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115-601: Acision was founded in 2007 as a spin-off of the wireless networks business from LogicaCMG . It existed as an independent, private company until it was purchased by Comverse, Inc. in 2015. Acision's roots lie in two companies: Aldiscon's first deployment of its Telepath SMSC was with TeliaSonera in Sweden in 1993, followed by Fleet Call (now Nextel ) in the US, Telenor in Norway and BT Cellnet (now O2 UK ) later in 1993. In 1997, Aldiscon

230-456: A 32-bit number. IPv4 is the initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in dominant use. It was designed in 1981 to address up to ≈4.3 billion (10 ) hosts. However, the explosive growth of the Internet has led to IPv4 address exhaustion , which entered its final stage in 2011, when the global IPv4 address allocation pool was exhausted. Because of the growth of

345-515: A 4G network. The limits that users face on accessing information via mobile applications coincide with a broader process of fragmentation of the Internet . Fragmentation restricts access to media content and tends to affect the poorest users the most. Zero-rating , the practice of Internet service providers allowing users free connectivity to access specific content or applications without cost, has offered opportunities to surmount economic hurdles but has also been accused by its critics as creating

460-517: A blog, or building a website involves little initial cost and many cost-free services are available. However, publishing and maintaining large, professional web sites with attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition. Many individuals and some companies and groups use web logs or blogs, which are largely used as easily being able to update online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to communicate advice in their areas of specialization in

575-463: A broad array of electronic, wireless , and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail , telephony , and file sharing . The origins of the Internet date back to research that enabled the time-sharing of computer resources,

690-597: A collection of documents (web pages) and other web resources linked by hyperlinks and URLs . In the 1960s, computer scientists began developing systems for time-sharing of computer resources. J. C. R. Licklider proposed the idea of a universal network while working at Bolt Beranek & Newman and, later, leading the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of

805-576: A designated pool of addresses set aside for each region. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration , an agency of the United States Department of Commerce , had final approval over changes to the DNS root zone until the IANA stewardship transition on 1 October 2016. The Internet Society (ISOC) was founded in 1992 with a mission to "assure the open development, evolution and use of

920-544: A foray into the wider software products world in the early-mid 1980s, creating the Software Products Group. The director of the group was Gordon Kirk. Logica Rapport was an early relational database management system that was developed internally in 1977 and began selling as a general product in 1979, with another release in 1980. Micro Rapport was also released, for the Zilog Z80 . By 1986, support for Rapport

1035-560: A framework known as the Internet protocol suite (also called TCP/IP , based on the first two components.) This is a suite of protocols that are ordered into a set of four conceptional layers by the scope of their operation, originally documented in RFC   1122 and RFC   1123 . At the top is the application layer , where communication is described in terms of the objects or data structures most appropriate for each application. For example,

1150-419: A larger market or even sell goods and services entirely online . Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries. The Internet has no single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies. The overarching definitions of the two principal name spaces on

1265-604: A major success that gave it visibility when it won the design of the SWIFT network for international money transfers in 1972–73. The company produced a whole new production, transmission and management system for the BBC in the late 1970s. Another involved the first bank cash dispenser in the UK. The company's staffing levels were around 200 employees in the early years, and their successes at pulling off large-scale and difficult projects garnered them

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1380-585: A network into two or more networks is called subnetting . Computers that belong to a subnet are addressed with an identical most-significant bit -group in their IP addresses. This results in the logical division of an IP address into two fields, the network number or routing prefix and the rest field or host identifier . The rest field is an identifier for a specific host or network interface. The routing prefix may be expressed in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation written as

1495-478: A node on a different subnetwork. Routing tables are maintained by manual configuration or automatically by routing protocols . End-nodes typically use a default route that points toward an ISP providing transit, while ISP routers use the Border Gateway Protocol to establish the most efficient routing across the complex connections of the global Internet. The default gateway is the node that serves as

1610-532: A reputation for technical excellence and able management. McNeil led the teams that did many of the company's early projects. He left Logica in 1977 and ended up in a successful career as a novelist and a writer for BBC dramas. In 1974, Logica, together with the French company SESA, set up a joint venture, Sesa-Logica, to undertake the Euronet development. The project, with the support of partners throughout Europe and

1725-574: A shorthand for internetwork in RFC   675 , and later RFCs repeated this use. Cerf and Kahn credit Louis Pouzin and others with important influences on the resulting TCP/IP design. National PTTs and commercial providers developed the X.25 standard and deployed it on public data networks . Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded

