Portal:Internet

The Internet Portal

The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that comprises private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information services and resources, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, discussion groups, internet telephony, streaming media and file sharing.

Most traditional communication media, including telephone, radio, television, paper mail, newspapers, and print publishing, have been transformed by the Internet, giving rise to new media such as email, online music, digital newspapers, news aggregators, and audio and video streaming websites. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interaction through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking services. Online shopping has also grown to occupy a significant market across industries, enabling firms to extend brick and mortar presences to serve larger markets. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries. (Full article...)

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Bomis, Inc. (/ˈbɒmɪs/, from Bitter Old Men in Suits; rhyming with "promise") was an American dot-com company best known for supporting the creations of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. It was co-founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis. By 2007, the company was inactive, with its Wikipedia-related resources transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation.

The company initially tried a number of ideas for content, including being a directory of information about Chicago. The site subsequently focused on content geared to a male audience, including information on sporting activities, automobiles, and women. Bomis became successful after focusing on pornography. "Bomis Babes" was devoted to erotic images; the "Bomis Babe Report" featured adult pictures. Bomis Premium, available for an additional fee, provided explicit material. "The Babe Engine" helped users find erotic content through a web search engine. The advertising director for Bomis noted that 99 percent of queries on the site were for nude women. (Full article...)

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Credit: Matt Britt

A partial map of the internet, rendered based on ping delay.

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Cow Clicker is an incremental social network game on Facebook developed by video game researcher Ian Bogost. The game serves as a deconstructive satire of social games. The goal of the game is to earn "clicks" by clicking on a sprite of a cow every six hours. The addition of friends' cows to the player's pasture allows the user to also receive "clicks" whenever the player's cow is clicked. A premium currency known as "Mooney" allows the user to purchase different cow designs and skip the six-hour interval between clicks.

In the wake of a controversial speech by Zynga's president at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2010, Bogost developed Cow Clicker for a presentation at a New York University seminar on social gaming in July 2010. The game was created to demonstrate what Bogost felt were the most commonly abused mechanics of social games, such as the promotion of social interaction and monetization rather than the artistic aspects of the medium. As the game unexpectedly began to grow in popularity, Bogost also used Cow Clicker to parody other recent gaming trends, such as gamification, educational apps, and alternate reality games.

Some critics praised Cow Clicker for its dissection of the common mechanics of social network games and viewed it as a commentary on how social games affect people. (Full article...)

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WikiProjects

Main project: WikiProject Internet
Related WikiProjects: Blogging • Websites • Early Web History • Internet culture

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... that the emoji of the unofficial flag of Saint Pierre and Miquelon is often used online by Basques because it features the flag of the Basque Country, which does not have its own emoji?
... that many people attributed Andrew Tate's removal from social media to a diatribe by Daz Black?
... that the cybercrime community may have begun migrating from web-based underground forums to private channels such as Telegram?
... that Ben Franklin was inspired by an internet meme?
... that Gambit Digital acquired the rights to the 2023 video game Fae Farm five days after the original developer ended online support in September 2025?
... that the emoji of the unofficial flag of Saint Pierre and Miquelon is often used online by Basques because it features the flag of the Basque Country, which does not have its own emoji?

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Jonathan Bruce Postel (6 August 1943 – 16 October 1998) made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly in the area of standards. He is principally known for being the Editor of the Request for Comment (RFC) document series, and for serving as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority until his death. While studying at UCLA, he was involved in early work on the ARPANET; he later moved to the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, where he spent the rest of his career. Postel served on the Internet Architecture Board and its predecessors for many years. He was the original and long-time .us Top-Level Domain administrator. He also managed the Los Nettos Network. The Internet Society's Postel Award is named in his honor, as is the Postel Center at Information Sciences Institute.

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The following are images from various internet-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1BBN Technologies TCP/IP Internet map of early 1986 (from History of the Internet)
Image 2The NeXT Computer used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN became the first Web server. (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 31997 advertisement in State Magazine by the US State Department Library for sessions introducing the then-unfamiliar Web (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 4
Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 5Internet Connectivity Access layer (from Internet access)
Image 6
Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 7
Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 8Stamped envelope of Russian Post issued in 1993 with stamp and graphics dedicated to first Russian underwater digital optic cable laid in 1993 by Rostelecom from Kingisepp to Copenhagen (see also: Internet in Russia) (from History of the Internet)
Image 9
Broadband affordability in 2011
This map presents an overview of broadband affordability, as the relationship between average yearly income per capita and the cost of a broadband subscription (data referring to 2011). Source: Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute. (from Internet access)
Image 10Wi-Fi range diagram (from Internet access)
Image 11The digital divide measured in terms of bandwidth is not closing, but fluctuating up and down. Gini coefficients for telecommunication capacity (in kbit/s) among individuals worldwide (from Internet access)
Image 12Satellite Internet access via VSAT in Ghana (from Internet access)
Image 13The "message block", designed by Paul Baran in 1962 and refined in 1964, is the first proposal of a data packet. (from History of the Internet)
Image 14
Internet users in 2023 as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 15Postage stamp of Azerbaijan (2004): 35 Years of the Internet, 1969–2004 (from History of the Internet)
Image 16Wi-Fi logo (from Internet access)
Image 17
Number of Internet hosts worldwide: 1969–2019
Source: Internet Systems Consortium. (from History of the Internet)
Image 18First Internet demonstration, linking the ARPANET, PRNET, and SATNET on November 22, 1977 (from History of the Internet)
Image 19The corridor where the World Wide Web was born, on the ground floor of building No. 1 at CERN (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 20Where the WEB was born (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 21
Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 22Robert Cailliau, Jean-François Abramatic, and Tim Berners-Lee at the tenth anniversary of the World Wide Web Consortium (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 23T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992 (from History of the Internet)
Image 24Map of the TCP/IP test network in February 1982 (from History of the Internet)
Image 25
Internet users in 2023 as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 26info.cern.ch, the first website, in 2025 (from History of the World Wide Web)

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China has placed severe restrictions on the Internet and enlisted America's high-tech companies as their Internet police.... As we meet today, Chinese citizens who had the courage to speak their minds on the Internet are in the Chinese gulag because Yahoo chose to reveal their identities to the Chinese government.

— Tom Lantos, U.S. Congressman, 2006

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Main topics

Internet

Articles: Application layer; ARPANET; Blog; Browsers; CERN; Collaborative software; Computer file; Computer network; Computer networking; DARPA; Data (computing); Electronic commerce; E-mail; English on the Internet; FidoNet; File sharing; History of the Internet; HTML; HyperCard; Hyperlink; ICANN; Instant messaging; Internet access; Internet capitalization conventions; Internet censorship; Internet Control Message Protocol; Internet democracy; Internet Exchange Point; Internet Governance Forum; Internet privacy; Internet Protocol; Internet protocols; Internet research; Internetworking; Massively multiplayer online role-playing game; Mosaic (web browser); National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Net neutrality; Online chat; Peering; Remote access; Transmission Control Protocol; Scale-free network; Search engine; Security; Social network service; Unicode; Uniform resource locator; User agent; User Datagram Protocol; ViolaWWW; Virtual private network; VoIP; Web browser; Web resource; Web service; Wide area network; World Summit on the Information Society; World Wide Web

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