The Internet
The Internet, a global computer network which embraces millions of users all over the world, began in the United States in 1969 as a milнitary experiment. It was designed to survive a nuclear war. Information sent over the Internet takes the shortest path available from one comнputer to another. Because of tins, any two computers on the Internet will be able to stay in touch with each other as long as there is a single route between them. This technology is called packet switching. Owing to this technology, if some computers on the network are knocked out (by a nuclear explosion, for example), information will just route around them. One such packet-swishing network already survived a war. It was the Iraqi computer network which was not knocked out durнing the Gulf War.
Most of the Internet host computers (more than 50 %) are in the United States , while the rest are located in more than 100 other counнtries. Although the number of host computers can be counted fairly accurately, nobody knows exactly how many people use the Internet, there are millions, and their number is [rowing by thousands each month worldwide.
The most popular Internet service is e-mail. Most of the people, who have access to the Internet, use the network only for sending and receiving e-mail messages. However, other popular services are availнable on the Internet: reading USENET News, using the World Wide Web, telnet, FTP, and Gopher.
In many developing countries the Internet may provide businessнmen with a reliable alternative to the expensive and unreliable telecomнmunications systems of these countries. Commercial users can comнmunicate over the Internet with the rest of the world and can do it very cheaply. When they send e-mail messages, they only have to pay for phone calls to their local service providers, not for calls across their countries or around the world. But who actually pays for sending e-mail messages over the Internet long distances, around the world? The answer is very simple: a user pays his/her service provider a monthly or hourly fee. Part of this fee goes towards its costs to connect to a largнer service provider. And part of the fee got by the larger provider goes to cover its cost of running a worldwide network of wires and wireless stations.
But saving money is only the first step. If people see that they can make money from the Internet, commercial use of this network will drastically increase. For example, some western architecture companies and garment centers already transmit their basic designs and conнcepts over the internet into China, where they are reworked and it fined by skilled Ч but inexpensive Ч Chinese computer-aided-design speнcialists.