Internet

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This article is about the worldwide computer network. For the global system of
pages accessed via URLs, see World Wide Web.
Internet

An Opte Project visualization of routing paths through a portion

of the Internet

General[show]

Governance[show]

Information infrastructure[show]

Services[show]

History[show]

Guides[show]

 Internet portal

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Computer network types
 by spatial scope

 Nanoscale
 Near-field (NFC)
 Body (BAN)
 Personal (PAN)
 Near-me (NAN)
 Local (LAN)
o Home (HAN)
o Storage (SAN)
o Wireless (WLAN)
 Campus (CAN)
 Backbone
 Metropolitan (MAN)
o Municipal wireless (MWN)
 Wide (WAN)
 Cloud (IAN)
 Internet
 Interplanetary Internet

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The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer

networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between
networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public,
academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a
broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The
Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the
inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide
Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.
The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and
research commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s
to enable time-sharing of computers.  The primary precursor network,
[1]

the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional

academic and military networks in the 1970s. The funding of the National Science
Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for
other commercial extensions, led to worldwide participation in the development of
new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks.  The linking of
[2]

commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marked the beginning of
the transition to the modern Internet,  and generated a sustained exponential
[3]

growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were

connected to the network. Although the Internet was widely used by academia in
the 1980s, commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into
virtually every aspect of modern life.
Most traditional communication media, including telephony, radio, television,
paper mail and newspapers are reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the
Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet telephony, Internet
television, online music, digital newspapers, and video streaming websites.
Newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or
are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators. The Internet
has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant
messaging, Internet forums, and social networking services. Online shopping has
grown exponentially for major retailers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs, as it
enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to serve a larger market
or even sell goods and services entirely online. Business-to-business and financial
services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.
The Internet has no single centralized governance in either technological
implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its
own policies.  The overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in
[4]

the Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP address) space and the Domain Name
System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and
standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international
participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.  In
[5]

November 2006, the Internet was included on USA Today's list of New Seven
Wonders. [6]
 Contents

 1Terminology
 2History
 3Governance
 4Infrastructure
o 4.1Service tiers
o 4.2Access
 5Internet Protocol Suite
o 5.1Internet protocol
o 5.2IETF
 6Applications and services
o 6.1World Wide Web
o 6.2Communication
o 6.3Data transfer
 7Social impact
o 7.1Users
o 7.2Usage
o 7.3Social networking and entertainment
o 7.4Electronic business
o 7.5Telecommuting
o 7.6Collaborative publishing
o 7.7Politics and political revolutions
o 7.8Philanthropy
 8Security
o 8.1Malware
o 8.2Surveillance
o 8.3Censorship
 9Performance
o 9.1Traffic volume
o 9.2Outages
o 9.3Energy use
 10See also
 11References
 12Sources
 13Further reading
 14External links

Terminology
The Internet Messenger by Buky Schwartz, located in Holon, Israel

Further information: Capitalization of "Internet"

The word internetted was used as early as 1849,
meaning interconnected or interwoven.  Today, the term Internet most commonly
[7]

refers to the global system of interconnected computer networks, though it may

also refer to any group of smaller networks. When it came into common use, most
publications treated the word as a capitalized proper noun; this has become less
common.  This reflects the tendency in English to capitalize new terms and move
[8]

to lowercase as they become familiar.  It is sometimes still capitalized to

[8][9]

distinguish the global internet from smaller networks, though many publications,
including the AP Stylebook, recommend the lowercase form in every case.  In
[8][9]

2016, the Oxford English Dictionary found that, based on a study of around 2.5

billion printed and online sources, "Internet" was capitalized in 54% of cases. [10]

The terms internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably; it is

common to speak of "going on the Internet" when using a web browser to
view web pages. However, the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large
number of Internet services,  a collection of documents (web pages) and other web
[11]

resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. [12]

History
Main articles: History of the Internet and History of the World Wide Web
In the 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United
States Department of Defense funded research into time-sharing of computers. [13][14]

 Research into packet switching, one of the fundamental Internet technologies,

[15]

started in the work of Paul Baran in the early 1960s and, independently, Donald
Davies in 1965.  After the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in 1967,
[1][16]

packet switching from the proposed NPL network was incorporated into the design
for the ARPANET and other resource sharing networks such as the Merit
Network and CYCLADES, which were developed in the late 1960s and early
1970s. [17]
ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were
interconnected between the Network Measurement Center at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and
Applied Science directed by Leonard Kleinrock, and the NLS system at SRI
International (SRI) by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October
1969.  The third site was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at
[18]

the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of

Utah Graphics Department. In a sign of future growth, 15 sites were connected to
the young ARPANET by the end of 1971.  These early years were documented
[19][20]

in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing. [21]

Early international collaborations for the ARPANET were rare. Connections were
made in 1973 to the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) via a satellite station
in Tanum, Sweden, and to Peter Kirstein's research group at University College
London which provided a gateway to British academic networks.  The ARPA
[22][23]

projects and international working groups led to the development of

various protocols and standards by which multiple separate networks could
become a single network or "a network of networks".  In 1974, Vint Cerf and Bob
[24]

Kahn used the term internet as a shorthand for internetwork in RFC 675,  and[25]

later RFCs repeated this use.  Cerf and Khan credit Louis Pouzin with important

[26]

influences on TCP/IP design.  Commercial PTT providers were concerned with

[27]

developing X.25 public data networks. [28]

Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science

Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982,
the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which permitted worldwide
proliferation of interconnected networks. TCP/IP network access expanded again
in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access
to supercomputer sites in the United States for researchers, first at speeds of 56
kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s.  The NSFNet expanded into academic
[29]

and research organizations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan in 1988–
89.  Although other network protocols such as UUCP had global reach well
[30][31][32][33]

before this time, this marked the beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental
network. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the
United States and Australia.  The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990.
[34] [35]
T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992.

