BCS Glossary of Computing, 14th Edition

B2 THE INTERNET

This section is concerned with terms likely to be met when using the internet. Many internet terms are concerned with the transmission of data between computers within networks. Some of these terms and other related terms can be found in Section B7 Networking, Section E6 Communications components or Section E7 Communications technology.

The internet – also known as ‘the Net’ – began in the 1960s as a US military initiative to create secure and robust communications in times of conflict. The important concept was of a network of computers, each communicating with several other computers in the network, but not with all of them. A data transmission from one computer to another thus generally travelled by stages, handed on from ...