The Internet

In a period of ten short years the Internet has profoundly changed the way modern telecommunications function. Today, it is hard to imagine a world without the Internet. The Internet's roots date back to the 1950s, when researchers realized there was a need to allow general communications between users of various computers and communications networks (History of the Internet, Wikipedia). However, it wasn't until 1986 and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) construction of a university network called NSFNet that the Internet truly began to take off. In the 1990s the Internet, as a shared network, began to gain in popularity. In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee published the very first web site to the internet, eleven years after he first proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers (History of the Internet, Wikipedia). The very first web site, http://info.cern.ch, contained information describing what the World Wide Web was, how an individual could set up a web server, and how someone could have a web browser. The web site also had the world's first web directory. At the time of the web site's release, Tim Berners-Lee was a fellow for the European Council for Nuclear Research also known as (CERN).

The Internet was not opened for commercial interest until 1995. It was at this point that the potential power of the Internet would be discovered. Today's Internet reaches nearly every corner of the earth. It has, in my opinion, changed the way individuals, institutions, corporations, and governments conduct day-to-day business/operations. One can surmise that the Internet has contributed considerably to the globalization of the world's economy. The Internet has provided a medium for thousands of companies and millions of individuals to join the global market place. Amazon.com and EBay.com are just a couple of the companies that were born from the development of the Internet. Amazon.com conducts business all over the world, selling millions of books each year without having one single retail store. All book sale transactions are conducted entirely on the Internet.

The Internet has also contributed to improvements in the healthcare industry. It is now possible for medical institutions to provide a vast range of improved services. Internet has benefited healthcare through the implementation of integrated computerized patient records systems. These web-based systems have considerably reduced the time it takes to update and retrieve patient information. One such example is the access to radiology film. Accessing radiology film has dropped from 24 hours to a mere 3.5 seconds (WinterGreen Research, May 2001).

The healthcare system was not the only beneficiary of the Internet. Nearly every form of business has gained from the development of the Internet. Governments, corporations, local retail stores, and private citizens now have the ability to literally reach every corner of the world. The world is communicating in near real time thanks to the Internet. An engineer located in New York can conduct troubleshooting with a technician in Europe or Asia without the need to travel.

The Internet has realized phenomenal growth since going main stream, at one point World Wide Web had an astounding if not incomprehensible 341,634% growth rate (Shannon).

The World Wide Web has rapidly become the most popular aspect of the Internet. It was twenty years ago that the first large internet service providers (ISPs) first began to offer internet access to the general public. One of these was America OnLine (AOL) that now has 29 million members world wide (America On Line, 2005). Even today, the Internet is still enjoying a steady rate of growth.

New technologies such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) continue to be introduced, bringing the world even closer. VoIP is making its mark on the telecommunications industry in a big way. VoIP technologies are making it possible for individuals to communicate using special software or special IP telephones as they do with traditional