Steady advances in semiconductor technology and optical networking created new

economic opportunities for commercial involvement in the expansion of the
network in its core and for delivering services to the public. In mid-1989, MCI
Mail and Compuserve established connections to the Internet, delivering email and
public access products to the half million users of the Internet.  Just months later,
[36]

on 1 January 1990, PSInet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial

use; one of the networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later
years. In March 1990, the first high-speed T1 (1.5 Mbit/s) link between the
NSFNET and Europe was installed between Cornell University and CERN,
allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites.
 Six months later Tim Berners-Lee would begin writing WorldWideWeb, the
[37]

first web browser, after two years of lobbying CERN management. By Christmas

1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web:
the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9,  the HyperText Markup
[38]

Language (HTML), the first Web browser (which was also a HTML editor and
could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files), the first HTTP server
software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server,  and the first Web
[39]

pages that described the project itself. In 1991 the Commercial Internet

eXchange was founded, allowing PSInet to communicate with the other
commercial networks CERFnet and Alternet. Stanford Federal Credit Union was
the first financial institution to offer online Internet banking services to all of its
members in October 1994.  In 1996, OP Financial Group, also a cooperative bank,
[40]

became the second online bank in the world and the first in Europe.  By 1995, the
[41]

Internet was fully commercialized in the U.S. when the NSFNet was
decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on use of the Internet to carry
commercial traffic. [42]

Worldwide Internet users

  2005 2010 2017 2019a

 World population[43] 6.5 billion 6.9 billion 7.4 billion 7.75 billion

Users worldwide 16% 30% 48% 53.6%

Users in the developing world 8% 21% 41.3% 47%

Users in the developed world 51% 67% 81% 86.6%

a
 Estimate.

Source: International Telecommunications Union.[44]

As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal growth,

the volume of Internet traffic started experiencing similar characteristics as that of
the scaling of MOS transistors, exemplified by Moore's law, doubling every 18
months. This growth, formalized as Edholm's law, was catalyzed by advances
in MOS technology, laser lightwave systems, and noise performance. [45]

Since 1995, the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce,
including the rise of near instant communication by email, instant messaging,
telephony (Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP), two-way interactive video calls,
and the World Wide Web  with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking
[46]

services, and online shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at

higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1-Gbit/s, 10-Gbit/s,
or more. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online
information and knowledge, commerce, entertainment and social networking
services.  During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet
[47]

grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of
Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%.  This growth is often [48]

attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the
network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which
encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting
too much control over the network.  As of 31 March 2011, the estimated total
[49]

number of Internet users was 2.095 billion (30.2% of world population).  It is [50]

estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the information flowing
through two-way telecommunication. By 2000 this figure had grown to 51%, and
by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the
Internet.[51]

Governance
Main article: Internet governance

ICANN headquarters in the Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States.

The Internet is a global network that comprises many voluntarily interconnected

autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body. The technical
underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an
activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of
loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by
contributing technical expertise. To maintain interoperability, the principal name
spaces of the Internet are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is governed by an international board of
directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and other
non-commercial communities. ICANN coordinates the assignment of unique
identifiers for use on the Internet, including domain names, IP addresses,
application port numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters.
Globally unified name spaces are essential for maintaining the global reach of the
Internet. This role of ICANN distinguishes it as perhaps the only central
coordinating body for the global Internet. [52]

Regional Internet registries (RIRs) were established for five regions of the world.
The African Network Information Center (AfriNIC) for Africa, the American
Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) for North America, the Asia-Pacific
Network Information Centre (APNIC) for Asia and the Pacific region, the Latin
American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) for Latin
America and the Caribbean region, and the Réseaux IP Européens – Network
Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) for Europe, the Middle East, and Central
Asia were delegated to assign IP address blocks and other Internet parameters to
local registries, such as Internet service providers, from a designated pool of
addresses set aside for each region.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of
the United States Department of Commerce, had final approval over changes to
the DNS root zone until the IANA stewardship transition on 1 October 2016. [53][54][55]
  The Internet Society (ISOC) was founded in 1992 with a mission to "assure the
[56]

open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people
throughout the world".  Its members include individuals (anyone may join) as
[57]

well as corporations, organizations, governments, and universities. Among other

activities ISOC provides an administrative home for a number of less formally
organized groups that are involved in developing and managing the Internet,
including: the IETF, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering
Steering Group (IESG), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), and Internet
Research Steering Group (IRSG). On 16 November 2005, the United Nations-
sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis established
the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues.

Infrastructure
See also: List of countries by number of Internet users and List of countries by
Internet connection speeds

2007 map showing submarine fiberoptic telecommunication cables around the world.

The communications infrastructure of the Internet consists of its hardware

components and a system of software layers that control various aspects of the
architecture. As with any computer network, the Internet physically consists
of routers, media (such as cabling and radio links), repeaters, modems etc.
However, as an example of internetworking, many of the network nodes are not
necessarily internet equipment per se, the internet packets are carried by other full-
fledged networking protocols with the Internet acting as a homogeneous
networking standard, running across heterogeneous hardware, with the packets
guided to their destinations by IP routers.
Service tiers
Packet routing across the Internet involves several tiers of Internet service providers.

Internet service providers (ISPs) establish the worldwide connectivity between

individual networks at various levels of scope. End-users who only access the
Internet when needed to perform a function or obtain information, represent the
bottom of the routing hierarchy. At the top of the routing hierarchy are the tier 1
networks, large telecommunication companies that exchange traffic directly with
each other via very high speed fibre optic cables and governed
by peering agreements. Tier 2 and lower level networks buy Internet transit from
other providers to reach at least some parties on the global Internet, though they
may also engage in peering. An ISP may use a single upstream provider for
connectivity, or implement multihoming to achieve redundancy and load
balancing. Internet exchange points are major traffic exchanges with physical
connections to multiple ISPs. Large organizations, such as academic institutions,
large enterprises, and governments, may perform the same function as ISPs,
engaging in peering and purchasing transit on behalf of their internal networks.
Research networks tend to interconnect with large subnetworks such
as GEANT, GLORIAD, Internet2, and the UK's national research and education
network, JANET.
Access
Common methods of Internet access by users include dial-up with a
computer modem via telephone circuits, broadband over coaxial cable, fiber
optics or copper wires, Wi-Fi, satellite, and cellular telephone technology
(e.g. 3G, 4G). The Internet may often be accessed from computers in libraries
and Internet cafes. Internet access points exist in many public places such as
airport halls and coffee shops. Various terms are used, such as public Internet
kiosk, public access terminal, and Web payphone. Many hotels also have public
terminals that are usually fee-based. These terminals are widely accessed for
various usages, such as ticket booking, bank deposit, or online payment. Wi-Fi
provides wireless access to the Internet via local computer
networks. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi cafes, where users need to
bring their own wireless devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be
free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based.
Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial Wi-Fi
services that cover large areas are available in many cities, such as New
York, London, Vienna, Toronto, San
Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh, where the Internet can then be
accessed from places such as a park bench.  Experiments have also been [58]

conducted with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-

speed data services over cellular networks, and fixed wireless services.
Modern smartphones can also access the Internet through the cellular carrier
network. For Web browsing, these devices provide applications such as Google
Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and a wide variety of other Internet software may be
installed from app-stores. Internet usage by mobile and tablet devices exceeded
desktop worldwide for the first time in October 2016. [59]

