It’s been over three decades since the web as we know it came to be. In that time, we’ve seen a rapid evolution in the way we connect with each other, find and share information, purchase goods, and entertain ourselves.
All of our online activity is built on systems that connect our devices, the information we’re seeking, and the pathways between each of those systems. Read on to learn more about the basics of how the web works and how all of the vital components are woven together.
What is the Internet?
Believe it or not, the internet isn’t simply the connection that Geneseo Communications installed at your home and hooked up to a WiFi router. In fact, that’s the delivery system for the internet.
To be more precise, the internet is a global network of all computers, phones, tablets, and other connected devices that communicate and share information. Everything connected to the internet has an IP address.
According to the Internet Society, “The global Internet consists of tens of thousands of interconnected networks run by service providers, individual companies, universities and governments.” So, in a sense, the internet is the primary network of all of the smaller networks that are interconnected.
The foundations of the internet can be traced back to the late 1960s with a network called ARPANET. It first connected universities and labs so researchers could share information. In 1983, a standard set of rules called TCP/IP made it possible for many smaller networks to connect and talk to each other. This was the start of the modern internet.
Today, more than 5 billion people worldwide use the internet to communicate, work, learn, and be entertained.
What is the World Wide Web?
While the Internet is the network of computers, the World Wide Web (WWW) is the network of information that people can access through the internet. They are not the same thing, and the WWW cannot function without the internet connecting together all of the devices storing information.
The WWW operates on top of the internet to provide each of the devices connected to it via the internet with the information requested by the user. The WWW uses a combination of web servers, which store information, and browsers, which request and display that information.
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (the Switzerland-based European Organization for Nuclear Research) proposed a system to share documents using hypertext links, naming it the World Wide Web. In 1993, CERN released the Web into the public domain, making it free for everyone to use and build upon.
The WWW now powers most of what we think of as “the internet,” from websites and online shopping to social media and video streaming.
What is a browser?
A web browser is software installed on a device that people use to access the WWW. It retrieves files out on the web, brings them to your device, and translates the code for you to see in a readable format of text and images.
Some popular examples of web browsers include:
- Google Chrome
- Apple’s Safari
- Microsoft Edge
- Mozilla Firefox
- Opera
Tim Berners-Lee created the first web browser in 1990, originally called WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus). In 1993, a browser called Mosaic was released at the University of Illinois. Mosaic was the first browser to show images and text together on one page, which made the web much more user-friendly and sparked its rapid adoption.
What is a search engine?
A search engine is a website designed to help users search for content on the web with simple text searches, and now, images. A search engine is accessed through a browser in order to search all of the content on the World Wide Web.
Search engines index the content across the web and create a database of where to find information. When someone searches for something like “apple pie recipes,” the search engine references its database of information for relevant mentions of apple pie recipes, rather than searching the entire WWW at that time.
These days, browsers have search engines built into them. Google Chrome is the most obvious example, where you can type search terms right into the browser’s address bar, rather than visiting www.google.com in your browser.
The first search tool, called Archie, was created in 1990 to index FTP archives. By the mid-1990s, web search engines like Yahoo! and AltaVista helped people find websites. Google launched in 1998 and quickly became the most popular because of its accuracy and speed.
Popular search engines include:
- Bing
- Yahoo!
- DuckDuckGo
AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Perplexity are also growing in popularity as search engines.
What is a website?
A website is a collection of web pages that are interlinked and contain information pertaining to a subject, service, tool, or product.
Websites, like devices on the web, have unique addresses called a URL. When a browser is used to access a website, the browser retrieves information from that URL and displays it on your device. Search engines also use that URL, along with the information from the pages within, to present information to someone searching for a related topic or term.
By 1991, Tim Berners-Lee published the first website explaining what the World Wide Web was. As of today, there are over 1.1 billion websites online.
What is Geneseo Communications’ role in the web?
Geneseo Communications and other internet service providers (ISPs) are the gateways that connect homes and businesses to the global system that is the internet. We manage the “last mile” of the network that links your devices to the larger network of devices across the world.
We set up your connection, maintain it, and keep it working fast and reliably so you always stay connected. Our network is connected to larger networks in our region and state that are then interconnected with the patchwork of larger networks across the country.
Our country is then connected to all other countries across the world through a network of undersea fiber optic cables that span across the globe. In fact, there are more than 745,000 miles of underwater cables connecting people across the world to the internet.
While Geneseo Communications is proud to be a small, locally based internet provider, we recognize that we’re a small piece of the larger and ever-growing puzzle that makes up the world’s connectivity, and we take that job very seriously. We’re proud to keep you connected to the internet with the region’s fastest fiber optic network.