1840-463: A sign of future growth, 15 sites were connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing . Thereafter, the ARPANET gradually developed into a decentralized communications network, connecting remote centers and military bases in the United States. Other user networks and research networks, such as

1955-585: A two-tiered Internet. To address the issues with zero-rating, an alternative model has emerged in the concept of 'equal rating' and is being tested in experiments by Mozilla and Orange in Africa. Equal rating prevents prioritization of one type of content and zero-rates all content up to a specified data cap. In a study published by Chatham House , 15 out of 19 countries researched in Latin America had some kind of hybrid or zero-rated product offered. Some countries in

2070-459: A vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to printed media, books, encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled the decentralization of information on a large scale. The Web has enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and information to a potentially large audience online at greatly reduced expense and time delay. Publishing a web page,

2185-674: A web browser operates in a client–server application model and exchanges information with the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and an application-germane data structure, such as the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Below this top layer, the transport layer connects applications on different hosts with a logical channel through the network. It provides this service with a variety of possible characteristics, such as ordered, reliable delivery (TCP), and an unreliable datagram service (UDP). Underlying these layers are

2300-572: A wide variety of other Internet software may be installed from app stores . Internet usage by mobile and tablet devices exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time in October 2016. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated that, by the end of 2017, 48% of individual users regularly connect to the Internet, up from 34% in 2012. Mobile Internet connectivity has played an important role in expanding access in recent years, especially in Asia and

2415-475: A year from the second half of 2012. Logica's shares fell to half their value from a year prior. Gradually the outsourcing component came to represent some 45 percent of the company's overall business. On 31 May 2012, Canada's CGI Group agreed to buy Logica in a £1.7 billion cash deal. The acquisition would give CGI a large presence in Europe for the first time and make it the sixth-largest IT services provider in

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2530-534: Is a global network that comprises many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body. The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols ( IPv4 and IPv6 ) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise. To maintain interoperability,

2645-399: Is a large address block with 2 addresses, having a 32-bit routing prefix. For IPv4, a network may also be characterized by its subnet mask or netmask , which is the bitmask that when applied by a bitwise AND operation to any IP address in the network, yields the routing prefix. Subnet masks are also expressed in dot-decimal notation like an address. For example, 255.255.255.0 is

2760-494: Is necessary to allocate address space efficiently. Subnetting may also enhance routing efficiency or have advantages in network management when subnetworks are administratively controlled by different entities in a larger organization. Subnets may be arranged logically in a hierarchical architecture, partitioning an organization's network address space into a tree-like routing structure. Computers and routers use routing tables in their operating system to direct IP packets to reach

2875-524: Is not directly interoperable by design with IPv4. In essence, it establishes a parallel version of the Internet not directly accessible with IPv4 software. Thus, translation facilities must exist for internetworking or nodes must have duplicate networking software for both networks. Essentially all modern computer operating systems support both versions of the Internet Protocol. Network infrastructure, however, has been lagging in this development. Aside from

2990-406: Is often accessed through high-performance content delivery networks . The World Wide Web is a global collection of documents , images , multimedia , applications, and other resources, logically interrelated by hyperlinks and referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), which provide a global system of named references. URIs symbolically identify services, web servers , databases, and

3105-541: The Oxford English Dictionary found that, based on a study of around 2.5 billion printed and online sources, "Internet" was capitalized in 54% of cases. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably; it is common to speak of "going on the Internet" when using a web browser to view web pages . However, the World Wide Web , or the Web , is only one of a large number of Internet services,

3220-1005: The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) for North America , the Asia–Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) for Asia and the Pacific region , the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) for Latin America and the Caribbean region, and the Réseaux IP Européens – Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) for Europe , the Middle East , and Central Asia were delegated to assign IP address blocks and other Internet parameters to local registries, such as Internet service providers , from

3335-897: The Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which facilitated worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks. TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States for researchers, first at speeds of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s. The NSFNet expanded into academic and research organizations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan in 1988–89. Although other network protocols such as UUCP and PTT public data networks had global reach well before this time, this marked

3450-535: The HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the first Web browser (which was also an HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd ), the first web server , and the first Web pages that described the project itself. In 1991 the Commercial Internet eXchange was founded, allowing PSInet to communicate with the other commercial networks CERFnet and Alternet. Stanford Federal Credit Union

3565-481: The International Network Working Group and commercial initiatives led to the development of various protocols and standards by which multiple separate networks could become a single network or "a network of networks". In 1974, Vint Cerf at Stanford University and Bob Kahn at DARPA published a proposal for "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication". They used the term internet as