Mobile communication

Number of mobile cellular subscriptions 2012–2016,

[http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0026/002610/261065e.pdf World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media
Development Global Report 2017/2018

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated that, by the end of

2017, 48% of individual users regularly connect to the Internet, up from 34% in
2012.  Mobile Internet connectivity has played an important role in expanding
[60]

access in recent years especially in Asia and the Pacific and in Africa.  The [61]

number of unique mobile cellular subscriptions increased from 3.89 billion in 2012
to 4.83 billion in 2016, two-thirds of the world's population, with more than half of
subscriptions located in Asia and the Pacific. The number of subscriptions is
predicted to rise to 5.69 billion users in 2020.  As of 2016, almost 60% of the[62]

world's population had access to a 4G broadband cellular network, up from almost

50% in 2015 and 11% in 2012.  The limits that users face on accessing
[disputed  –  discuss][62]

information via mobile applications coincide with a broader process

of fragmentation of the Internet. Fragmentation restricts access to media content
and tends to affect poorest users the most. [61]
Zero-rating, the practice of Internet service providers allowing users free
connectivity to access specific content or applications without cost, has offered
opportunities to surmount economic hurdles, but has also been accused by its
critics as creating a two-tiered Internet. To address the issues with zero-rating, an
alternative model has emerged in the concept of 'equal rating' and is being tested in
experiments by Mozilla and Orange in Africa. Equal rating prevents prioritization
of one type of content and zero-rates all content up to a specified data cap. A study
published by Chatham House, 15 out of 19 countries researched in Latin
America had some kind of hybrid or zero-rated product offered. Some countries in
the region had a handful of plans to choose from (across all mobile network
operators) while others, such as Colombia, offered as many as 30 pre-paid and 34
post-paid plans.[63]

A study of eight countries in the Global South found that zero-rated data plans

exist in every country, although there is a great range in the frequency with which
they are offered and actually used in each.  The study looked at the top three
[64][dead link]

to five carriers by market share in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya,

Nigeria, Peru and Philippines. Across the 181 plans examined, 13 per cent were
offering zero-rated services. Another study,
covering Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, found Facebook's Free Basics
and Wikipedia Zero to be the most commonly zero-rated content. [65]

Internet Protocol Suite

Internet protocol suite

Application layer

 BGP
 DHCP
 DNS
 FTP
 HTTP
 HTTPS
 IMAP
 LDAP
 MGCP
 MQTT
 NNTP
 NTP
  POP
 PTP
 ONC/RPC
 RTP
 RTSP
 RIP
 SIP
 SMTP
 SNMP
 SSH
 Telnet
 TLS/SSL
 XMPP
 more...

Transport layer
 TCP
 UDP
 DCCP
 SCTP
 RSVP
 more...

Internet layer
 IP 
o IPv4
o IPv6
 ICMP
 ICMPv6
 ECN
 IGMP
 IPsec
 more...

Link layer
 ARP
 NDP
 OSPF
 Tunnels 
 o L2TP
 PPP
 MAC 
o Ethernet
o Wi-Fi
o DSL
o ISDN
o FDDI
 more...

 v
 t
 e

The Internet standards describe a framework known as the Internet protocol

suite (also called TCP/IP, based on the first two components.) This is a suite of
protocols that are are ordered into a set of four conceptional layers by the scope of
their operation, originally documented in RFC 1122 and RFC 1123. At the top is
the application layer, where communication is described in terms of the objects or
data structures most appropriate for each application. For example, a web browser
operates in a client-server application model and exchanges information with
the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and an application-germane data
structure, such as the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
Below this top layer, the transport layer connects applications on different hosts
with a logical channel through the network. It provides this service with a variety
of possible characteristics, such ordered, reliable delivery (TCP), and an unreliable
datagram service (UDP).
Underlying these layers are the networking technologies that interconnect networks
at their borders and exchange traffic across them. The Internet layer implements
the Internet Protocol (IP) which enables computers to identify and locate each
other by IP address, and route their traffic via intermediate (transit) networks.
 The internet protocol layer code is independent of the type of network that it is
[66]

physically running over.

At the bottom of the architecture is the link layer, which connects nodes on the
same physical link, and contains protocols that do not require routers for traversal
to other links. The protocol suite does not explicitly specify hardware methods to
transfer bits, or protocols to manage such hardware, but assumes that appropriate
technology is available. Examples of that technology include Wi-Fi, Ethernet,
and DSL.
As user data is processed through the protocol stack, each abstraction layer adds encapsulation information at the
sending host. Data is transmitted over the wire at the link level between hosts and routers. Encapsulation is removed
by the receiving host. Intermediate relays update link encapsulation at each hop, and inspect the IP layer for routing
purposes.

Internet protocol

Conceptual data flow in a simple network topology of two hosts (A and B) connected by a link between their
respective routers. The application on each host executes read and write operations as if the processes were directly
connected to each other by some kind of data pipe. After establishment of this pipe, most details of the
communication are hidden from each process, as the underlying principles of communication are implemented in the
lower protocol layers. In analogy, at the transport layer the communication appears as host-to-host, without
knowledge of the application data structures and the connecting routers, while at the internetworking layer,
individual network boundaries are traversed at each router.

The most prominent component of the Internet model is the Internet Protocol (IP).
IP enables internetworking and, in essence, establishes the Internet itself. Two
versions of the Internet Protocol exist, IPV4 and IPV6.
IP Addresses
A DNS resolver consults three name servers to resolve the domain name user-visible "www.wikipedia.org" to
determine the IPV4 Address 207.142.131.234

For locating individual computers on the network, the Internet provides IP

addresses. IP addresses are used by the Internet infrastructure to direct internet
packets to their destinations. They consist of fixed-length numbers, which are
found within the packet. IP addresses are generally assigned to equipment either
automatically via DHCP, or are configured.
However the network also supports other addressing systems. Users generally
enter domain names (e.g. "en.wikipedia.org") instead of IP addresses because they
are easier to remember, they are converted by the Domain Name System (DNS)
into IP addresses which are more efficient for routing purposes.
IPv4
Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a 32-bit number.  IPv4 [67]

is the initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in
dominant use. It was designed to address up to ≈4.3 billion (10 ) hosts. However, 9

the explosive growth of the Internet has led to IPv4 address exhaustion, which
entered its final stage in 2011,  when the global IPv4 address allocation pool was
[68]

exhausted.
IPv6
Because of the growth of the Internet and the depletion of available IPv4
addresses, a new version of IP IPv6, was developed in the mid-1990s, which
provides vastly larger addressing capabilities and more efficient routing of Internet
traffic. IPv6 uses 128 bits for the IP address and was standardized in 1998. [69][70]

 IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s and is currently in

[71]

growing deployment around the world, since Internet address registries (RIRs)
began to urge all resource managers to plan rapid adoption and conversion. [72]

IPv6 is not directly interoperable by design with IPv4. In essence, it establishes a

parallel version of the Internet not directly accessible with IPv4 software. Thus,
translation facilities must exist for internetworking or nodes must have duplicate
networking software for both networks. Essentially all modern computer operating
systems support both versions of the Internet Protocol. Network infrastructure,
however, has been lagging in this development. Aside from the complex array of
physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by
bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts, e.g., peering agreements, and by
technical specifications or protocols that describe the exchange of data over the
network. Indeed, the Internet is defined by its interconnections and routing
policies.
Subnetwork

Creating a subnet by dividing the host identifier

A subnetwork or subnet is a logical subdivision of an IP network.  The practice

[73]:1,16

of dividing a network into two or more networks is called subnetting.

Computers that belong to a subnet are addressed with an identical most-significant
bit-group in their IP addresses. This results in the logical division of an IP address
into two fields, the network number or routing prefix and the rest field or host
identifier. The rest field is an identifier for a specific host or network interface.
The routing prefix may be expressed in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR)
notation written as the first address of a network, followed by a slash character (/),
and ending with the bit-length of the prefix. For example, 198.51.100.0/24 is the
prefix of the Internet Protocol version 4 network starting at the given address,
having 24 bits allocated for the network prefix, and the remaining 8 bits reserved
for host addressing. Addresses in the range 198.51.100.0 to 198.51.100.255 belong
to this network. The IPv6 address specification 2001:db8::/32 is a large address
block with 2  addresses, having a 32-bit routing prefix.
96

For IPv4, a network may also be characterized by its subnet mask or netmask,

which is the bitmask that when applied by a bitwise AND operation to any IP
address in the network, yields the routing prefix. Subnet masks are also expressed
in dot-decimal notation like an address. For example, 255.255.255.0 is the subnet
mask for the prefix 198.51.100.0/24.
Traffic is exchanged between subnetworks through routers when the routing
prefixes of the source address and the destination address differ. A router serves as
a logical or physical boundary between the subnets.
The benefits of subnetting an existing network vary with each deployment
scenario. In the address allocation architecture of the Internet using CIDR and in
large organizations, it is necessary to allocate address space efficiently. Subnetting
may also enhance routing efficiency, or have advantages in network management
when subnetworks are administratively controlled by different entities in a larger
organization. Subnets may be arranged logically in a hierarchical architecture,
partitioning an organization's network address space into a tree-like routing
structure.
Routing
Computers and routers use routing tables in their operating system to direct IP
packets to reach a node on a different subnetwork. Routing tables are maintained
by manual configuration or automatically by routing protocols. End-nodes
typically use a default route that points toward an ISP providing transit, while ISP
routers use the Border Gateway Protocol to establish the most efficient routing
across the complex connections of the global Internet. The default gateway is
the node that serves as the forwarding host (router) to other networks when no
other route specification matches the destination IP address of a packet.[74][75]

IETF
While the hardware components in the Internet infrastructure can often be used to
support other software systems, it is the design and the standardization process of
the software that characterizes the Internet and provides the foundation for its
scalability and success. The responsibility for the architectural design of the
Internet software systems has been assumed by the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF).  The IETF conducts standard-setting work groups, open to any
[76]

individual, about the various aspects of Internet architecture. Resulting

contributions and standards are published as Request for Comments (RFC)
documents on the IETF web site. The principal methods of networking that enable
the Internet are contained in specially designated RFCs that constitute the Internet
Standards. Other less rigorous documents are simply informative, experimental, or
historical, or document the best current practices (BCP) when implementing
Internet technologies.

Applications and services

The Internet carries many applications and services, most prominently the World
Wide Web, including social media, electronic mail, mobile
applications, multiplayer online games, Internet telephony, file sharing,
and streaming media services.
Most servers that provide these services are today hosted in data centers, and
content is often accessed through high-performance content delivery networks.
World Wide Web
Main article: World Wide Web
This NeXT Computer was used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world's first Web server.

The World Wide Web is a global collection of documents, images, multimedia,

applications, and other resources, logically interrelated by hyperlinks and
referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), which provide a global
system of named references. URIs symbolically identify services, web servers,
databases, and the documents and resources that they can provide. Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the main access protocol of the World Wide
Web. Web services also use HTTP for communication between software systems
for information transfer, sharing and exchanging business data and logistic and is
one of many languages or protocols that can be used for communication on the
Internet. [77]

World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft's Internet

Explorer/Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari, and Google Chrome, lets
users navigate from one web page to another via the hyperlinks embedded in the
documents. These documents may also contain any combination of computer data,
including graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content that
runs while the user is interacting with the page. Client-side software can include
animations, games, office applications and scientific demonstrations.
Through keyword-driven Internet research using search
engines like Yahoo!, Bing and Google, users worldwide have easy, instant access
to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to printed media,
books, encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled
the decentralization of information on a large scale.
The Web has enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and
information to a potentially large audience online at greatly reduced expense and
time delay. Publishing a web page, a blog, or building a website involves little
initial cost and many cost-free services are available. However, publishing and
maintaining large, professional web sites with attractive, diverse and up-to-date
information is still a difficult and expensive proposition. Many individuals and
some companies and groups use web logs or blogs, which are largely used as easily
updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to
communicate advice in their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be
impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the
corporation as a result.
Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce, which is the
sale of products and services directly via the Web, continues to grow. Online
advertising is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to
deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email
marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types
of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising.
In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable
television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.  Many common
[78]:19

online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to

regulation.
When the Web developed in the 1990s, a typical web page was stored in completed
form on a web server, formatted in HTML, complete for transmission to a web
browser in response to a request. Over time, the process of creating and serving
web pages has become dynamic, creating a flexible design, layout, and content.
Websites are often created using content management software with, initially, very
little content. Contributors to these systems, who may be paid staff, members of an
organization or the public, fill underlying databases with content using editing
pages designed for that purpose while casual visitors view and read this content in
HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems
built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the
target visitors.
Communication
Email is an important communications service available via the Internet. The
concept of sending electronic text messages between parties, analogous to mailing
letters or memos, predates the creation of the Internet.  Pictures, documents, and
[79][80]

