Why internets

All networks could now be connected by a universal language. It weighed some 16, pounds, used 5, vacuum tubes, and could perform about 1, calculations per second. It was the first American commercial computer, as well as the first computer designed for business use. The first few sales were to government agencies, the A. There is nothing of these things around, Antonio Gonzalo Vaca. Jennifer Riggins. How many of you have anti-malware protection installed on your smartphones?

Shivvy Jervis. Kids of all ages are using apps these days. Even the youngest of digital natives instinctively know how to play games, navigate book apps, Melissa Maypole.

It is a virtual lifeline. Be part of the solution. Imagine living through without the Internet. As the world shut down, people finally understood the Internet is essential. Our global community sprung into action. Our impact report shines a light on their inspiring stories — and shows the major shifts in how people starting using the Internet. The result is a mass of cables, computers, data centres, routers, servers, repeaters, satellites and wifi towers that allows digital information to travel around the world.

One measure is the amount of information that courses through it: about five exabytes a day. It takes some wiring up. Hundreds of thousands of miles of cables criss-cross countries , and more are laid along sea floors to connect islands and continents. About submarine cables, the deep-sea variant only as thick as a garden hose, underpin the modern internet. Most are bundles of hair-thin fibre optics that carry data at the speed of light. Major cables serve a staggering number of people.

In , damage to two marine cables near the Egyptian port of Alexandria affected tens of millions of internet users in Africa, India, Pakistan and the Middle East. Last year, the chief of the British defence staff, Sir Stuart Peach, warned that Russia could pose a threat to international commerce and the internet if it chose to destroy marine cables.

The web is a way to view and share information over the internet. That information, be it text, music, photos or videos or whatever, is written on web pages served up by a web browser. There are nearly 2bn websites in existence but most are hardly visited.

The top 0. The rise of apps means that for many people, being on the internet today is less about browsing the open web than getting more focused information: news, messages, weather forecasts, videos and the like. A search of the web does not search all of it. While the search index is massive, it contains only a fraction of what is on the web.

Think of the web as having three layers: surface, deep and dark.