Рубрика:
87
Most of the Internet host computers (more than 50%) are in the US, while the
rest are located in more than 100 other countries. Although the number of host
computers can be counted fairly accurately, nobody knows exactly how many
people use the Internet, there are millions, and their number is growing.
The most popular Internet service is e-mail. Most of the people, who have
access to the Internet, use the network only for sending and receiving e-mail
messages. However, other popular services are available on the Internet: reading
USENET News, using the World-Wide Web, telnet, FTP, and Gopher.
In many developing countries the Internet may provide businessmen with a
reliable alternative to the expensive and unreliable telecommunication systems
of these countries. Commercial users can communicate over the Internet with
the rest of the world and can do it very cheaply. When they send e-mail
messages, they only have to pay the phones calls to their local service providers,
not for calls across their countries or around the world. But who actually pays
for sending e-mail messages over the Internet long distances, around the world?
The answer is very simple: a used pays his/her service provider a monthly or
hourly fee. Part of this fee goes towards its cost to connect to a larger service
provider. And part of the fee got by the larger provider goes to cover its cost of
running worldwide network of wires and wireless stations.
But saving money is only the first step. If people see that they can make
money from the Internet, commercial use of this network will drastically
increase. For example, some western architecture companies and garment
centers already transmit their basic designs and concepts over the Internet into
China, where they are reworked and refined by skilled – but inexpensive –
Chinese computer-aided-design specialists.
However, some problems remain. The most important is security. When you
send an e-mail message to somebody, this message can travel through many different
networks and computers. The data is constantly being directed towards its
destination by special computers called routers. Because of this, it is possible to get
into any of computers along the route, intercept and even change the data being
sent over the Internet. In spite of the fact that there are many strong encoding
programs available, nearly all the information being sent over the Internet is transmitted
without any form of encoding, i. e. “in the clear”. But when it becomes necessary
to send important information over the network, these encoding programs may be
useful. Some American banks and companies even conduct transactions over the
Internet. However, there are still both commercial and technical problems, which
will take time to be resolved.
(2680 t. un.)