other files are sent as email attachments. Email messages can be cc-ed to
multiple email addresses.
Internet telephony is a common communications service realized with the Internet.
The name of the principle internetworking protocol, the Internet Protocol, lends its
name to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The idea began in the early 1990s
with walkie-talkie-like voice applications for personal computers. VoIP systems
now dominate many markets, and are as easy to use and as convenient as a
traditional telephone. The benefit has been in substantial cost savings over
traditional telephone calls, especially over long distances. Cable, ADSL,
and mobile data networks provide Internet access in customer premises  and [81]
inexpensive VoIP network adapters provide the connection for traditional analog
telephone sets. The voice quality of VoIP often exceeds that of traditional calls.
Remaining problems for VoIP include the situation that emergency services may
not be universally available, and that devices rely on a local power supply, while
older traditional phones are powered from the local loop, and typically operate
during a power failure.
Data transfer
File sharing is an example of transferring large amounts of data across the Internet.
A computer file can be emailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an
attachment. It can be uploaded to a website or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server
for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file
server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can
be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks. In any of these
cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication, the transit of the
file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption, and money may change
hands for access to the file. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds
from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed—usually fully
encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may
be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests. These simple
features of the Internet, over a worldwide basis, are changing the production, sale,
and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for
transmission. This includes all manner of print publications, software products,
news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has
caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled
the production and distribution of these products.
Streaming media is the real-time delivery of digital media for the immediate
consumption or enjoyment by end users. Many radio and television broadcasters
provide Internet feeds of their live audio and video productions. They may also
allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen
Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet
"broadcasters" who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-
connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to
access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a
television or radio receiver. The range of available types of content is much wider,
from specialized technical webcasts to on-demand popular multimedia
services. Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where—usually audio—material
is downloaded and played back on a computer or shifted to a portable media
player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment
allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual
material worldwide.
Digital media streaming increases the demand for network bandwidth. For
example, standard image quality needs 1 Mbit/s link speed for SD 480p, HD 720p
quality requires 2.5 Mbit/s, and the top-of-the-line HDX quality needs 4.5 Mbit/s
for 1080p.[82]

Webcams are a low-cost extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can

give full-frame-rate video, the picture either is usually small or updates slowly.
Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama
Canal, traffic at a local roundabout or monitor their own premises, live and in real
time. Video chat rooms and video conferencing are also popular with many uses
being found for personal webcams, with and without two-way sound. YouTube
was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading website for free
streaming video with more than two billion users.  It uses an HTML5 based web
[83]

player by default to stream and show video files.  Registered users may upload an
[84]

unlimited amount of video and build their own personal profile. YouTube claims

that its users watch hundreds of millions, and upload hundreds of thousands of
videos daily.

Social impact
The Internet has enabled new forms of social interaction, activities, and social
associations. This phenomenon has given rise to the scholarly study of
the sociology of the Internet.
Users
See also: Global Internet usage, English in computing, and Languages used on
the Internet
 ►
 See or edit source data.
Share of population using the Internet [85]

Internet users per 100 population members and GDP per capita for selected countries.

Internet users per 100 inhabitants

Source: International Telecommunications Union.[86][87]
From 2000 to 2009, the number of Internet users globally rose from 394 million to
1.858 billion.  By 2010, 22 percent of the world's population had access to
[88]

computers with 1 billion Google searches every day, 300 million Internet users

reading blogs, and 2 billion videos viewed daily on YouTube.  In 2014 the world's
[89]

Internet users surpassed 3 billion or 43.6 percent of world population, but two-
thirds of the users came from richest countries, with 78.0 percent of Europe
countries population using the Internet, followed by 57.4 percent of the Americas.
 However, by 2018, Asia alone accounted for 51% of all Internet users, with 2.2
[90]

billion out of the 4.3 billion Internet users in the world coming from that region.
The number of China's Internet users surpassed a major milestone in 2018, when
the country's Internet regulatory authority, China Internet Network Information
Centre, announced that China had 802 million Internet users.  By 2019, China was
[91]

the world's leading country in terms of Internet users, with more than 800 million
users, followed closely by India, with some 700 million users, with the United
States a distant third with 275 million users. However, in terms of penetration,
China has  a 38.4% penetration rate compared to India's 40% and the United
[when?]

States's 80%.  As of 2020, it was estimated that 4.5 billion people use the Internet.
[92]

[93]

The prevalent language for communication via the Internet has always been
English. This may be a result of the origin of the Internet, as well as the language's
role as a lingua franca and as a world language. Early computer systems were
limited to the characters in the American Standard Code for Information
Interchange (ASCII), a subset of the Latin alphabet.
After English (27%), the most requested languages on the World Wide Web are
Chinese (25%), Spanish (8%), Japanese (5%), Portuguese and German (4% each),
Arabic, French and Russian (3% each), and Korean (2%).  By region, 42% of the
[94]

world's Internet users are based in Asia, 24% in Europe, 14% in North America,

10% in Latin America and the Caribbean taken together, 6% in Africa, 3% in the
Middle East and 1% in Australia/Oceania.  The Internet's technologies have
[95]

developed enough in recent years, especially in the use of Unicode, that good
facilities are available for development and communication in the world's widely
used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display of
some languages' characters) still remain.
In an American study in 2005, the percentage of men using the Internet was very
slightly ahead of the percentage of women, although this difference reversed in
those under 30. Men logged on more often, spent more time online, and were more
likely to be broadband users, whereas women tended to make more use of
opportunities to communicate (such as email). Men were more likely to use the
Internet to pay bills, participate in auctions, and for recreation such as downloading
music and videos. Men and women were equally likely to use the Internet for
shopping and banking.  More recent studies indicate that in 2008, women
[96]

significantly outnumbered men on most social networking services, such as

Facebook and Myspace, although the ratios varied with age.  In addition, women
[97]

watched more streaming content, whereas men downloaded more.  In terms of[98]

blogs, men were more likely to blog in the first place; among those who blog, men
were more likely to have a professional blog, whereas women were more likely to
have a personal blog. [99]

Splitting by country, in 2012 Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and

Denmark had the highest Internet penetration by the number of users, with 93% or
more of the population with access. [100]

