ALL ABOUT THE INTERNET

ALL ABOUT THE INTERNET©
by Bill Smith, president of Elite Software

There’s a lot of talk about the internet these days and for good reason. The amount of information and resources on the internet make it the most incredible "library" in human history. Aided greatly by affordable personal computers and user friendly internet navigation software, the internet is easy to use and accessible to just about everyone. The pace may be a little quicker when the messages race around the world in a few seconds, but it's not much different from a large and very interesting party. Until you use a radio or TV receiver, you are unaware of the wealth of programming, music, and information otherwise invisible to you. The internet is much the same.

Before looking at what the Internet is today, a look at how it

all got started can be helpful. The Internet began in 1969 as an experimental network by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. It was founded as a way to transmit vital information should the US find itself in a wartime situation with some cities obliterated in nuclear holocaust. Called ARPANET, it originally consisted of four computers. ARPANET was designed to permit many routes among the computers so that a message could arrive to its destination using any possible route, not a single fixed path. Thus, if a single computer went down, other computers could fill in and keep the internet working. By 1972, fifty universities and military research sites had ARPANET access.

During the 1980s, several other networks (including a National Science Foundation network of five supercomputers) were created. Through time, many more public and private networks were created and interconnected to permit any computer on the subnetworks to communicate with computers anywhere in the entire internet. ARPA also helped developed standards, or protocols, to allow all kinds of computers to speak the same language and thus facilitate data transmission between different types of computer networks.

Today, the internet is like a modern system of interstate superhighways connecting large cities. Out from these large cities come smaller roads that link together small towns, whose residents travel on slower and smaller highways. The information “superhighway” or backbone of the internet consists of super computers that use a special system of transferring data at very high speeds. Connected to the backbone are computers for smaller networks serving particular geographic regions. Feeding off these in turn are even smaller networks or individual computers. Nobody really knows how many computers and networks actually make up the internet. Some estimates say there are now as many as 5,000 networks connecting over 2 million computers and more than 30 million people around the world. By the year 2000, 200 million people will be on the internet.

Whatever the actual numbers, it is clear that the internet is big and growing at exponential rates. Some estimates are that the volume of data transferred through the Net grows 20% a month! In response, government and other users have tried in recent years to expand the Net itself. Not long ago, the main internet "backbone" in the U.S. moved data at 1.5 million bits per second. That proved too slow for the ever increasing amount of information being sent over it, and the maximum speed was increased to 45 million bits per second. Today, improvements are under way to pump data at speeds that would send the entire Encyclopedia Britannica across the country in one hot second. Now, anybody with a computer and modem can literally tap into the world.

But what is it exactly that’s zipping around all those computers? In short, an astonishing amount of information on almost any imaginable subject. For example, if you do a search on "energy management" you'll get literally thousands of documents and resources from government, university, commercial and private computers worldwide. You can visit museums like the Smithsonian and the Louvre, research university libraries, shop, buy a new car, look for jobs, send flowers, earn a college degree, get news and weather, read innumerable online magazines and newspapers, keep up with your sports team, participate in professional associations, order airline tickets and hotel reservations, research vacation resorts, look for long lost friends, buy stocks, browse huge online bookstores and much, much more.

The internet search "engines" are simple to use but permit fast and powerful searches through the millions of computers of the internet. And, you can do it all in a point and click, easy-to-use, colorful, pictorial format. There is also an incredible array of software available for the downloading. Much of this software is free including the very software needed to "browse" or navigate the internet.

One of the greatest benefits of the Internet may be something you already take for granted: electronic mail or "Email". You can stay in touch with friends, relatives and colleagues around the world at a fraction of the cost of phone calls or even air mail. Email also lets you send large data files and pictures. USENET newsgroups are discussion groups of people which focus on a specific subject and serve as a central gathering place for people with the same interests. There's even a newsgroup solely dedicated to HVAC matters where visitors can get answers to design and system problems and address concerns of interest to the world's HVAC community.

There are more and more HVAC sites arriving on the internet. These include ASHRAE, ARI, ACCA, IEEE, IGSPHA, AutoDesk, trade journals, AEC and building industry sites, Trane and other equipment manufacturers and many more. The HVAC industry's news group is at "news:sci.engr.heat-vent-ac". Elite Software also has its own site on the Internet at “http://www.elitesoft.com”. Visitors to Elite’s home page can get instant and complete up-to-date information on the company’s full line of HVAC, electrical and plumbing programs. Free demonstration software is available and can also be easily downloaded. Visitors can also find many important links to other significant industry home pages.

The internet with its global network of computers and their interconnections lets you skip like a stone across oceans and continents and control computers at remote sites. The internet will continue to grow with faster connections, support ever more beautiful graphics and offer increasingly compelling content and information. But the internet is more than just a technological marvel; it is human communication at its most fundamental level. It has a wonderful spirit of cooperation, not competition, and volunteer effort has largely built the net. Best of all, it is low cost and accessible. It is open to all and has helped us overcome what has been called the tyranny of distance. The internet truly gives us a global village.

Mr. Smith welcomes your email about this article. - email