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3680-478: The Merit Network and CYCLADES , were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Early international collaborations for the ARPANET were rare. Connections were made in 1973 to Norway ( NORSAR and NDRE ), and to Peter Kirstein's research group at University College London (UCL), which provided a gateway to British academic networks , forming the first internetwork for resource sharing . ARPA projects,

3795-525: The United States and in the United Kingdom and France . The ARPANET initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the United States to enable resource sharing . The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, encouraged worldwide participation in

3910-504: The French research centre INRIA and the UK’s National Physical Laboratory . Logica set up operating subsidiaries in the Sweden and the United States in 1977. While there were many other British computer services firms started up during this period, most ended up being bought out by bigger companies or overseas services firms. As such Logica became the dominant independent UK computer services company. The firm

4025-576: The Internet and the depletion of available IPv4 addresses , a new version of IP IPv6 , was developed in the mid-1990s, which provides vastly larger addressing capabilities and more efficient routing of Internet traffic. IPv6 uses 128 bits for the IP address and was standardized in 1998. IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s and is currently in growing deployment around the world, since Internet address registries ( RIRs ) began to urge all resource managers to plan rapid adoption and conversion. IPv6

4140-677: The Internet are contained in specially designated RFCs that constitute the Internet Standards . Other less rigorous documents are simply informative, experimental, or historical, or document the best current practices (BCP) when implementing Internet technologies. The Internet carries many applications and services , most prominently the World Wide Web, including social media , electronic mail , mobile applications , multiplayer online games , Internet telephony , file sharing , and streaming media services. Most servers that provide these services are today hosted in data centers , and content

4255-444: The Internet can then be accessed from places such as a park bench. Experiments have also been conducted with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet , various high-speed data services over cellular networks, and fixed wireless services. Modern smartphones can also access the Internet through the cellular carrier network. For Web browsing, these devices provide applications such as Google Chrome , Safari , and Firefox and

4370-614: The Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world" . Its members include individuals (anyone may join) as well as corporations, organizations , governments, and universities. Among other activities ISOC provides an administrative home for a number of less formally organized groups that are involved in developing and managing the Internet, including: the IETF, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), and Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG). On 16 November 2005,

4485-444: The Internet model is the Internet Protocol (IP). IP enables internetworking and, in essence, establishes the Internet itself. Two versions of the Internet Protocol exist, IPv4 and IPv6 . For locating individual computers on the network, the Internet provides IP addresses . IP addresses are used by the Internet infrastructure to direct internet packets to their destinations. They consist of fixed-length numbers, which are found within

4600-514: The Internet via local computer networks. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi cafés, where users need to bring their own wireless devices, such as a laptop or PDA . These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks . Commercial Wi-Fi services that cover large areas are available in many cities, such as New York , London , Vienna , Toronto , San Francisco , Philadelphia , Chicago and Pittsburgh , where

4715-691: The Internet was included on USA Today ' s list of the New Seven Wonders . The word internetted was used as early as 1849, meaning interconnected or interwoven . The word Internet was used in 1945 by the United States War Department in a radio operator's manual, and in 1974 as the shorthand form of Internetwork. Today, the term Internet most commonly refers to the global system of interconnected computer networks , though it may also refer to any group of smaller networks. When it came into common use, most publications treated

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4830-451: The Internet when needed to perform a function or obtain information, represent the bottom of the routing hierarchy. At the top of the routing hierarchy are the tier 1 networks , large telecommunication companies that exchange traffic directly with each other via very high speed fiber-optic cables and governed by peering agreements. Tier 2 and lower-level networks buy Internet transit from other providers to reach at least some parties on

4945-686: The Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise. In November 2006,

5060-467: The NSFNET and Europe was installed between Cornell University and CERN , allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites. Later in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee began writing WorldWideWeb , the first web browser , after two years of lobbying CERN management. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9,

5175-580: The Netherlands, and Scandinavia. On 20 February 2007, LogicaCMG Telecom Products was sold for £265m (US $ 525m) to private investors Atlantic Bridge Ventures and Access Industries, and became known as Acision . Following a profit warning in 2007, shareholders became increasingly skeptical about the wisdom of the European acquisitions strategy, and Martin Read was forced out as CEO by these shareholders. Andy Green

5290-498: The Pacific and in Africa. The number of unique mobile cellular subscriptions increased from 3.9 billion in 2012 to 4.8 billion in 2016, two-thirds of the world's population, with more than half of subscriptions located in Asia and the Pacific. The number of subscriptions was predicted to rise to 5.7 billion users in 2020. As of 2018 , 80% of the world's population were covered by