Several neologisms exist that refer to Internet users: Netizen (as in "citizen of the

net")  refers to those actively involved in improving online communities, the
[101]

Internet in general or surrounding political affairs and rights such as free speech, [102]

 Internaut refers to operators or technically highly capable users of the Internet,

[103] [104]

 digital citizen refers to a person using the Internet in order to engage in society,

[105]

politics, and government participation. [106]

Internet users by language[94]

 
 

Website content languages[107]

Usage

Internet users in 2015 as a percentage of a country's population

Source: International Telecommunications Union.[100]

Main articles: Global digital divide and Digital divide

 Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunications Union.[108]

Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012

as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunications Union.[109]

The Internet allows greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially
with the spread of unmetered high-speed connections. The Internet can be accessed
almost anywhere by numerous means, including through mobile Internet devices.
Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users
to connect to the Internet wirelessly. Within the limitations imposed by small
screens and other limited facilities of such pocket-sized devices, the services of the
Internet, including email and the web, may be available. Service providers may
restrict the services offered and mobile data charges may be significantly higher
than other access methods.
Educational material at all levels from pre-school to post-doctoral is available from
websites. Examples range from CBeebies, through school and high-school revision
guides and virtual universities, to access to top-end scholarly literature through the
likes of Google Scholar. For distance education, help with homework and other
assignments, self-guided learning, whiling away spare time or just looking up more
detail on an interesting fact, it has never been easier for people to access
educational information at any level from anywhere. The Internet in general and
the World Wide Web in particular are important enablers of
both formal and informal education. Further, the Internet allows universities, in
particular, researchers from the social and behavioral sciences, to conduct research
remotely via virtual laboratories, with profound changes in reach and
generalizability of findings as well as in communication between scientists and in
the publication of results. [110]
The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills have
made collaborative work dramatically easier, with the help of collaborative
software. Not only can a group cheaply communicate and share ideas but the wide
reach of the Internet allows such groups more easily to form. An example of this is
the free software movement, which has produced, among other
things, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice.org (later forked into LibreOffice).
Internet chat, whether using an IRC chat room, an instant messaging system, or a
social networking service, allows colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient
way while working at their computers during the day. Messages can be exchanged
even more quickly and conveniently than via email. These systems may allow files
to be exchanged, drawings and images to be shared, or voice and video contact
between team members.
Content management systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of
documents simultaneously without accidentally destroying each other's work.
Business and project teams can share calendars as well as documents and other
information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including
scientific research, software development, conference planning, political activism
and creative writing. Social and political collaboration is also becoming more
widespread as both Internet access and computer literacy spread.
The Internet allows computer users to remotely access other computers and
information stores easily from any access point. Access may be with computer
security, i.e. authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the
requirements. This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration
and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home
can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in
a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These
accounts could have been created by home-working bookkeepers, in other remote
locations, based on information emailed to them from offices all over the world.
Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but
the cost of private leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in
practice. An office worker away from their desk, perhaps on the other side of the
world on a business trip or a holiday, can access their emails, access their data
using cloud computing, or open a remote desktop session into their office PC using
a secure virtual private network (VPN) connection on the Internet. This can give
the worker complete access to all of their normal files and data, including email
and other applications, while away from the office. It has been referred to
among system administrators as the Virtual Private Nightmare,  because it
[111]

extends the secure perimeter of a corporate network into remote locations and its
employees' homes.
By late 2010s Internet has been described as "the main source of scientific
information "for the majority of the global North population". [112]:111

Social networking and entertainment

See also: Social networking service §  Social impact
Many people use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports,
to plan and book vacations and to pursue their personal interests. People use chat,
messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes
in the same way as some previously had pen pals. Social networking services such
as Facebook have created new ways to socialize and interact. Users of these sites
are able to add a wide variety of information to pages, to pursue common interests,
and to connect with others. It is also possible to find existing acquaintances, to
allow communication among existing groups of people. Sites like LinkedIn foster
commercial and business connections. YouTube and Flickr specialize in users'
videos and photographs. Social networking services are also widely used by
businesses and other organizations to promote their brands, to market to their
customers and to encourage posts to "go viral". "Black hat" social media
techniques are also employed by some organizations, such as spam accounts
and astroturfing.
A risk for both individuals and organizations writing posts (especially public posts)
on social networking services, is that especially foolish or controversial posts
occasionally lead to an unexpected and possibly large-scale backlash on social
media from other Internet users. This is also a risk in relation to
controversial offline behavior, if it is widely made known. The nature of this
backlash can range widely from counter-arguments and public mockery, through
insults and hate speech, to, in extreme cases, rape and death threats. The online
disinhibition effect describes the tendency of many individuals to behave more
stridently or offensively online than they would in person. A significant number
of feminist women have been the target of various forms of harassment in response
to posts they have made on social media, and Twitter in particular has been
criticised in the past for not doing enough to aid victims of online abuse.[113]

For organizations, such a backlash can cause overall brand damage, especially if

reported by the media. However, this is not always the case, as any brand damage
in the eyes of people with an opposing opinion to that presented by the
organization could sometimes be outweighed by strengthening the brand in the
eyes of others. Furthermore, if an organization or individual gives in to demands
that others perceive as wrong-headed, that can then provoke a counter-backlash.
Some websites, such as Reddit, have rules forbidding the posting of personal
information of individuals (also known as doxxing), due to concerns about such
postings leading to mobs of large numbers of Internet users directing harassment at
the specific individuals thereby identified. In particular, the Reddit rule forbidding
the posting of personal information is widely understood to imply that all
identifying photos and names must be censored in Facebook screenshots posted to
Reddit. However, the interpretation of this rule in relation to public Twitter posts is
less clear, and in any case, like-minded people online have many other ways they
can use to direct each other's attention to public social media posts they disagree
with.
Children also face dangers online such as cyberbullying and approaches by sexual
predators, who sometimes pose as children themselves. Children may also
encounter material which they may find upsetting, or material which their parents
consider to be not age-appropriate. Due to naivety, they may also post personal
information about themselves online, which could put them or their families at risk
unless warned not to do so. Many parents choose to enable Internet filtering, and/or
supervise their children's online activities, in an attempt to protect their children
from inappropriate material on the Internet. The most popular social networking
services, such as Facebook and Twitter, commonly forbid users under the age of
13. However, these policies are typically trivial to circumvent by registering an
account with a false birth date, and a significant number of children aged under 13
join such sites anyway. Social networking services for younger children, which
claim to provide better levels of protection for children, also exist.
[114]

