Result from Foreign Dictionaries (3 entries found)

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  internet \in"ter*net\ ([i^]n"t[~e]r*n[e^]t), n.
     A large network[3] of numerous computers connected through a
     number of major nodes of high-speed computers having
     high-speed communications channels between the major nodes,
     and numerous minor nodes allowing electronic communication
     among millions of computers around the world; -- usually
     referred to as {the internet}. It is the basis for the
     {World-Wide Web}.
     [PJC]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:

  Internet
      n : a computer network consisting of a worldwide network of
          computer networks that use the TCP/IP network protocols
          to facilitate data transmission and exchange [syn:
          {Internet}, {Net}, {cyberspace}]

From Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) [jargon]:

  Internet
   n.
  
     The mother of all networks. First incarnated beginning in 1969 as the
     ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense research testbed. Though it has
     been widely believed that the goal was to develop a network
     architecture for military command-and-control that could survive
     disruptions up to and including nuclear war, this is a myth; in fact,
     ARPANET was conceived from the start as a way to get most economical
     use out of then-scarce large-computer resources. Robert Herzfeld, who
     was director of ARPA at the time, has been at some pains to debunk
     the "survive-a-nuclear-war" myth, but it seems unkillable.
  
     As originally imagined, ARPANET's major use would have been to
     support what is now called remote login and more sophisticated forms
     of distributed computing, but the infant technology of electronic
     mail quickly grew to dominate actual usage. Universities, research
     labs and defense contractors early discovered the Internet's
     potential as a medium of communication between humans and linked up
     in steadily increasing numbers, connecting together a quirky mix of
     academics, techies, hippies, SF fans, hackers, and anarchists. The
     roots of this lexicon lie in those early years.
  
     Over the next quarter-century the Internet evolved in many ways. The
     typical machine/OS combination moved from {DEC} {PDP-10}s and
     {PDP-20}s, running {TOPS-10} and {TOPS-20}, to PDP-11s and {VAX}en
     and Suns running {Unix}, and in the 1990s to Unix on Intel
     microcomputers. The Internet's protocols grew more capable, most
     notably in the move from NCP/IP to {TCP/IP} in 1982 and the
     implementation of Domain Name Service in 1983. It was around this
     time that people began referring to the collection of interconnected
     networks with ARPANET at its core as "the Internet".
  
     The ARPANET had a fairly strict set of participation guidelines --
     connected institutions had to be involved with a DOD-related research
     project. By the mid-80s, many of the organizations clamoring to join
     didn't fit this profile. In 1986, the National Science Foundation
     built NSFnet to open up access to its five regional supercomputing
     centers; NSFnet became the backbone of the Internet, replacing the
     original ARPANET pipes (which were formally shut down in 1990).
     Between 1990 and late 1994 the pieces of NSFnet were sold to major
     telecommunications companies until the Internet backbone had gone
     completely commercial.
  
     That year, 1994, was also the year the mainstream culture discovered
     the Internet. Once again, the {killer app} was not the anticipated
     one -- rather, what caught the public imagination was the hypertext
     and multimedia features of the World Wide Web. Subsequently the
     Internet has seen off its only serious challenger (the OSI protocol
     stack favored by European telecoms monopolies) and is in the process
     of absorbing into itself many of the proprietary networks built
     during the second wave of wide-area networking after 1980. By 1996 it
     had become a commonplace even in mainstream media to predict that a
     globally-extended Internet would become the key unifying
     communications technology of the next century. See also {the
     network}.
  

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