Differentiating the World Wide Web and the Internet

In my field of work you’ll be amazed to know the number of people I have encountered that confused the internet with the World Wide Web. So I would like to post my share in an attempt to at least shed light to that confusion.


Internet

Plain and simple, the internet is the global connection (or network) of computers. It’s just a bunch of powerful computers located in different parts of the world connected by high speed networks. These computers either acts as servers or clients. This powerful computer commonly acts as Servers. While your computer (typically the one you use at home) is commonly called the client computer. Server computers “serve” to certain request of information from client computers. This is how the internet works—by passing around information from different computers.This global connection of computers we now call the INTERNET have many features:

1. E-mail or electronic mail.The exchange of written (well actually its digital) messages to different users around the world. Compared to snail mail (mail sent via the traditional postal service), e-mails are delivered almost instantly and is more cost effective.


2. File Sharing (File Transfer Protocol). FTP enables us to share digital or electronic file (these maybe software programs, videos, photos, etc.) to other users across the world via the UPLOAD or DOWNLOAD feature.


3. Discussion groups. This let users join in specific topical discussion who share common interest.


4. Published Information. These are published information linked with each other via hyperlinks. This is more commonly known as the World Wide Web (WWW) or simply the Web.

The creation of the World Wide Web has significantly boosted the use of the internet. Actually, it’s the web that makes the use of the internet more exciting! I’ll discuss more about the Web in my next post.