The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception, with
entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on
university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much traffic. [citation

 Many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos.

needed] [citation

 The Internet pornography and online gambling industries have taken advantage

needed]

of the World Wide Web. Although many governments have attempted to restrict
both industries' use of the Internet, in general, this has failed to stop their
widespread popularity. [115]

Another area of leisure activity on the Internet is multiplayer gaming.  This form
[116]

of recreation creates communities, where people of all ages and origins enjoy the
fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-
person shooters, from role-playing video games to online gambling. While online
gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began
with subscription services such as GameSpy and MPlayer.  Non-subscribers were
[117]

limited to certain types of game play or certain games. Many people use the
Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their
enjoyment and relaxation. Free and fee-based services exist for all of these
activities, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies.
Some of these sources exercise more care with respect to the original artists'
copyrights than others.
Internet usage has been correlated to users' loneliness.  Lonely people tend to use
[118]

the Internet as an outlet for their feelings and to share their stories with others, such
as in the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread.
A 2017 book claimed that the Internet consolidates most aspects of human
endeavor into singular arenas of which all of humanity are potential members and
competitors, with fundamentally negative impacts on mental health as a result.
While successes in each field of activity are pervasively visible and trumpeted,
they are reserved for an extremely thin sliver of the world's most exceptional,
leaving everyone else behind. Whereas, before the Internet, expectations of success
in any field were supported by reasonable probabilities of achievement at the
village, suburb, city or even state level, the same expectations in the Internet world
are virtually certain to bring disappointment today: there is always someone else,
somewhere on the planet, who can do better and take the now one-and-only top
spot.[119]

Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form which involves: "highly dispersed

small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger
social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger
network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common
devotion to a particular leader. Overseas supporters provide funding and support;
domestic practitioners distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share
information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members and
practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith,
exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in the collective study via email,
on-line chat rooms, and web-based message boards."  In particular, the British
[120]

government has raised concerns about the prospect of young British Muslims being
indoctrinated into Islamic extremism by material on the Internet, being persuaded
to join terrorist groups such as the so-called "Islamic State", and then potentially
committing acts of terrorism on returning to Britain after fighting in Syria or Iraq.
Cyberslacking can become a drain on corporate resources; the average UK
employee spent 57 minutes a day surfing the Web while at work, according to a
2003 study by Peninsula Business Services.  Internet addiction disorder is
[121]

excessive computer use that interferes with daily life. Nicholas G. Carr believes

that Internet use has other effects on individuals, for instance improving skills of
scan-reading and interfering with the deep thinking that leads to true creativity. [122]

Electronic business
Electronic business (e-business) encompasses business processes spanning the
entire value chain: purchasing, supply chain
management, marketing, sales, customer service, and business relationship. E-
commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the Internet to build and enhance
relationships with clients and partners. According to International Data
Corporation, the size of worldwide e-commerce, when global business-to-business
and -consumer transactions are combined, equate to $16 trillion for 2013. A report
by Oxford Economics added those two together to estimate the total size of
the digital economy at $20.4 trillion, equivalent to roughly 13.8% of global sales.
[123]

While much has been written of the economic advantages of Internet-enabled

commerce, there is also evidence that some aspects of the Internet such as maps
and location-aware services may serve to reinforce economic inequality and
the digital divide.  Electronic commerce may be responsible for consolidation and
[124]

the decline of mom-and-pop, brick and mortar businesses resulting in increases

in income inequality. [125][126][127]

Author Andrew Keen, a long-time critic of the social transformations caused by the

Internet, has focused on the economic effects of consolidation from Internet
businesses. Keen cites a 2013 Institute for Local Self-Reliance report saying brick-
and-mortar retailers employ 47 people for every $10 million in sales while
Amazon employs only 14. Similarly, the 700-employee room rental start-
up Airbnb was valued at $10 billion in 2014, about half as much as Hilton
Worldwide, which employs 152,000 people. At that time, Uber employed 1,000
full-time employees and was valued at $18.2 billion, about the same valuation
as Avis Rent a Car and The Hertz Corporation combined, which together employed
almost 60,000 people. [128]

Telecommuting
Telecommuting is the performance within a traditional worker and employer
relationship when it is facilitated by tools such as groupware, virtual private
networks, conference calling, videoconferencing, and VoIP so that work may be
performed from any location, most conveniently the worker's home. It can be
efficient and useful for companies as it allows workers to communicate over long
distances, saving significant amounts of travel time and cost.
As broadband Internet connections become commonplace, more workers have
adequate bandwidth at home to use these tools to link their home to their
corporate intranet and internal communication networks.
Collaborative publishing
Wikis have also been used in the academic community for sharing and
dissemination of information across institutional and international boundaries.  In [129]

those settings, they have been found useful for collaboration on grant
writing, strategic planning, departmental documentation, and committee work.
 The United States Patent and Trademark Office uses a wiki to allow the public
[130]

to collaborate on finding prior art relevant to examination of pending patent

applications. Queens, New York has used a wiki to allow citizens to collaborate on
the design and planning of a local park.  The English Wikipedia has the largest
[131]

user base among wikis on the World Wide Web  and ranks in the top 10 among
[132]

all Web sites in terms of traffic. [133]

Politics and political revolutions

See also: Internet censorship, Mass surveillance, and Social media use in politics

Banner in Bangkok during the 2014 Thai coup d'état, informing the Thai public that 'like' or 'share' activities on
social media could result in imprisonment (observed 30 June 2014).

The Internet has achieved new relevance as a political tool. The presidential
campaign of Howard Dean in 2004 in the United States was notable for its success
in soliciting donation via the Internet. Many political groups use the Internet to
achieve a new method of organizing for carrying out their mission, having given
rise to Internet activism, most notably practiced by rebels in the Arab Spring. [134]

 The New York Times suggested that social media websites, such as Facebook

[135]

and Twitter, helped people organize the political revolutions in Egypt, by helping
activists organize protests, communicate grievances, and disseminate information.
[136]

Many have understood the Internet as an extension of the Habermasian notion of

the public sphere, observing how network communication technologies provide
something like a global civic forum. However, incidents of politically
motivated Internet censorship have now been recorded in many countries,
including western democracies. [citation needed]

