The Online World resources handbook

Selected online services http://home.eunet.no/~presno/bok/v1.html
Vendor of packet data services with local operations in many countries around the
world.
Internet
The name comes from "inter networking," which is the process of connecting multiple
host computers and their associated networks together to create a larger network.
What started as ARPANET, was by July 1996 a large group of over 134,000
interconnected independent networks in 175 countries supporting mail, news, remote
login, file transfer, and many other services (source: http://www.nw.com). All
participating hosts use the TCP/IP protocol.
While electronic mail and the World Wide Web are the net's most popular
applications, users also have access to ftp and telnet. Ftp gives interactive access to
remote computers for transferring files. Telnet gives access to a remote service for
interactive dialog. You can telnet several bulletin boards through Internet, like
telnet://conrad.appstate.edu. (Login as "info")
It is not possible to calculate the number of interconnected networks any more, but
by July 1997, hosts in 214 countries provided net connectivity.
There are other major wide area networks, such as the BITNET and DECnet
networks that are not based on the TCP/IP protocols and are thus not part of the
Internet. However, it is possible to communicate between them and the Internet via
electronic mail because of mail gateways that act as "translators" between the different
network protocols involved. See The Matrix below.
The number of hosts grew from 213 in 1981, through 313,000 in 1990, to
93,047,785 in July, 2000. (Source: Internet Software Consortium). A host used to be a
single machine on the net. The definition has changed due to virtual hosting, where a
single machine acts like multiple systems (and has multiple domain names and IP
addresses).
The number of users is claimed to double every year. In January 1994, the
Internet Number FAQ estimated some 16 million users. Two years later, Matrix News
estimated 36 million users of computers who could distribute information by interactive
TCP/IP services (like WWW, and FTP), and 57 million users who could access
information by interactive TCP/IP services.
By June 1998, the Internet had an estimated 129.5 million users, according to Nua
Internet Surveys. By November 1997, the number was 86 million users.
For a different view of the figures, check Global Internet Statistics. They
estimate the number of each language population on the Internet (native speakers): those
who have access to the Internet on a worldwide scale (that is, who have email access) or
to the Web. They classify by languages instead of by countries, since people speaking
the same language form their own online community no matter what country they
happen to live in.
Already by August, 1991, over half the registered networks on Internet were
commercial.
In addition, private enterprise networks have an estimated 1,410,000 hosts using
TCP/IP (Source: The Internet Demographic Survey, January 1994.) These offer mail
exchange with the Internet, but not services such as Telnet or FTP to most parts of the
Internet, and are estimated to have some 7.5 million users.
One important feature of the Internet is that no one is in charge. The Internet is
essentially a voluntary association. Somehow it all works.
Some of its direction comes from a group of volunteers called the Internet Society
run more like a council of elders than a business.
No one organization collects fees from Internet users or networks. Each user and
service pays its own way. There are rarely any additional charges for sending and
receiving electronic mail (even when sending to other networks), retrieving files, or
reading Usenet Newsgroups.
For more on the Internet, check out the sources listed at the end of Appendix 6.
Statistics
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