What is the difference between internet and WWW in computer?

Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (aka. the Web) interchangeably, but in fact the two terms are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things.

What is The Internet?

What is the difference between internet and WWW in computer?
What is the difference between internet and WWW in computer?
The internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the internet. Information that travels over the internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.

Quick Points about The Internet:

  • It is a global network connecting millions of computers.
  • The internet is decentralized.
  • Each internet computer is independent.
  • There are a variety of ways to access the internet.
  • There are more than 3.5 billion internet users in the world.

What is The Web (World Wide Web)?

What is the difference between internet and WWW in computer?
What is the difference between internet and WWW in computer?
The World Wide Web, or simply web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the internet. The web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the the web to share information. The web also utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, to access Web documents called webpages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.

Quick Points about The Web:

  • It is a system of internet servers that support specially formatted documents.
  • Documents are formatted in a markup language that supports links to other documents.
  • You can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots (hyperlinks).
  • Applications called web browsers that make it easy to access the World Wide Web.
  • There are more than 1,275,000,000 websites.

The Web is a Portion of The Internet

The web is just one of the ways that information can be disseminated over the internet. The internet, not the web, is also used for email, which relies on SMTP, Usenet news groups, instant messaging and FTP. So the web is just a portion of the Internet, albeit a large portion, but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.

DID YOU KNOW… In March 1972 Ray Tomlinson wrote the first basic email program. In 1976 Queen Elizabeth II sent an email.
(Source: Brief Timeline of the Internet)

This article was last updated on August 07, 2018

The World Wide Web (WWW) is one set of software services running on the Internet. The Internet itself is a global, interconnected network of computing devices. This network supports a wide variety of interactions and communications between its devices. The World Wide Web is a subset of these interactions and supports websites and URIs.

The Internet is actually a huge network that is accessible to everyone & everywhere across the world. The network is composed of sub-networks comprising of a number of computers that are enabled to transmit data in packets. The internet is governed by a set of rules, laws & regulations, collectively known as the Internet Protocol (IP). The sub-networks may range from defense networks to academic networks to commercial networks to individual PCs. Internet, essentially provides information & services in the form of E-Mail, chat & file transfers. It also provides access to the World Wide Web & other interlinked web pages.

The Internet & the World Wide Web (the Web), though used interchangeably, are not synonymous. Internet is the hardware part - it is a collection of computer networks connected through either copper wires, fiber-optic cables or wireless connections whereas, the World Wide Web can be termed as the software part – it is a collection of web pages connected through hyperlinks and URLs. In short, the World Wide Web is one of the services provided by the Internet. Other services over the Internet include e-mail, chat and file transfer services. All of these services can be provided to consumers for use by businesses or government or by individuals creating their own networks or platforms.

Another method to differentiate between both is using the Protocol Suite – a collection of laws & regulations that govern the Internet. While internet is governed by the Internet Protocol – specifically dealing with data as whole and their transmission in packets, the World Wide Web is governed by the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that deals with the linking of files, documents and other resources of the World Wide Web.

History

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) created by the US in 1958 as a reply to the USSR’s launching of the Sputnik, led to creation of a department called the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) which started the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) that linked all the radar systems of US together. With tremendous research happening across the world, the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) got the ARPANET, a smaller version of the Internet in 1969. Since then Internet has taken huge strides in terms of technology and connectivity to reach its current position. In 1978, the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS) was created in Europe by the British Post Office in collaboration with Tymnet & Western Union International and this network slowly spread its wings to the US and Australia. In 1983, the first Wide Area Network (WAN) was created by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the US called the NSFnet. All these sub-networks merged together post 1985 with new definitions of the Transfer Control Protocols of the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) for optimization of resources.

The Web was invented by Sir Tim Berners Lee. In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal that described the Web as an elaborate information management system. With help from Robert Cailliau, he published a more formal proposal for the World Wide Web on November 12, 1990. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the first web browser (which was a web editor as well), the first web server, and the first Web pages which described the project itself. On August 6, 1991, he posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.

Berners-Lee's breakthrough was to marry hypertext to the Internet. In his book Weaving The Web, he explains that he had repeatedly suggested that a marriage between the two technologies was possible to members of both technical communities, but when no one took up his invitation, he finally tackled the project himself. In the process, he developed a system of globally unique identifiers for resources on the Web and elsewhere: the Uniform Resource Identifier.

The World Wide Web had a number of differences from other hypertext systems that were then available. The Web required only unidirectional links rather than bidirectional ones. This made it possible for someone to link to another resource without action by the owner of that resource. It also significantly reduced the difficulty of implementing web servers and browsers (in comparison to earlier systems), but in turn presented the chronic problem of link rot. Unlike predecessors such as HyperCard, the World Wide Web was non-proprietary, making it possible to develop servers and clients independently and to add extensions without licensing restrictions.

For more details see The History of the Internet and The History of the World Wide Web.

Internet of Things

In recent years, the phrase Internet of Things—or IoT—has been used to denote a subset of the Internet that connects physical devices, such as home appliances, vehicles, industrial sensors. Historically the devices connected to the Internet have been computers, cell phones and tablets. With the Internet of Things, other devices like refrigerators, HVAC systems, light bulbs, cars, thermostats, video cameras, and locks can also connect to the Internet. This allows better monitoring and more control of the physical world through the Internet.

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