Philanthropy
The spread of low-cost Internet access in developing countries has opened up new
possibilities for peer-to-peer charities, which allow individuals to contribute small
amounts to charitable projects for other individuals. Websites, such
as DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving, allow small-scale donors to direct funds to
individual projects of their choice. A popular twist on Internet-based philanthropy
is the use of peer-to-peer lending for charitable purposes. Kiva pioneered this
concept in 2005, offering the first web-based service to publish individual loan
profiles for funding. Kiva raises funds for local
intermediary microfinance organizations which post stories and updates on behalf
of the borrowers. Lenders can contribute as little as $25 to loans of their choice,
and receive their money back as borrowers repay. Kiva falls short of being a pure
peer-to-peer charity, in that loans are disbursed before being funded by lenders and
borrowers do not communicate with lenders themselves. [137][138]

Security
Main article: Internet security
Internet resources, hardware, and software components are the target of criminal or
malicious attempts to gain unauthorized control to cause interruptions, commit
fraud, engage in blackmail or access private information.
Malware
Malware is malicious software used and distributed via the Internet. It
includes computer viruses which are copied with the help of humans, computer
worms which copy themselves automatically, software for denial of service
attacks, ransomware, botnets, and spyware that reports on the activity and typing of
users. Usually, these activities constitute cybercrime. Defense theorists have also
speculated about the possibilities of hackers using cyber warfare using similar
methods on a large scale. [citation needed]

Surveillance
Main article: Computer and network surveillance
See also: Signals intelligence and Mass surveillance
The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring
of data and traffic on the Internet.  In the United States for example, under
[139]

the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, all phone calls and
broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc.) are required
to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by Federal law enforcement
agencies.  Packet capture is the monitoring of data traffic on a computer
[140][141][142]

network. Computers communicate over the Internet by breaking up messages

(emails, images, videos, web pages, files, etc.) into small chunks called "packets",
which are routed through a network of computers, until they reach their
destination, where they are assembled back into a complete "message"
again. Packet Capture Appliance intercepts these packets as they are traveling
through the network, in order to examine their contents using other programs. A
packet capture is an information gathering tool, but not an analysis tool. That is it
gathers "messages" but it does not analyze them and figure out what they mean.
Other programs are needed to perform traffic analysis and sift through intercepted
data looking for important/useful information. Under the Communications
Assistance For Law Enforcement Act all U.S. telecommunications providers are
required to install packet sniffing technology to allow Federal law enforcement and
intelligence agencies to intercept all of their customers' broadband Internet and
VoIP traffic. [143]

The large amount of data gathered from packet capturing requires surveillance
software that filters and reports relevant information, such as the use of certain
words or phrases, the access of certain types of web sites, or communicating via
email or chat with certain parties.  Agencies, such as the Information Awareness
[144]

Office, NSA, GCHQ and the FBI, spend billions of dollars per year to develop,

purchase, implement, and operate systems for interception and analysis of data.
 Similar systems are operated by Iranian secret police to identify and suppress
[145]

dissidents. The required hardware and software was allegedly installed by

German Siemens AG and Finnish Nokia. [146]

Censorship
Main articles: Internet censorship and Internet freedom
See also: Culture of fear and Great Firewall

Internet censorship and surveillance by country (2018)[147][148][149][150][151]

  Pervasive   Selective
  Substantial   Little or none
   Unclassified / No data

Some governments, such as those of Burma, Iran, North Korea, Mainland

China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, restrict access to content on the
Internet within their territories, especially to political and religious content, with
domain name and keyword filters. [152]

In Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, major Internet service providers have
voluntarily agreed to restrict access to sites listed by authorities. While this list of
forbidden resources is supposed to contain only known child pornography sites, the
content of the list is secret.  Many countries, including the United States, have
[153]

enacted laws against the possession or distribution of certain material, such as child
pornography, via the Internet, but do not mandate filter software. Many free or
commercially available software programs, called content-control software are
available to users to block offensive websites on individual computers or networks,
in order to limit access by children to pornographic material or depiction of
violence.

Performance
As the Internet is a heterogeneous network, the physical characteristics, including
for example the data transfer rates of connections, vary widely. It
exhibits emergent phenomena that depend on its large-scale organization. [154]

Traffic volume
Global Internet Traffic

The volume of Internet traffic is difficult to measure, because no single point of

measurement exists in the multi-tiered, non-hierarchical topology. Traffic data may
be estimated from the aggregate volume through the peering points of the Tier 1
network providers, but traffic that stays local in large provider networks may not
be accounted for.
Outages
An Internet blackout or outage can be caused by local signalling interruptions.
Disruptions of submarine communications cables may cause blackouts or
slowdowns to large areas, such as in the 2008 submarine cable disruption. Less-
developed countries are more vulnerable due to a small number of high-capacity
links. Land cables are also vulnerable, as in 2011 when a woman digging for scrap
metal severed most connectivity for the nation of Armenia.  Internet blackouts
[155]

affecting almost entire countries can be achieved by governments as a form

of Internet censorship, as in the blockage of the Internet in Egypt, whereby
approximately 93%  of networks were without access in 2011 in an attempt to
[156]

stop mobilization for anti-government protests.[157]

Energy use
Estimates of the Internet's electricity usage have been the subject of controversy,
according to a 2014 peer-reviewed research paper that found claims differing by a
factor of 20,000 published in the literature during the preceding decade, ranging
from 0.0064 kilowatt hours per gigabyte transferred (kWh/GB) to 136 kWh/GB.
 The researchers attributed these discrepancies mainly to the year of reference
[158]

(i.e. whether efficiency gains over time had been taken into account) and to
whether "end devices such as personal computers and servers are included" in the
analysis.
[158]

In 2011, academic researchers estimated the overall energy used by the Internet to
be between 170 and 307 GW, less than two percent of the energy used by
humanity. This estimate included the energy needed to build, operate, and
periodically replace the estimated 750 million laptops, a billion smart phones and
100 million servers worldwide as well as the energy that routers, cell towers,
optical switches, Wi-Fi transmitters and cloud storage devices use when
transmitting Internet traffic.  According to a non-peer reviewed study published
[159][160]

in 2018 by The Shift Project (a French think tank funded by corporate sponsors),
nearly 4% of global CO  emissions could be attributed to global data transfer and
2

the necessary infrastructure.  The study also said that online video

[161]

streaming alone accounted for 60% of this data transfer and therefore contributed
to over 300 million tons of CO  emission per year, and argued for new "digital
2

sobriety" regulations restricting the use and size of video files. [162]

See also
 Internet portal

 Crowdfunding
 Crowdsourcing
 Darknet
 Deep web
 Freenet
 Index of Internet-related articles
 Internet metaphors
 Internet video
 "Internets"
 Open Systems Interconnection
 Outline of the Internet

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