Many people use the terms
Internet and
World Wide Web (a.k.a.
the Web) interchangeably, but in fact the two terms are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things. The
Internet is a massive
network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as
protocols.
The
World Wide Web, or simply
Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow
applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the the Web to share information. The Web also utilizes
browsers, such as
Internet Explorer or
Netscape, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via
hyperlinks. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.
The Web is just one of the ways that information can be disseminated over the Internet. The Internet, not the Web, is also used for
e-mail, which relies on SMTP,
Usenet news groups,
instant messaging and
cPanel®. So the Web is just a portion of the Internet, albeit a large portion, but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.