5405-587: The Philippines, and saw a subsequent increase in its outsourced HR and payroll services business to more than 850 customer organisations. Beginning in late 2009, Logica's revenues suffered from the effects of the European debt crisis . In December 2011, Logica announced it would cut 1,300 jobs or around 3 percent of the workforce spread across Benelux , the United Kingdom and Sweden, to save 50 to 60 million pounds

5520-526: The UK trade magazine Computing named Logica as the "Company of the Decade". In 1984 the company developed the automated clearing system for the UK banks ( CHAPS ) as well as the Customer Service System for British Telecommunications (BT/CSS), the £1bn total implementation, represented largest computer project undertaken in Europe and the largest integrated database in the world. Logica pioneered

5635-813: The UK's national research and education network , JANET . Common methods of Internet access by users include dial-up with a computer modem via telephone circuits, broadband over coaxial cable , fiber optics or copper wires, Wi-Fi , satellite , and cellular telephone technology (e.g. 3G , 4G ). The Internet may often be accessed from computers in libraries and Internet cafés . Internet access points exist in many public places such as airport halls and coffee shops. Various terms are used, such as public Internet kiosk , public access terminal , and Web payphone . Many hotels also have public terminals that are usually fee-based. These terminals are widely accessed for various usages, such as ticket booking, bank deposit, or online payment . Wi-Fi provides wireless access to

5750-495: The United Kingdom, as part of making further improvements to Xenix and porting Xenix to other platforms. In doing so, Microsoft gave HCR and Logica the rights to do Xenix ports and license Xenix binaries in those territories, which for Logica included all of Europe. This second source agreement was formalised between Microsoft and Logica in January 1983. This Logica group put out several releases, including Xenix 3.0 in 1984, which

5865-787: The United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues. The communications infrastructure of the Internet consists of its hardware components and a system of software layers that control various aspects of the architecture. As with any computer network, the Internet physically consists of routers , media (such as cabling and radio links), repeaters, modems etc. However, as an example of internetworking , many of

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5980-593: The United States Department of Defense (DoD). Research into packet switching , one of the fundamental Internet technologies, started in the work of Paul Baran at RAND in the early 1960s and, independently, Donald Davies at the United Kingdom's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in 1965. After the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in 1967, packet switching from the proposed NPL network and routing concepts proposed by Baran were incorporated into

6095-457: The United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television . Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation. When the Web developed in the 1990s, a typical web page was stored in completed form on a web server, formatted in HTML , ready for transmission to a web browser in response to a request. Over time,

6210-521: The acquisition, Comverse changed its name to Xura . LogicaCMG Logica plc was a multinational IT and management consultancy company headquartered in London and later Reading , United Kingdom. Founded in 1969, the company had offices in London and in a number of major cities across England , Wales and Scotland , as well as in other countries around the world. It was responsible for many telecommunications infrastructure projects, such as

6325-418: The architectural design of the Internet software systems has been assumed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The IETF conducts standard-setting work groups, open to any individual, about the various aspects of Internet architecture. The resulting contributions and standards are published as Request for Comments (RFC) documents on the IETF web site. The principal methods of networking that enable

6440-580: The assistance of Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used the packet switching technology of the NPL network and ARPANET and X.25 protocols to form virtual circuits . It established a network linking research centres in a number of European countries. They hired Roger Scantlebury in 1977 who had worked on the European Informatics Network , a datagram network linking CERN ,

6555-525: The automated ticketing system for London Underground in 1987 and a new version of the system which randomly generates Premium Bond numbers ( ERNIE ) in 1988. Logica set up joint ventures in Hong Kong with Jardine Matheson to undertake the real time trading system for the new integrated Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1984, in Italy with Finsiel in 1993, and in the UK with British Airways in 1990 to undertake

6670-412: The beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental network. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. Steady advances in semiconductor technology and optical networking created new economic opportunities for commercial involvement in the expansion of the network in its core and for delivering services to

6785-456: The bottom of the architecture is the link layer , which connects nodes on the same physical link, and contains protocols that do not require routers for traversal to other links. The protocol suite does not explicitly specify hardware methods to transfer bits, or protocols to manage such hardware, but assumes that appropriate technology is available. Examples of that technology include Wi-Fi , Ethernet , and DSL . The most prominent component of

6900-722: The close of the 1990s, Logica had seen large-scale growth, with an average annual earnings increase of 35 percent over the previous five years and an increase in the company's market capitalisation from £130 million in August 1993 to £6.1 billion in December 1999. Logica had 8,500 employees and had gained entry into the FTSE 100 . Its customers included large governmental organizations and private companies such as Ford , Exxon , IBM , Compaq , Vodafone , Reuters , Merrill Lynch , Prudential , Deutsche Bank , and Diageo . Read had great ambitions for

