Computing machines perhaps can do the work of a dozen ordinary men, but there is no machine that can do the work of one extraordinary man.
E. B. White
by Christian Plazas
Don't for one second think that you are the only person to ask "What's the difference between the Internet and World Wide Web?". This $64,000 question has been asked many young and old, as well as novice and experienced Web users.
Before proceeding with a discussion of the differences between the World Wide Web and the Internet, it is important for you to have a good understanding of what each is.
The Internet is a world wide network of computers that share information. Information sharing and communication are the primary purpose for the Internet. Worldwide e-mail, software archives, and other informational resources abound on the Internet. It is these vast informational resources that many refer to when they say Internet. While this use of the word Internet is not wrong, there is a lot more to the Internet than information, such as personal communications like online chatting or e-mail.
Internet—a world wide network of computers that share information. Information sharing and communication are the primary purpose for the Internet.
The Internet itself is just cables, wires, and specialized computers, but its value lies in the vast amounts of information it contains. At the physical level, the structure of the Internet is one that is often described as a network of networks. It can be said that the Internet is one large virtual network composed of many smaller networks. In fact, it is the connection of networks from which the Internet derives its name. Much like the interstate highway system in the U.S., which enables land travel between states, the Internet facilitates communication between networks (inter -> between + net -> network = Internet).
The "shape" of the Internet can be visualized by imagining its layout as an inverted tree much like a diagram of a family tree or an organizational chart. At the very bottom, or ends of the tree are leaves or nodes—individual computers that make up end points on the network. These nodes usually make up a network that is confined to a small geographic area. These type of networks are called LANs, or Local Area Networks.
LAN (Local Area Network)—network containing individual computers that make up end points on the Internet.
Typically these networks can be found in a building, department, or college campus. These "local" networks connect to larger networks, which cover a broader geographic area. These networks are called WANs, or wide area networks, and make up the "branches" of the tree. Further up stream many WANs connect to large regional networks, national, and international networks. At the top, the large regional, national, or international networks interconnect at many locations to form the virtual world-wide network. Thus, in our example individual computers can be thought of as leaves, LANs as twigs, WANs as branches, and large regional and international networks as the trunks.
WAN (Wide Area Network)—network that covers broad geographical areas.
It is the arrangement just described that facilitates worldwide communications over the Internet. The structure of the Internet can be observed in many places around us. Taking a look at one of these structures can help to understand how Internet communications occur.
The national system of roads and highways, for example, is laid out in much the same fashion as the Internet. Using this large network of roads, highways, and superhighways, an individual can travel from any location in the country to any other location thousands of miles away. The Internet is similar in this respect because using your home computer, you can "travel," or connect to a computer half the world away.
Let's take a trip from a small town in Virginia to another small town in Oregon, as an example.
After traversing the Internet backbone, traffic is routed, or directed, to the regional network containing the destination computer. The data, or information, travels down through the WAN and LAN containing the destination computer, until the data reaches the computer. In this manner information is transported throughout the world.
While the Internet provides us with the capability to access large amounts of varied information, historically the Internet has not made the access to the information easy. How to provide easy, universal access to Internet resources is a question that the pioneers of the Internet have struggled with for some time.
Early attempts for standard methods of information access led to the creation of protocols, or rules, that dictated how one was to get the information one needed. Client software that used these protocols was created, and was usually given the name of the protocol it used, for example, Telnet and FTP.
Protocol—rules that dictate how you get the information you want from the Internet.
At first, this Internet access software was not very user-friendly and was only used by people who were very knowledgeable about computers. As time went on Internet users, tried to find ways to make it even easier to find and retrieve Internet information, which led to the development of Internet software systems with catchy names, such as Gopher, Veronica, and Jughead.
These program too had flaws. They only provided a way to locate the information, not access it. You often still had to use the old Internet client software to actually retrieve the information once you found it. Hence, the World Wide Web, a development that would forever change the face of the Internet, was born.. The Web enables users with the most rudimentary computing skills to use the Internet effectively.
The World Wide Web is one of the most exciting developments in the history of human communication. Begun as an attempt to make it easier for physicists to share research, it has now become one of the most popular uses of the Internet. The Web is everywhere nowadays. Billboards advertising the latest Hollywood productions proclaim the address of the movie's Web site, television commercials carry that familiar trailer at the end http://blah-blah—the Web is hot!
What is the Web and what makes it so special, you ask? The Web can simply be defined as a world wide collection of hypermedia documents. You will notice first of all, that the Web is worldwide, not localized, but distributed throughout the world, even reaching Antarctica.
World Wide Web—a world wide collection of hypermedia documents.
Second, the Web is made up of documents—hypermedia documents—that contain various forms of information. These documents are called hypermedia documents because they are not only made up of plain text, but are compound documents capable of containing rich multimedia elements and because almost any element in the document can contain what is called a hyperlink to another part of the document or another document altogether. It is the combination of rich content and ease of navigation that make the Web so great.
Hypermedia documents—compound documents capable of containing rich multimedia elements. Almost any element in the document can contain what is called a hyperlink to another part of the document or another document altogether.
