Watch this movie about the Internet at www.brainpop.com.

So, what is this Internet thing you have been hearing so much about? Everyone talks about it and almost all of us have been on the Internet, but how many of us really understand the Internet? The Internet is the biggest computer network in the world; it reaches millions of people, across thousands of interconnected networks that span the entire globe. If the Internet is the largest network in the world, what is the World Wide Web? Originally, the Internet was used only by the military, Universities, and Laboratories to help them share information about their research. This was called ARPANET. Then businesses wanted access too. Finally, everyone, like you and me, wanted to be able to put up their own webpages. So, when the Internet first became open to everyone, ARPANET connected to many other networks worldwide. The most popular part of the Internet was called the World Wide Web. This was the webpages of businesses and people like you and me. Today the term World Wide Web is not used as much and most people just call it the Internet.

If the Internet is a gigantic network, what is a network? A network is a group of connected computers that allows people to share information and equipment. These computers can talk to one another and allow the users to do the same. So, the Internet is made up of thousands of computer networks. This means that millions and millions of people’s computers are all talking to one another. You are on the Internet right now. The Internet is how you are viewing this webpage. The computer you are sitting in front of is talking to many different computers as you read this webpage. In fact, this webpage is saved on a computer very far from you. When you type a URL, or Uniform Resource Locator (web address) into your address bar the computer talks to many computers in order to find this webpage. Every time you connect to the internet your computer is talking to many other computers along your journey on the Information Superhighway and you don’t even realize it. Pretty amazing stuff!

How does your computer display, or show you, the webpage you are looking at right now? It uses an Internet browser. You might now ask, what is a browser? A browser helps your computer to interpret, or read, webpages. Without it, you would not be able to surf the Internet. That would definitely be a drag! There are many browsers available. The most popular browser is Internet Explorer. Others are Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera.

The wonderful thing about the Internet is that you have so much information available to you. From games to up to date news, its all out there on the Internet. One of the Internet’s main challenges is what is commonly referred to as information glut. There is just so much information it is difficult to find what you are looking for. This is why search engines are useful. A search engine allows you to search the Internet for topics your interested in. The best search engine on the Internet is at www.google.com. Others are www.yahoo.com, www.askjeeves.com, and there a hundreds more. If you like, you can click on one of those hyperlinks (a link you can click on that will take you to another page or another location on the same page) and search for something. Try searching for your full name. See if there is anything about you out on the Internet. You might be surprised with what you find.

Questions:

1). Right now I am using as my Internet browser to view this webpage.

2). The Internet is the biggest in the world.

3). came before the Internet and was only used by the military, Universities, and laboratories.

4).The is the most popular portion of the Interent and is made up of mostly business websites and personal home pages. Today when someone says the Internet you know they are saying the same thing as this.

3).A is used to help you find information on the Internet.

4).An example of the answer to question #3 is .

5). A URL is also known as a .

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