7015-414: The company in 1987. Founder Philip Hughes resigned as chairman of the board of directors in 1990, and left the board entirely in 1995, focusing instead on a completely different career as a very successful landscape painter . Other original founders of the company were also playing a lesser role at this point. During the late 1980s and early 1990s the company was led by David Mann. During this period

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7130-477: The company its distinctive character." The new firm's first major contract came in 1970 for a computerized hotel reservation system that would operate on a nationwide basis and was worth £100,000. Another early project was the control system for the United Kingdom's natural gas grid in 1971. In its early years the company focused on adapting software to specific customer needs and requirements and advising customers on trends in information technology. The company

7245-528: The company's turnover fell flat, and it suffered a loss in 1991, as it struggled with the effects of the early 1990s recession , especially among customers in the financial services industry. There were also problems in the Logica US subsidiary, and changes in the software marketplace. The company gained a reputation for emphasizing the creation of technically difficult, bespoke solutions, but ones that did not always maximise customer or shareholder value. Logica

7360-463: The company, saying that over the next five years, "I would like to make Logica as famous a brand as IBM.". In 1999 the buyout of the in-house Customer Care and Billing product division took place leading to the founding of the company that would become Cerillion . In 2000, Logica acquired the German computing services business PDV for £370 million, increasing the size of the German workforce by 1,200 in

7475-455: The complex array of physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts, e.g., peering agreements , and by technical specifications or protocols that describe the exchange of data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is defined by its interconnections and routing policies. A subnetwork or subnet is a logical subdivision of an IP network . The practice of dividing

7590-591: The design of the ARPANET , an experimental resource sharing network proposed by ARPA. ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) on 29 October 1969. The third site was at the University of California, Santa Barbara , followed by the University of Utah . In

7705-594: The design of the SWIFT network for international money transfers, the Euronet packet-switching network, and the Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco. Following the acquisition of CMG in 2002, the company was known as LogicaCMG from then until 2008, when it changed its name back to Logica. The company's main business at that point was in providing consulting, systems integration, and IT outsourcing in both

7820-512: The development of packet switching in the 1960s and the design of computer networks for data communication . The set of rules ( communication protocols ) to enable internetworking on the Internet arose from research and development commissioned in the 1970s by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense in collaboration with universities and researchers across

7935-665: The development of computer systems for the airline and then sell them to other airlines. The company's research and development arm was known as Logica Cambridge and located in Cambridge, England. Logica's competitors in the IT services and contracting realm in general included not just EDS but also Andersen Consulting , Cap Gemini Sogeti , and the Sema Group , as well as in specialty areas (such as banking) Hoskyns Group , Admiral Consulting , and Advanced Computer Techniques . Near-original employee David Mann became managing director and CEO of

8050-434: The development of new networking technologies and the merger of many networks using DARPA's Internet protocol suite . The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s, as well as the advent of the World Wide Web , marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal , and mobile computers were connected to

8165-594: The documents and resources that they can provide. HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the main access protocol of the World Wide Web. Web services also use HTTP for communication between software systems for information transfer, sharing and exchanging business data and logistics and is one of many languages or protocols that can be used for communication on the Internet. World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft 's Internet Explorer / Edge , Mozilla Firefox , Opera , Apple 's Safari , and Google Chrome , enable users to navigate from one web page to another via

8280-843: The doomed Beagle 2 probe after separation from the Mars Express orbiter. During the mid-2000s the company embarked on a series of acquisitions of Continental European firms. In 2005, LogicaCMG purchased 60 percent of the Portuguese company Edinfor (and in March 2008 purchased the remaining portion). In 2006, LogicaCMG purchased the French company Unilog for £631 million and the Swedish company WM-data for £876 million. The company suffered some embarrassment in 2006 when laptops containing police payroll data were stolen from LogicaCMG and an outsourcing contract with Transport for London for IT services

8395-485: The first address of a network, followed by a slash character ( / ), and ending with the bit-length of the prefix. For example, 198.51.100.0 / 24 is the prefix of the Internet Protocol version 4 network starting at the given address, having 24 bits allocated for the network prefix, and the remaining 8 bits reserved for host addressing. Addresses in the range 198.51.100.0 to 198.51.100.255 belong to this network. The IPv6 address specification 2001:db8:: / 32

