What is Internet

What is the Internet?

The Internet is the cabling, software, hardware and other infrastructure that connects millions of computers in networks around the world. People with Internet-connected computers can quickly share and transfer information back and forth. Currently, the four primary uses for the Internet are the World Wide Web, email, instant messaging, and newsgroups. The World Wide Web itself is a large network of graphical and text-based pages that connect each other over the Internet. Web pages can also contain sound, video, and other multimedia elements. Pages are connected to each other using "hyperlinks" to make navigation simple and intuitive. But since most of us use the Web when we connect to the Internet, and because the two technologies overlap more every day, "the Web" and "the Internet" are coming to mean more or less the same thing to most people. When we connect to the Internet, we use the infrastructure to browse the Web, email our friends and coworkers, hold conversations with instant messaging, enjoy news groups, and do a variety of other fun and necessary things. The World Wide Web, email, instant messaging and newsgroups all use the Internet to connect people.

What's the difference between .com, .net and .org?

The letters after the "dot" in a Web address are the domain extension. The domain extension may tell you about a site's purpose or locale. For example, sites with a .com extension are often commercial sites. There are domain extensions for countries, such as .it for Italy, .dz for Algeria, .us for the United States, .to for Tonga. There are many other extensions now, including .biz, .tv and others, but the ones we see most often are the .com, .net, and .org. The original extensions were meant to indicate a Web address was being used for a business (.com), a charity or non-profit organization (.org), or for an Internet technology company (.net). As the World Wide Web grew, however, companies and individuals started to register their domains with all the extensions. Currently, .com, .net, and .org domain extensions are universally accepted for any type of Web address.

Why do some Web addresses start with "www" and others don't?

The "www" stands for World Wide Web and dates back to a time when some Web servers needed the "www" designation before they could serve up a Web page, and when browsers needed it before they could show you a Web page. Those servers and browsers have almost all been replaced, so the "www" doesn't matter much any more. There are still some pages on the Web that need it, so if a Web page doesn't open without the" www," type it in and see if it works.


You may be seeing symptoms of spyware or a virus infectionYou may have been infected with a virus or be seeing symptoms of spyware.

Review the list of spyware and virus symptoms below.Spyware Symptoms
· My software programs are taking much longer than usual to start
· Pop-Up advertisements appear when I'm on the Internet
· My Web browser suddenly closes and stops responding
· My Internet home page was changed
· New Web sites were added to my Favorites listMore symptoms Removing spyware Protecting your computer Virus Symptoms
· People are receiving email from me that I didn't send
· Unusual messages display on my monitor
· My computer performance has slowed significantly
· Some software programs suddenly don't work · Low memory and system resource error messages are displaying