If the Internet was a library, then the Web also known as the World Wide Web are the books in the library. It’s a subtle difference to the untrained eye, but it exists and you my friend are now a nerd. It’s common for people to use the two terms interchangeably, but I can see why.
Lets use another analogy. Do you like burgers? Cafe Javas has some of the best burgers in Kampala by the way. The internet is a bit like a burger. It’s a sandwich consisting of several layers of cooked or grilled meat, sliced bread, vegetables and anything in between.
Or maybe a 7 layer cake. You start off with a base, the cake itself and then the icing and decoration tops it off. Look, I know nothing much about cakes except to eat them at birthday parties, but you get the gist.
The internet itself is simply a network of networks of connected computers, routers, switches, fiber cables that build the entire fabric of the network. These network equipment use a standard protocol called TCP/IP to communicate and share bits and bytes of data among themselves. At its core, its just a dump pipe push through it bits and bytes of data travelling at lighting speeds. The internet is an infrastructure a bit like the national power grid that delivers electricity to your house.
Now the web are the appliances in your house; the bulbs, washing machine, Television etc. Without these appliances, you wouldn’t make much sense of the national grid. In the cake analogy, the internet is the cake stand, but the real cake that you eat is the web.
The web gives a soul to the internet. The web are the applications you use everyday when you connect to the internet such as Facebook, Gmail, Youtube, millions of WordPress websites, Whatsapp, Telegram etc. It’s a Web of information easily shared through Hyperlinks or URLs. The Web runs on the HTTP/HTTPS protocol which describes how Web pages are retrieved from remote Servers also known as the Cloud.
Related post: What makes up a URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
Web Browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc help you navigate through the Web. The Domain Name System(DNS) is what translates human-friendly Domain Names into their Corresponding Numeric IPs so that you don’t have to remember 102.132.96.35 instead of facebook.com.
Related post: The difference between a website and a domain name
Your Internet Service Provider(ISP) provides you with an “internet package”, a means of connecting to the Web. Depending on which part of world you live in, ISP can take several shapes and colors. ISPs can provide solely internet such as Comcast in the U.S, or they can double as your mobile phone network such as MTN Uganda.
Related post: 5 Worthwhile Ugandan Internet Service providers (ISP) for Small business owners
Still confused about the difference between the Internet and the Web? It doesn’t matter. The Web is now the Internet and the Internet is the Web, the two have been joined together and no one will put them asunder. Do you own and website? It can go offline anytime and you should be in the know. That is why you should Sign up for Free on Site Monki to be alerted when your website goes down or when your domain name expires.
Image: Pixabay