8510-503: The first word processors to achieve mass sales. The advent of the personal computer , and software such as WordPerfect , led to the decline of this business and its ultimate closure. In connection with office automation, Logica VTS also engaged in product work related to local area networking , putting out a product called Polynet in 1981 which was based upon the Cambridge Ring idea rather than Ethernet . This aspect of business

8625-429: The forwarding host (router) to other networks when no other route specification matches the destination IP address of a packet. While the hardware components in the Internet infrastructure can often be used to support other software systems, it is the design and the standardization process of the software that characterizes the Internet and provides the foundation for its scalability and success. The responsibility for

8740-603: The global Internet, though they may also engage in peering. An ISP may use a single upstream provider for connectivity, or implement multihoming to achieve redundancy and load balancing. Internet exchange points are major traffic exchanges with physical connections to multiple ISPs. Large organizations, such as academic institutions, large enterprises, and governments, may perform the same function as ISPs, engaging in peering and purchasing transit on behalf of their internal networks. Research networks tend to interconnect with large subnetworks such as GEANT , GLORIAD , Internet2 , and

8855-661: The hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information and be attracted to the corporation as a result. Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce , which is the sale of products and services directly via the Web, continues to grow. Online advertising is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising . In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in

8970-505: The hyperlinks embedded in the documents. These documents may also contain any combination of computer data , including graphics, sounds, text , video , multimedia and interactive content that runs while the user is interacting with the page. Client-side software can include animations, games , office applications and scientific demonstrations. Through keyword -driven Internet research using search engines like Yahoo! , Bing and Google , users worldwide have easy, instant access to

9085-485: The late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%. This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over

9200-501: The major development sites for SCO and over the next few years did the operating system kernel development work behind the subsequent SCO OpenDesktop and SCO OpenServer product releases, as well as later working in networking, security, escalations, and other areas, in addition to being the sales, marketing, and customer engineering hub for SCO's (and later Caldera International 's) EMEA region (although most development work in Watford

9315-462: The network nodes are not necessarily Internet equipment per se. The internet packets are carried by other full-fledged networking protocols with the Internet acting as a homogeneous networking standard, running across heterogeneous hardware, with the packets guided to their destinations by IP routers. Internet service providers (ISPs) establish the worldwide connectivity between individual networks at various levels of scope. End-users who only access

9430-412: The network. As of 31 March 2011 , the estimated total number of Internet users was 2.095 billion (30% of world population ). It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunication . By 2000 this figure had grown to 51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the Internet. The Internet

9545-1058: The network. Although the Internet was widely used by academia in the 1980s, the subsequent commercialization in the 1990s and beyond incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life. Most traditional communication media, including telephone , radio , television , paper mail, and newspapers, are reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as email , Internet telephone , Internet television , online music , digital newspapers, and video streaming websites. Newspapers, books, and other print publishing have adapted to website technology or have been reshaped into blogging , web feeds , and online news aggregators . The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interaction through instant messaging , Internet forums , and social networking services . Online shopping has grown exponentially for major retailers, small businesses , and entrepreneurs , as it enables firms to extend their " brick and mortar " presence to serve

9660-414: The networking technologies that interconnect networks at their borders and exchange traffic across them. The Internet layer implements the Internet Protocol (IP) which enables computers to identify and locate each other by IP address and route their traffic via intermediate (transit) networks. The Internet Protocol layer code is independent of the type of network that it is physically running over. At

9775-457: The operational helm, and Philip Hughes, who served in the visionary role. Indeed a later profile would call Hughes "one of the architects of the information age." The other founders were Pat Coen, Steve Feldman, and John McNeil. Another important figure, David Mann, joined the fledgling outfit a few weeks later. Together these people, in the later words of the Financial Times , "gave

9890-481: The packet. IP addresses are generally assigned to equipment either automatically via DHCP , or are configured. However, the network also supports other addressing systems. Users generally enter domain names (e.g. "en.wikipedia.org") instead of IP addresses because they are easier to remember; they are converted by the Domain Name System (DNS) into IP addresses which are more efficient for routing purposes. Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as

10005-435: The principal name spaces of the Internet are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is governed by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and other non-commercial communities. ICANN coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers for use on the Internet, including domain names , IP addresses, application port numbers in

10120-582: The process of creating and serving web pages has become dynamic, creating a flexible design, layout, and content. Websites are often created using content management software with, initially, very little content. Contributors to these systems, who may be paid staff, members of an organization or the public, fill underlying databases with content using editing pages designed for that purpose while casual visitors view and read this content in HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems built into

