The Motive Web Design Glossary
internet
The internet is a global network (or net’) of inter-connected computers.
The internet provides the infrastructure through which software applications or services such as email, chatrooms and instant messaging operate.
‘Internet’ vs ‘web’: Transport vs content
Although in casual conversation used interchangeably with ‘web’, ‘internet’ and ‘web’ have different meanings.
- The internet provides the infrastructure that is used to move hypertext documents (webpages) between computers (using the Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP)).
- The ‘Web’ (often with a capital ‘W’), comprises of the content of, and the links created between, webpages.
As an analogy: a fax is sent across a telephone line, but a fax is not a telephone line.
The common-knowledge understanding of ‘internet’ and ‘web’ is often satirised with the portmanteau word ‘inter-web’; as in: “I was just looking on the inter-web thingy”.
: DNS, IP address, server, web
References and further reading
- Web vs. Internet (Computer Language Company Inc. in Answers.com)
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