How the Internet Works, Eighth Edition

Part 3. Communicating on the Internet

 

Since its very earliest days, the Internet has been concerned primarily with one task—making it easier for people to communicate with one another using computers. The Internet was created to enable university researchers to share their thoughts, work, and resources, and for military people to communicate with each other in case of war and even, theoretically, a nuclear attack.

Today, more than two decades after the inception of the first networks that grew into the Internet, it is still primarily a communications medium. Millions of people from all over the world share their thoughts, hopes, work, ...