The Internet: global information superhighway for the future

The information revolution is bringing people of different backgrounds from around the world into a global information superhighway. The Internet provides a global platform connecting thousands of networks around the world. There is a variety of information available on the Internet for the users. It has been considered as a forum for users to share worldwide information resources. The resources are so vast that many of us really cannot grasp or understand the Internet fully. It has become a 'global information library' which allows the users to participate in the group discussion, search for any information, start any discussion with others and so on. It can be considered as a hybrid environment of postal services, citizen's band radio, libraries and neighborhood community centers where we ('we' is mainly used in this paper in its generic form) can spend time with our friends ('our' is also mainly used generically). Internet users (Internauts) share jokes, gossip in on-line conferences and join special groups to keep abreast of their specific interests. The main objective of this tutorial is to discuss various services on the Internet, their implementations, various Internet tools, and interconnection to the Internet. Other important issues like the Internet addressing, domain name system, IP addressing, etc. are discussed in detail in order to understand some design concepts. A brief list of the different types of browsers for different platforms is given. a discussion on future of the Internet is given via different advances and tools defined to provide security, interconnectivity and other related issues. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.