10235-612: The process. In 2001 the company secured an outsourcing contract to create and operate a new case management system for the Crown Prosecution Service . At this time the level of Read's remuneration received attention when it was revealed that he enjoyed a £28 million pay packet. The merger of Logica (60 percent) with British company CMG (40 percent) to form LogicaCMG on 30 December 2002 united an established technology firm (Logica) with an established consulting firm (CMG). In December 2003, LogicaCMG’s software controlled

10350-463: The public and private sectors. Logica was acquired by Canada-based CGI Group in 2012 and the Logica brand name ceased being used in 2013. Logica was started as a systems integration business in 1969. Its founders were five people who left Scicon, an American computer company that had opened a London-based UK subsidiary and that had then been bought by BP . Chief among these were Len Taylor, who took

10465-442: The public. In mid-1989, MCI Mail and Compuserve established connections to the Internet, delivering email and public access products to the half million users of the Internet. Just months later, on 1 January 1990, PSInet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial use; one of the networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later years. In March 1990, the first high-speed T1 (1.5 Mbit/s) link between

10580-463: The region had a handful of plans to choose from (across all mobile network operators) while others, such as Colombia , offered as many as 30 pre-paid and 34 post-paid plans. A study of eight countries in the Global South found that zero-rated data plans exist in every country, although there is a great range in the frequency with which they are offered and actually used in each. The study looked at

10695-590: The rise of near-instant communication by email, instant messaging , telephony ( Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP), two-way interactive video calls , and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums , blogs, social networking services , and online shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, or more. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever-greater amounts of online information and knowledge, commerce, entertainment and social networking services. During

10810-452: The subnet mask for the prefix 198.51.100.0 / 24 . Traffic is exchanged between subnetworks through routers when the routing prefixes of the source address and the destination address differ. A router serves as a logical or physical boundary between the subnets. The benefits of subnetting an existing network vary with each deployment scenario. In the address allocation architecture of the Internet using CIDR and in large organizations, it

10925-547: The support of the UK's National Enterprise Board , in January 1979 the company established a new subsidiary to exploit this technology, Logica VTS. A range of standalone word processors, the VTS 100, the VTS 2200 ("Whirlwind") and, finally, the VTS 2300 ("Kennet"), were developed and were manufactured at a purpose built factory in Swindon . These machines were sold internationally by BT and by International Computers Ltd , and were amongst

11040-456: The top three to five carriers by market share in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru and Philippines. Across the 181 plans examined, 13 percent were offering zero-rated services. Another study, covering Ghana , Kenya , Nigeria and South Africa , found Facebook 's Free Basics and Misplaced Pages Zero to be the most commonly zero-rated content. The Internet standards describe

11155-405: The transport protocols, and many other parameters. Globally unified name spaces are essential for maintaining the global reach of the Internet. This role of ICANN distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body for the global Internet. Regional Internet registries (RIRs) were established for five regions of the world. The African Network Information Center (AfriNIC) for Africa ,

11270-452: The volume of Internet traffic started experiencing similar characteristics as that of the scaling of MOS transistors , exemplified by Moore's law , doubling every 18 months. This growth, formalized as Edholm's law , was catalyzed by advances in MOS technology , laser light wave systems, and noise performance. Since 1995, the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce, including

11385-522: The word Internet as a capitalized proper noun ; this has become less common. This reflects the tendency in English to capitalize new terms and move them to lowercase as they become familiar. The word is sometimes still capitalized to distinguish the global internet from smaller networks, though many publications, including the AP Stylebook since 2016, recommend the lowercase form in every case. In 2016,

11500-422: The world. The acquisition was completed on 20 August 2012. Internet The Internet (or internet ) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private , public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by

11615-437: Was "the world's largest provider of the software, hardware and integration services that form the infrastructure behind SMS text messages". The lead investor at Atlantic Bridge (who became executive chairman at Acision), Laurence Quinn, had been one of the founders of Aldiscon. As of 2008, Acision had over 300 mobile operators as customers. Acision claimed to serve over a billion end users, and that over 50 per cent of SMS revenue

11730-509: Was a pioneer in the development of Text messageing systems for Mobiles making their first sale to Vodafone . By February 1994, Mann was out as CEO. Martin Read was recruited from GEC Marconi , where he had worked for Arnold Weinstock , and appointed CEO in August 1993. Most of the executive directors left the company during the two years following his appointment – David Mann, Colin Rowland, Andrew Karney , Ian Macleod and Cliff Preddy. This

11845-545: Was acquired by SCO in December 1986; it became a wholly owned subsidiary, the Santa Cruz Operation Limited, and the basis for SCO's UK operation, with its office subsequently being relocated first to Soho and then to Watford outside London. Initially supplemented by some engineers who transferred from SCO's headquarters operation in Santa Cruz, California , the ex-Logica group now in Watford became one of

11960-405: Was acquired by UK-based Logica , which merged with CMG in 2002 to form LogicaCMG . Both companies' wireless divisions merged into LogicaCMG Wireless Networks. Acision was born on 20 February 2007, when LogicaCMG Wireless Networks was sold for £265m (US$ 525m) to private investors Atlantic Bridge Ventures and Access Industries and became known as Acision. The Times wrote that the new entity

12075-753: Was based on UNIX System III for 16-bit processors with some Berkeley Software Distribution networking functionality and improved compatibility with MS-DOS . Logica stated that it had over 300 clients for its Xenix product, including other computer manufacturers such as Acorn Computers , Plessey Microsystems , SAGEM , Regnecentralen , and Triumph-Adler , indirect sales through resellers, and direct sales to end customers such as Chemical Bank , West Midlands County Council , and Natural Environment Research Council . Logica's positioning of Xenix included features making it easier to use. However, during 1986, Logica decided to, as it said in its annual review, "withdraw from Xenix operations". The Software Products Group

12190-595: Was being phased out by Logica, to the consternation of some organisations using it. Xenix was a version of the Unix operating system that Microsoft worked on; in 1982 they engaged with the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) in this work, with the two companies' engineers working together on improvements. Microsoft and SCO then further engaged Human Computing Resources in Canada, and the Software Products Group within Logica in

12305-421: Was generated through its platforms. The company employed approximately 1,500 people in 22 countries. Acision was considered one of the industry leaders in providing an MMS delivery platform to content provides, marketing providers, and the like. In June 2015, it was announced that Acision was being acquired by Comverse, Inc. for a combination of cash and stock values at between $ 135 and $ 210 million. Soon after

12420-436: Was involved in the development of the original automatic train control system for San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of the original construction of BART. In 1975, Logica developed the first electronic typing pool – Unicom – for Unilever . This development allowed the functions of a typing pool to be automated into a single system supporting about 50 workstations. With

12535-431: Was not unexpected; as one of the very few still left, Andrew Given, later said, "As executive directors we knew we were being brave in choosing him, because for most of us it was like turkeys voting for Christmas." By 1994 the company had some 3,400 employees. Defence work was still going on within the company, being done both by both Logica plc and by a specific group known as Logica, Defence and Civil Government. By

12650-435: Was premised on the idea that there was tremendous promise in communications technology and that an international approach was warranted. Accordingly, Logica's first overseas office, in the Netherlands, was opened in 1973, the same year that turnover exceeded £1 million for the first time. Overall, Logica played a role in putting into use many of the components that later made the Internet a large-scale success. Logica had

12765-482: Was recruited as the new CEO and took office from 1 January 2008. On 27 February 2008, the company changed its name back to Logica. Nevertheless news accounts often referred to the company as being Anglo-Dutch. In April 2008 Green announced a major restructuring programme for the company, leading to 1,300 job losses. In May 2008 the company announced that it would offshore more of its activities including SAP support and HR and payroll administration to Makati in

12880-615: Was shut down in 2000). The company floated on the London Stock Exchange on 26 October 1983. The company had 1,000 employees at this time, and they were major shareholders, owning some 40 percent of the firm. However the stock price remained flat during this time, and indeed would for much of the next ten years. In 1985 they were faced with a hostile takeover bid by the Ross Perot -led competitor Electronic Data Systems (EDS), but they were able to fend it off. Around this time

12995-399: Was still going in 1984, with Logica founder Pat Coen as managing director of Logica VTS. By the end of 1985, Logica had decided to exit the office automation business, and Logica VTS was shut down over the course of 1986. Most of Logica's software products were used only internally, as part of reusing implementation parts of the contracting projects it engaged in. However, Logica staged

13110-402: Was terminated early after disputes over payments and service level agreements. By 2007, the firm had some 39,000 employees and offices in 36 countries, and was one of Europe's largest IT services and outsourcing firms. Its largest locations in terms of employees counts were France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, in that order. Its most profitable sales regions were the UK, France,

13225-554: Was the first financial institution to offer online Internet banking services to all of its members in October 1994. In 1996, OP Financial Group , also a cooperative bank , became the second online bank in the world and the first in Europe. By 1995, the Internet was fully commercialized in the U.S. when the NSFNet was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic. As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal growth,

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