Surf The Net

What is the World Wide Web?

So, what is the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?
The Internet ('Net) is a network of computers that are all physically hooked together by telephone, radio, cable lines or via satellite. A single network of computers might be all the computers linked to one another within an office building. A larger network might be all the computers connected within different the branches of your financial institution. The Internet is many thousands of these networks communicating with one another. University networks connected to government networks connected to business networks connected to private networks.

The World Wide Web on the other hand is a linked collection of information in the form of Web pages on the Internet.

A simple way to remember the difference is to think of it this way, on the Net (network), the connections are cables between computers; on the Web, connections are hypertext links. The Web could not be without the Net.

What is this browser thing I've been hearing about?

In order to use the WWW you have to have three things:

• Access to a computer with a modem
• An Internet Service Provider
• A Browser

You wouldn't be able to see the pictures from the WWW on your computer without a piece of software called a browser. Most of us use either Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer as our browser. The browser is the software that converts a programming language called HyperText Markup Language also known as HTML into information you can see and hear when connected to the Internet. HTML is the text-based programming language used to make Web pages.

Just for fun you can see the HTML used to create this Web page by clicking once each on View > Source at the top of the Internet Explorer window. If you're using Netscape Navigator you would click once each on View > Page Source. Give it a try, you'll be amazed at what you see.

© Copyright 2001 Rachelle Owen
[email protected]
February 1, 2003