Internet – The Untapped Realm

The Internet is a vast global network of information-sharing consisting of many people and organizations using computers to exchange information among themselves and with others online, usually through some sort of network or server. It allows people to share information, ideas, and knowledge with each other on a worldwide, global scale. For example, one can look to the Internet to learn about ancient Greek mythology, to find out how to perform a scientific experiment, to find out how to speak several different languages, to study the stars and constellations, or to research any number of other interesting topics.

Although the Internet was originally developed as an intranet for universities and colleges in the United States and other first-world countries, it has rapidly expanded into a full communication and exchange platform, including the use of computer networks all over the world. There are millions of users on the internet work at home jobs, who communicate with each other using chat rooms, forums, email, instant messaging, and other such tools. In fact, there are far more internet users than there are residents in the entire United States. While the majority of this traffic passes through servers that control the Internet in the form of private high-speed broadband connections, there is considerable leakage or Internet traffic which comes from various other sources.

This “off the rails” Internet refers to any source of Internet traffic that originates outside of the controlled networks of the Internet itself. This “off the rails” Internet is what allows voice over Internet protocol, commonly referred to as VoIP, to work. Even though this form of Internetworking is becoming increasingly widespread, it still faces many challenges. One major issue for the Internet is the difficulty of keeping the massive amounts of data that must be exchanged and stored in computer networks. Another major issue facing the Internet user is the difficulty of securing his or her privacy, especially if that person uses a web browser to access the Internet. (The availability of anti-virus software has also increased the difficulty of using the Internet.)