You probably use it every day but how well do you know your Internet?

Ever wonder how all this foolishness got started in the first place and why? How big it really is? How many present users there are? The average time spent on a website? Here are 21 facts you might or might not want to know about the Internet.

1. Who coined the phrase 'World Wide Web'?

Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.

2. How did the Internet Start and Why?

It all started with the time-sharing of IBM computers in the early 60's at universities such as Dartmouth and Berkeley in the States. People would share the same computer for their computing tasks. The Internet also got help from Sputnik! After this Russian Satellite was launched in 1957; President Eisenhower formed ARPA to advance computer networking and communication.

3. Who was J.C.R. Licklider?

Licklider is often referred to as the father of the Internet because his ideas of interactive computing and a "Galactic Network" were the seeds for the Internet. His ideas would be developed thru DARPA,(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 1962. Later he would help form ARPANET and the Internet was on it's way.

4. What was ARPANET?

ARPANET stands for 'Advanced Research Projects Agency Network' Came about in the arena of Sputnik and the cold war. The military needed a method of communicating and sharing all the information on computers for research and development. It would also be a handy communication system if all traditional ways were wiped out in a nuclear attack!

5. What was the First long distance Connection?

In 1965 using a low speed dial-up telephone line, MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts working with Thomas Merrill, connected the TX-2 computer in Massachusetts to the Q-32 in California. The phone lines weren't quite up to the task!

6. Who was Leonard Kleinrock?

Kleinrock came up with the theory of packet switching, the basic form of Internet connections. With a group of UCLA graduate students on Oct. 29, 1969, Kleinrock connected with the Stanford Research Institute but as they typed in the G in LOGIN -- the system crashed!

7.What is an Ethernet?

It's a protocol for by many local networks, (LAN Local-area Networks) the origins of which came from Bob Metcalfe's Harvard's dissertation on "Packet Networks".

8. When was the first mouse introduced?

The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Expo in San Francisco.

9. Did Al Gore really invent the Internet? No, but give credit where credit is due. He did the most of any elected official to actively promote the Internet. However, he wasn't even in Congress when ARPANET was formed in 1969 or even when the term 'Internet' came into use in 1974. Gore was first elected in 1976.

10. Who coined the phrase 'Information Super Highway'?

Al Gore in 1981!

11. Which decade really saw the explosion of the net?

The 90's! The Internet exploded in or around 1993.

12. How fast is the Internet growing?

Very fast! It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million users, 13 years for TV, and only 5 years for the Internet. Source: CyberAtlas.com

13. Number of Internet Users and Breakdown.

The Internet is roughly 35% English, 65% Non-English with the Chinese at 14%. Yet only 13% of world's population, 812 million are Internet users as of Dec. '04. North America has the highest concentration with 70% of the people using the Internet.

14. Country with the highest percentage of net users?

Sweden at 75%.

15. How big is the Internet's surfing world?

Google's index now stands at 8 billion pages.

16. What was the Net's first index called?

Archie, other than library catalogs, this was the first index created in 1989 by Peter Deutsch at McGill in Montreal. Although it spouted such others as Veronica and Judhead, Archie was short for Archiver and had nothing to do with the comic strip.

17. Who coined the phrase 'The Web might be better than sex'?

Bob Metcalfe in 1995.

18. What does HTTP stand for?

HyperText Transfer Protocol -- it's the protocol for moving files across the net; it requires two client programs. The HTTP client and the server.

19. What is an ISP?

Internet Service Provider -- This is the service or company you use to access the Internet.

20. What is HTML?

Hypertext Markup Language -- it's the coded format language for transmitting and creating hypertext web pages.

21. What are your average surfing habits according to Nielsen NetRatings?

Each month you usually visit 59 domains, view 1,050 pages allocating 45 seconds for each page and spend about 25 hours doing all this net activity! Each surfing session lasts 51 minutes.

One last thought - Henry Edward Hardy in his Master's Thesis (1993) on The History of the Net stated "The Net is Immortal". Ever wonder what this baby will be like in a 100 years? a 1000 years? Just something to think about as you keep your eye on that cursor.

Copyright 2005 Titus Hoskins