Knowledge of what hypertext is and how it fits in to the Web is necessary to have a clear understanding of what the WWW really is. Hypertext is a term that describes the concept of displaying information the navigation of those displays. In a hypertext document, certain words are highlighted in some way (underlined, bracketed, and so on) to make them distinct from the rest of the document's text.
This special text is linked to other documents containing information related to either the document containing the highlighted text or the highlighted text itself. When the link, or hyperlink, is activated, the document referenced by the link is displayed. This behavior is often seen in many multimedia encyclopedias available for personal computers. For example, while researching an article on basketball in a hypertext encyclopedia, the name of the game's inventor, Dr. John Naysmith, might be a hyperlink. If the link is activated, the encyclopedia displays the biography of Dr. John Naysmith.
As you can see by the preceding example, one of the most important aspects of hypertext is that it allows for non-linear navigation of the available information. If the same information is presented in book form, it must be navigated in a linear fashion, one topic after another. If there is something you need to know about, you look in the table of contents, or in the index and then thumb through the book to find the correct page.
Using hypertext, a given piece of information can be accessed in many different contexts. Take an encyclopedia article on viruses, for example. You can access the contents of the virus article by following a link embedded in an article on human diseases, but you can also access the article from another link embedded in an article dealing with microbiology. In this manner, the same piece of information is presented in different contexts.
Hypermedia takes the concept of hypertext a bit further. With hypermedia, it is no longer just highlighted text that provides links to other documents, but any multimedia element on the page can be used as a link. This is most often seen on the Web in the form of images and animations that, when activated, will link the user to another page, sound, or video clip. The use of hypermedia is one of the things that make the WWW as popular as it is. People can now have an interactive experience that stimulates visually and intellectually.
The capability to link documents from around the world in many different ways is what gives the WWW its name. Millions of links pointing to millions of documents can be compared to a spider's web, where many strands of spider silk are interconnected to form one whole structure. Using a web, a spider can move from any position on the web to any other as necessary, because the strands are all interlinked.
On the Web, millions of pieces of information, in the form of documents, are linked together to form a whole body of worldwide knowledge. A link embedded in a document contained on a local server might lead you to another document on a server located in Moscow, Russia. But it doesn't matter that these documents are physically separated by thousands of miles because to the user—they appear as a seamless whole. The seamless sharing of information is what the Web is all about.
The relationship between the Web and the Internet is one that can be compared to the relationship between the data on a computer and the graphical interface used by the computer's user to manipulate and work with that data. The Web provides an easy-to-use interface for Internet users, much like graphical interfaces make it easier for computer users to move, copy, create, rename and otherwise manipulate files, documents, and other data on their computers.
The relationship between the Web and the Internet is one that can be compared to the relationship between the complex machinery that makes an automobile go and the controls that people use to drive that car (steering wheel, pedals, and so on). The Web provides an easy-to-use interface for Internet users that hides the connections that need to be made and the commands that must be issued for Web pages to display, much like an automobile's controls hides the complex interactions that power the automobile; the fuel mixing with air, the spark plugs firing, the drive shaft turning, and so on.
In the early days of the Internet, it was necessary to learn to use many different client programs to be able to access Internet information resources, but with the advent of the World Wide Web, this is no longer necessary. The client software for the Web, called a Web browser (or just browser) issues all the commands, makes all the connections, and presents information to the user in a easy to use point-and-click interface. Using a browser, an Internet user can access FTP sites, Web sites, Gopher sites, send and receive e-mail, and so on. Almost all the Internet's services can be used from within the Web browser.
Browser—an interface that enables you to manage information on the Web. The browser speaks to the servers to which you're connecting, grabs the Web pages you want, and displays the files within the browser interface.
In addition to providing the information that fuels the Web, the Internet is also the medium by which that information is transported. The Internet, by its worldwide nature, is what makes the Web worldwide. The Internet provides the physical network upon which the Web operates. You will notice that WWW servers, the computers that store and "serve" or provide access to Web documents, are also members of the Internet. They are usually full-fledged Internet "host computers" and sometimes even provide other Internet-based services, such as FTP and Telnet.
WWW servers—computers that store and "serve" or provide access to Web documents.
It is interesting to note that the technical definition of the Web does not specify that the Web should use the Internet. In fact, companies routinely create distributed information systems based upon Web concepts on their internal networks, called intranets. But it is the Internet that makes the World Wide Web truly "worldwide". The Internet is thus part of and backbone to the World Wide Web.
The technical definition of the Web does not specify that the Web should use the Internet. In fact, companies routinely create distributed information systems based upon Web concepts on their internal networks, called intranets.
At this point, you can see that the Internet is just a network of computer networks. Because the Internet is a network comprised of other folks' networks, it is owned by no single entity. Each piece of the Internet is owned by whoever put the cables, wires, and computers together in that particular location.
Hypermedia and hypertext are the heart of the Web, which is really a concept of presenting information for human use. Hypertext and hypermedia allow users to see what information interests them in the order that they want to see it. The Web's function is to provide Internet users with an easy to use and exciting interface to the information stored on Internet computers. In addition to presenting Internet information in a more palatable format, the Web uses the Internet as its backbone, providing the seamless integration of individual Web documents scattered around the globe.
Christian Plazas, a networking professional based in Columbus, GA, specializes in Internet communications.
