Starr report is now posted on the Internet. I bet Clinton's glad he put a computer in every classroom.
Jay Leno, 1998

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Main topics

Internet topics
Articles
Application layer
ARPANET
Blog
Browsers
CERN
Collaborative software
Computer file
Computer network
Computer networking
DARPA
Data (computing)
Electronic commerce
E-mail
English on the Internet
FidoNet
File sharing
History of the Internet
HTML
HyperCard
Hyperlink
ICANN
Instant messaging
Internet access
Internet capitalization conventions
Internet censorship
Internet Control Message Protocol
Internet democracy
Internet Exchange Point
Internet Governance Forum
Internet privacy
Internet Protocol
Internet protocols
Internet research
Internetworking
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Mosaic (web browser)
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Net neutrality
Online chat
Peering
Remote access
Transmission Control Protocol
Scale-free network
Search engine
Security
Social network service
Unicode
Uniform resource locator
User agent
User Datagram Protocol
ViolaWWW
Virtual private network
VoIP
Web browser
Web resource
Web service
Wide area network
World Summit on the Information Society
World Wide Web
Lists
List of basic Internet topics
List of Internet topics
Academic databases and search engines
List of blogging terms
List of HTTP headers
List of HTTP status codes
List of IP protocol numbers
List of journals available free online
List of IPv6 tunnel brokers
List of PHP editors
List of organizations with .INT domain names
List of social networking websites
List of newsgroups
Comp.* hierarchy
Sci.* hierarchy
List of RFCs
List of search engines
List of virtual communities
List of web directories
List of webcomics
List of websites founded before 1995

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