The Internet

A computer network is the interconnection of many individual computers, much as a road is the link between the homes and the buildings of a city. Having many separate computers linked on a network provides many advantages to organizations such as businesses and universities. People may quickly and easily share files; modify databases; send memos called e-mail (electronic mail); run programs on remote mainframes; and access information in databases that are too massive to fit on a small computer's hard drive. Networks provide an essential tool for the routing, managing, and storing of huge amounts of rapidly changing data.

The Internet is a network of networks: the international linking of hundreds of thousands of businesses, universities, and research organizations with millions of individual users. It was originally formed in 1970 as a military network called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) as part of the United States Department of Defense. The network opened to nonmilitary users in the 1970s, when universities and companies doing defense-related research were given access, and flourished in the late 1980s as most universities and many businesses around the world came online. In 1993, when commercial Internet service providers were first permitted to sell Internet connections to individuals, usage of the network grew tremendously. Simultaneously, other wide area networks (WANs) around the world began to link up with the American network to form a truly international Internet. Millions of new users came on within months, and a new era of computer communications began.

Most networks on the Internet make certain files available to other networks. These common files can be databases, programs, or e-mail from the individuals on the network. With hundreds of thousands of international sites each providing thousands of pieces of data, it is easy to imagine the mass of raw data available to users. Users can download, or copy, information from a remote computer to their PCs and workstations for viewing and processing.

British physicist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1992 as a way to organize and access information on the Internet. Its introduction caused the popularity of the Internet to explode nearly overnight. Instead of being able to download only simple linear text, with the introduction of the World Wide Web users could download Web pages that contain text, graphics, animation, video, and sound. A program called a Web browser runs on users' PCs and workstations and allows them to view and interact with these pages.

Many commercial companies maintain Web sites, or sets of Web pages, that their customers can view. The companies can also sell their products on their Web sites. Customers who view the Web pages can learn about products and purchase them directly from the companies by sending orders back over the Internet. Buying and selling stocks and other investments and paying bills electronically are other common Web activities.

Many organizations and educational institutions also have Web sites. They use their sites to promote themselves and their causes, to disseminate information, and to solicit funds and new members. Many private individuals also have Web sites. They can fill their pages with photographs and personal information for viewing by friends and associates.

To visit a Web site, users type the URL (uniform resource locator), which is the site's address, in a Web browser.

Web sites are maintained on computers called Web servers. Most companies and many organizations have their own Web servers. These servers often have databases that store the content displayed on their sites' pages. Individuals with Web sites can use the Web servers of their Internet service providers.

Web pages are programmed using a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). Web page designers can make their pages more interactive and dynamic by including small programs written in Java called applets. When Web browsers download the pages, they know how to render the HTML (convert the code into the text and graphics for display on the screen) and run the Java applets. Web servers are commonly programmed in C, Java, or a language called Perl (practical extraction and reporting language), which was developed in the mid-1980s by Larry Wall, a computer system administrator.

 

2. Расставьте заголовки в тексте.

A Introduction of WWW.

B Widely used tool.

C Great possibilities for people.

D Special software.

E New era starts.

F Commercial use.

G How it works.

 

3. Найдите в тексте английские эквиваленты.

	взаимодействие
	база данных
	удаленный компьютер
	жесткий диск
	маршрутизация данных
	сеть Управления перспективных исследовательских программ
	глобальная сеть
	необработанные данные
	загружать данные
	всемирная «паутина»
	распространять информацию
	привлекать средства
	унифицированный указатель информационного ресурса
	язык гипертекстовой разметки
	апплет
	универсальный язык сценариев

 

4. Заполните таблицу.

Аббревиатура	Термин /англ.язык/	Перевод /русский язык/
Internet
e-mail
ARPANET
WAN
WWW
URL
HTML
Perl

 

5. Заполните таблицу, используя информацию из текста.

 

Date	Events
1970s
mid-1980s

 

6. Переведите письменно первые три абзаца текста.

7. Выпишите из текста способы применения Интернета. Как вы используете всемирную сеть?