In this age of Information Technology, the Internet is of great importance. Use of the Internet is increasing day by day. Today, the Internet has become a tool of communication. Internet is an interconnection between millions of computers of different types belonging to various networks all over the globe. It is a network of networks. Internet is an information highway. You can get any kind of information ranging from movies to sports, politics to streets, science to arts, news and much more. You can talk to a person sitting in any part of the world. It is more popular in youngsters to a chat. Internet means different things to different people. It is:
- a global community of computer users.
- an enormous library of information.
- a vast communication network.
- a way to store a common body of knowledge.
- fun to visit.
Application of Internet: Application of the Internet is the following:
1. E-mail: The most commonly used facility of the Internet is E-mail. Users can get E-mail account by signing on websites providing free E-mail facility, e.g., indiatimes.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, rediff.com etc. or paid facility. With a message, we can attach a greeting card or a useful document. Hotmail (www.hotmail. com) is the first company to start E-mail service for business. It was developed by an NRI Sabeer Bhatia. After its great success, Microsoft bought it for 7 million dollars.
2. Telenet: Using this facility, one can use another computer connected to the Internet, even while sitting at home and can use the resources available at that end. This facility is widely used by research institutions to connect to the supercomputer to use their processing power for scientific researches, weather forecasting.
3. File transfer facility: One can copy the files from different computer users connected by using telnet. We have a set of utility software, which helps us to find the computers to which computers are connected to like Archie, Gopher, Veronika etc. They keep track of the information stored on various computer parts of the Internet.
4. WWW: World Wide Web is a section of the Internet, where related files are interlinked. This facility is similar to a magazine which consists of web ‘sites’ (Topics) and web pages through which one can get information about different topics.
5. FTP: File transfer protocol transfers the file from one location to another location.
6. URL: Uniform resource locator is a tool, which helps you to locate the files you want.
7. Gopher: This is the Internet tool which makes it easy to get the information from different libraries and servers.
8. E-commerce: It is the facility of doing business through the Internet. E-commerce is helpful in doing business worldwide while sitting in remote locations. Now, by using Ecommerce facilities, one can transfer money faster, order goods and generate more information about products faster. It is the platform for buyers and sellers.
