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Exercises · Q12

Q.Sahil, a Class X student, has just started understanding the basics of Internet and web technologies. He is a bit confused in between the terms "World Wide Web" and "Internet". Help him in understanding both the terms with the help of suitable examples of each.

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The Internet is the physical network of connected computers worldwide, while the World Wide Web is one service that runs on top of the Internet, allowing us to access websites through browsers.

Think of the Internet as the road system of a country—the actual highways, streets, and lanes that connect different places. The World Wide Web, on the other hand, is like one particular type of vehicle that travels on those roads, say all the buses. Just as roads can carry cars, trucks, bicycles, and buses, the Internet carries many different services, and the Web is just one of them.

The Internet is the underlying infrastructure, a vast network of computers and servers connected through cables, routers, and wireless signals spanning the entire globe. It came into being in the late 1960s as a military and research project, evolving over decades into the global network we know today. When your computer connects to the Internet, it joins this massive network and can communicate with any other connected device using a common language called Internet Protocol.

On this infrastructure run multiple services. Email is one—when you send a message through Gmail or Outlook, you're using the Internet but not the Web. Online gaming is another; when players connect to game servers, they're using the Internet directly. File transfer services, video calls through applications, and even Internet banking apps on your phone—all these use the Internet as their foundation but operate independently of the World Wide Web.

The World Wide Web was invented much later, in 1990, by Tim Berners-Lee. It's a system of interlinked documents and resources that you access through a web browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. Every time you type a web address starting with "www" or "http," you're using the Web. The Web works through three key technologies: HTML (which structures the content of pages), URLs (the addresses like www.example.com), and HTTP (the protocol that transfers web pages from servers to your browser).

Note

When you open YouTube in a browser, you're using the World Wide Web. But when you stream a video through the YouTube app on your phone, you're often using the Internet directly through the app's own protocols—the Web isn't necessarily involved. …

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