ISP
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned. Internet services typically provided by ISPs can include internet access, internet transit, domain name registration, web hosting, and colocation. History The Internet (originally ARPAnet) was developed as a network between government research laboratories and participating departments of universities. Other companies and organizations joined by direct connection to the backbone, or by arrangements through other connected companies, sometimes using dialup tools such as UUCP. By the late 1980s, a process was set in place towards public, commercial use of the Internet. Some restrictions were removed by 1991, shortly after the introduction of the World Wide Web. During the 1980s, online service pro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Net Neutrality
Net neutrality, sometimes referred to as network neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering User (computing), users and online content providers consistent transfer rates regardless of content, website, computing platform, platform, application software, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication (i.e., without price discrimination). Net neutrality was advocated for in the 1990s by the presidential administration of Presidency of Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton in the United States. Clinton signed of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934. In 2025, an American court ruled that Internet companies should not be regulated like utilities, which weakened net neutrality regulation and put the decision in the hands of the United States Congress and state legislatures. Supporters of net neutrality argue that it p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Internet Access
Internet access is a facility or service that provides connectivity for a computer, a computer network, or other network device to the Internet, and for individuals or organizations to access or use applications such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is offered for sale by an international hierarchy of Internet service providers (ISPs) using various networking technologies. At the retail level, many organizations, including municipal entities, also provide cost-free access to the general public. Types of connections range from fixed-line cable (such as DSL and fiber optic) to Mobile broadband, mobile (via Cellular network, cellular) and Satellite Internet access, satellite. The availability of Internet access to the general public began with the commercialization of the early Internet in the early 1990s, and has grown with the availability of useful applications, such as the World Wide Web. In 1995, only percent of the world's population had access, with well ove ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Network Access Point
Internet exchange points (IXes or IXPs) are common grounds of IP networking, allowing participant Internet service providers (ISPs) to exchange data destined for their respective networks. IXPs are generally located at places with preexisting connections to multiple distinct networks, ''i.e.'', datacenters, and operate physical infrastructure ( switches) to connect their participants. Organizationally, most IXPs are each independent not-for-profit associations of their constituent participating networks (that is, the set of ISPs that participate in that IXP). The primary alternative to IXPs is private peering, where ISPs and large customers directly connect their networks. IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic that must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing the average per-bit delivery cost of their service. Furthermore, the increased number of paths available through the IXP improves routing efficiency (by allowing routers to selec ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Dial-up
Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telephone line which could be connected using an RJ-11 connector. Dial-up connections use modems to decode audio signals into data to send to a router or computer, and to encode signals from the latter two devices to send to another modem at the ISP. Dial-up Internet reached its peak popularity during the dot-com bubble with the likes of ISPs such as Sprint, EarthLink, MSN Dial-up, NetZero, Prodigy, and America Online (more commonly known as AOL). This was in large part because broadband Internet did not become widely used until well into the 2000s. Since then, most dial-up access has been replaced by broadband. History In 1979, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, graduates of Duke University, created an early predecessor to dial-up Internet acc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Prodigy (online Service)
Prodigy Communications Corporation was an online service from 1984 to 2001 that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services. It was one of the major internet service providers of the 1990s. The company claimed it was the first consumer online service, citing its graphical user interface and basic architecture as differentiation from CompuServe, which started in 1979 and used a command-line interface. Prodigy was described by the ''New York Times'' as "family-oriented" and one of "the Big Three information services" in 1994. By 1990, it was the second-largest online service provider with 465,000 subscribers, trailing only CompuServe's 600,000. In 1993 it was the largest. In 2001, it was acquired by SBC Communications, which in 2005 became the present iteration of AT&T. The Mexican branch of Prodigy, however, was acquired by Telmex. Early history The roots of Prodigy date to 1980 when broadcaster CBS and telecommunications firm AT&T Corporation formed a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Internet Backbone
The Internet backbone is the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected computer networks and core routers of the Internet. These data routes are hosted by commercial, government, academic and other high-capacity network centers as well as the Internet exchange points and network access points, which exchange Internet traffic internationally. Internet service providers (ISPs) participate in Internet backbone traffic through privately negotiated interconnection agreements, primarily governed by the principle of settlement-free peering. The Internet, and consequently its backbone networks, do not rely on central control or coordinating facilities, nor do they implement any global network policies. The resilience of the Internet results from its principal architectural features, such as the idea of placing as few network state and control functions as possible in the network elements, instead relying on the endpoints of communication to handle most of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks that consists of Private network, private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, Wireless network, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and Web application, applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), email, electronic mail, internet telephony, streaming media and file sharing. The origins of the Internet date back to research that enabled the time-sharing of computer resources, the development of packet switching in the 1960s and the design of computer networks for data communication. The set of rules (communication protocols) to enable i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Internet Transit
Internet transit is the service of allowing network traffic to cross or "transit" a computer network, usually used to connect a smaller Internet service provider (ISP) to the larger Internet. Technically, it consists of two bundled services: * The advertisement of customer routes to other ISPs, thereby soliciting inbound traffic toward the customer from them * The advertisement of other ISPs' routes (usually but not necessarily in the form of a default route or a full set of routes to all of the destinations on the Internet) to the ISP's customer, thereby soliciting outbound traffic from the customer towards these networks. In the 1970s and early 1980s-era Internet, the assumption was made that all networks would provide full transit for one another. In the modern private-sector Internet, two forms of interconnect agreements exist between Internet networks: transit, and peering. Transit is distinct from peering, in which only traffic between the two ISPs and their downstrea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Online Service Provider
An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, an official government site, social media, a wiki, or a Usenet newsgroup. In its original more limited definition, it referred only to a commercial computer communication service in which paid members could dial via a computer modem the service's private computer network and access various services and information resources such as bulletin board systems, downloadable files and programs, news articles, chat rooms, and electronic mail services. The term "online service" was also used in references to these dial-up services. The traditional dial-up online service differed from the modern Internet service provider in that they provided a large degree of content that was only accessible by those who subscribed to the online service, whil ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
The World (Internet Service Provider)
The World is an Internet service provider originally headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was the first commercial ISP in the world that provided a direct connection to the internet, with its first customer logging on in November 1989. Controversy Many government and university installations blocked, threatened to block, or attempted to shut-down The World's Internet connection until Software Tool & Die was eventually granted permission by the National Science Foundation to provide public Internet access on "an experimental basis." Domain name history The World is operated by Software Tool & Die. The site and services were initially hosted solely under the domain name world.std.com which continues to function to this day. Sometime in or before 1994, the domain name world.com had been purchased by Software Tool & Die and used as The World's primary domain name. In 2000, STD let go ownership of world.com and is no longer associated with it. In 1999, STD obtained the do ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
America Online
AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online service known as PlayNET. PlayNET licensed its software to Quantum Link (Q-Link), which went online in November 1985. A new IBM PC–compatible, IBM PC client was launched in 1988, and eventually renamed as America Online in 1989. AOL grew to become the largest online service, displacing established players like CompuServe and The Source (online service), The Source. By 1995, AOL had about three million active users. AOL was at one point the most recognized brand on the Web in the United States. AOL once provided a Dial-up Internet access, dial-up Internet service to millions of Americans and pioneered instant messaging and chat rooms with AIM (software), AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). In 1998, AOL purchased Nets ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |