A Succinct Definition of the Internet?

magnamous asks: "Ever since Senator Ted Stevens used the phrase 'series of tubes' to describe his understanding of the Internet, I've noticed several stories and comments referencing how silly that is. Although I agree that that description is rather silly, each time I've found myself trying to come up with a -succinct layman's definition- of what the Internet is, and I come up short. Wikipedia has a gargantuan page describing the Internet, and Google's definitions offer pretty good descriptions of what the Internet is in a functional sense (with some throwing in terms that the layman wouldn't understand, or take the time to understand), but not really a good description of what it -is- in the physical sense that I think Sen. Stevens was trying to get at. What are your suggestions for a succinct layman's definition of the Internet?" I know some would say that laypeople should take the time to learn the technical, more accurate meaning of what the Internet is. The problem is that they won't. We all know laypeople. I live with two of them. When you start talking about 'TCP/IP' or 'DNS', or if you get far enough to start describing those terms, their eyes glaze over. That's what makes them laypeople — they don't care about the subject enough to learn about it in-depth; if they did, they'd be computer enthusiasts. So please keep in mind that, in order for this discussion to be useful, 'succinct' and 'layman' are essential parts to any definition of the Internet given here. Also keep in mind that 'succinct' doesn't necessarily mean one sentence; a relatively short paragraph would be fine, too — the main goal is to come up with something that physically describes the Internet in a way which laypeople can actually understand."

Comments

The Internet

[mfh]

The internet is a collection of ideas, presented to users in a vast array of increasingly easier to use methods, by a plethora of individuals, groups, small businesses, corporations and governments, for multiple purposes involving money, fact and/or opinion. No single group of aligned parties shall control the Internet, or the Internet shall be no longer valid.

Re:The Internet

[Tackhead]

> The internet is a collection of ideas, presented to users in a vast array of increasingly easier to use methods, by a plethora of individuals, groups, small businesses, corporations and governments, for multiple purposes involving money, fact and/or opinion. No single group of aligned parties shall control the Internet, or the Internet shall be no longer valid.

Usenet was not the Internet, but back when it was most of what the Internet was used for, Gene Spafford said the same thing, albeit somewhat more whimsically:

"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
- Gene Spafford, 1992

Re:The Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

...is for porn!

Re:The Internet

[Nazlfrag]

The Internet is a series of boobs.

Best one short sentence description?

[Threni]

How about "bunch of computers connected using phone lines"?

Re:Best one short sentence description?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, to anyone with a shared connection (office, campus, etc) this wouldn't sound right. In fact, I would argue that from a mere mortal's perspective the participating computers are not actually part of the Internet. I would submit that it's more accurate to say:

"It's the phone system for computers. It allows your computer to contact other computers and exchange information, just like you do with your home phone. And as with your phone, there's lots of physical ways to make that work (cells phones, old black rotary phones, big office phone exchanges with hundreds of handsets, and so on. To important thing is the information that flows, and that the actually connection part has been automated so you don't have to worry about how it works, you can focus on the communication part of what you're trying to do..."

            - peterd (not signed in)

Series of tubes

[biocute]

Maybe just call it "series of tubes"? Stevens is pretty layman, so I wouldn't be surprised most people can understand better with description like that.

We used to call aeroplanes "big metal birds" and people instantly associate it with "big flying things" in a physical sense. Later on, aeroplane becomes a common term and no more layman terms are needed.

So in the future the term "internet" would be enough for everyone, but right now, "series of tubes" pretty much describes its physical structure.

Re:Series of tubes

[Grishnakh]

We're already at that point, unless you happen to live in an African tribe or similar. 10 or 15 years ago, this "what do we say to laymen?" question may have had some relevance, but now it does not. Everyone I know either uses the internet, or at least knows what it is, and this isn't just geeks or nerds, it's 75-year-old retired people, disabled people, and assorted other totally non-technical people. In developed countries, especially those speaking English (since we are discussing an English definition after all), there's almost no one left who doesn't know by now what the internet is.

It's true, these people may not understand exactly what it is on a low level, like what backbones are, what companies own them, what TCP/IP is, etc., but just like with airplanes, they know the important stuff: that it's a "network" connected to their computer that they can use to access email, websites, and other services. These nontechnical people use the internet every day for reading their email, buying stuff on Amazon.com, checking out their favorite discussion forums, etc. They don't need a definition for the "internet". They already know what it is. That some stupid politician doesn't know, or feels some need to create a definition, is utterly pathetic.

Re:Series of tubes

[Hennell]

> That some stupid politician doesn't know, or feels some need to create a definition, is utterly pathetic.
Its not just pathetic, its utterly embarrassing. If you're regulating something it would be nice if you have some idea of what that thing is. Saying stuff like:
"I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially."
does not exactly inspire confidence that he knows what he's regulating.

However I think he's far less unusual then you suggest. You might be right that most people have heard of the internet, but I'd guess loads don't really know what it actually is or how it would work. Try asking a couple of non-geeky people you know to explain how they think the internet works. My Mother who has been using e-mail and the web for quite some time, still doens't really understand the difference between the internet, Google and the browser. She didn't even realise there was a difference for many years. When I tried to introduce her to firefox she thought it was a different 'internet' because I didn't have google as the homepage (which is when I tried to explain google is a website, not the web. She didn't get it). Just because people have heard of or use the internet doesn't mean they actually know what it is, how it works, or anything other then how they access it.
---
How exactly do rats desert a sinking ship?
---

Re:Series of tubes

[Nefarious Wheel]

Yes, most people have an idea of what the Internet does for them, but a number of laymen want to know what makes it go without being shown what a routing table is or what an MX record is for.

For these people I say:

"It's computers talking to other computers over cables. The cables are connected via a sort of automatic phone dialer called a "Router" using a sort of electronic phone directory called "DNS" where the name of the site you click on to is translated into the that site's phone number. That's simplistic, and there's a lot more to it than that of course, but that's basically it -- cables, routers and electronic directories".

Disclaimer -- I'm a senior architect for a major telco's VoIP transformation, so nothing I'm likely to say is authoritative. But I do have to say these words to people...

the internet in a nutshell

[Rudisaurus]

It's pretty much a telephone system, except that it's computers calling other computers. Most people have a basic understanding of the workings -- if not the mechanics -- of a phone system.

Re:the internet in a nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

more like a really fast postal system ... everything being sent on multiple postcards and being rearranged into a sensible conversation at either end.

Re:the internet in a nutshell

[Goalie_Ca]

In all of 0.5 seconds i came up with this:
"A global computer network."

People all know the word 'A' but probably couldn't tell you if it is an article or a noun.
People understand global. To the stupidest it means big, to the educated.. well they should know damn well what the internet is.
Computer. You know that thing that beeps and bops and plays games and downloads porn.
Network. That thing you build up when you politic.. except this time its for computers.

Ted Stevens was way off

[Mr2001]

It's not a "series of tubes". God, what a stupid definition.

It's an array of pipes!

Youtube answers

[mattbelcher]

Just send them this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1n4fDgmrF3o

The Internet is...

[Jimmy_B]

The Internet is a bunch of electronics which let any connected computer communicate with any other connected computer. It is useful because many of those computers provide information and services on request.

That's it. The Internet is not wires, fiber-optic cables, http, TCP/IP, or anything like that, because those are technical details which have changed in the past and may change in the future.

Re:The Internet is...

[Chris Burke]

That's a really good definition. You are right that the key observation is that the technological means by which all of the computers are connected and the protocols they use are not important.

However since we are defining The Internet and not merely any computer network (to which your definition would apply), you should mention that this is a globally connected public system.

Tubes are fine

[rta]

I thougth the "tubes" analogy was fine, myself. I don't know why people got on his case about it.
Usually when i try to describe the internet I liken it to the mail system. You have "envelopes" that are addressed to someplace. Then they get picked up by someone, thrown on a truck, routed etc. It's basically the same thing that happens with packets as they get routed.

As far as the WWW goes, that's a different and distinct thing that's built on top of the Internet. I don't think it's really that hard to explain. It's just like a library or newspaper basically.

If you want to get into the finer social implications.. then that's another story, but the basics, I think, are easily understood in terms of familiar concepts.

The Internet is a model train set

[sserendipity]

This is how I describe it to people.

There are a bunch of computers - big and small, like the one on your desk and big ones that live in big rooms full of other computers. In between them is a lot of fiber optic cable. And organizing all the fiber optic cable is a set of junctions, like you would have in a model train set, only functioning at a bazillion miles an hour.

Each little bit of data that you ask for, and the request itself, is like a little train, going down a track. It keeps hitting these junctions that read where it is going and shunt it onto the right cable to get there. When it gets there, in all likelihood the computer at that end sends something back, which travels the same way.

Re:The Internet is a model train set

[Bin]

Maybe a better analogy would be a classroom with a bunch of kids (computers) passing notes (packets) to each other. If a kid passes a note to someone directly beside them (same subnet) then they can just reach over and drop it on their desk. If it needs to go to a kid on the opposite side of the room, they pass the note to their friend who passes it on.

That's quite good.

I would also say:

• You are sat at a desk just outside the door which you can open when you "dial-up" to pass notes to the nearest desk inside.
• The notes have:
  • Who they are to.
  • Who they are from.
  • Are only allowed 3 words of actual message.
  • A sequence number to allow you to send a long message by breaking it into 3 word chunks and the re-assembling the it at the other end.
• The other end will send you notes back saying "I have up to message 10", but they will write it "ack 10" and they can also send 3 words on that note if they want to.
• There is no teacher in the class room.

Bryn

Simple English Wiki

[daeg]

The Simple English Wikipedia edition has a decent definition, although it throws in packet switching and "IP" in the definition (http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet):

The Internet is a worldwide network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

So when you come up with a good definition, please contribute and edit the Simple English page.

best definition I've heard...

[Floritard]

The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another. - Ben Affleck - Dogma (1999)

Imagine a giant radish

[Blakey Rat]

Imagine a giant radish, like a planet sized radish. Now imagine that there's a bunny hopping to the radish, and it takes a bite out of it. But the bunny spits out that bite and kind of smears it back in place on the radish with a paw. Then it rains.

That's the internet.

Depends on the context

[deblau]

Physical: The Internet is a collection of computers that send each other messages, along with the equipment that carries the messages. Social: The Internet is a virtual community where people can get together, do business, and share ideas and culture. Functional: The Internet is a way you can use computers to send family, friends, and co-workers letters, pictures, and movies. Technical: The Internet is a collection of computers following protocols conforming to the OSI model that enable computers to communicate with each other. ...

It's a cloud, and other little cartoony things.

[ScentCone]

Most of the internet is a fluffy cloud, with little lightning bolts connecting it to little brick walls with holes through them, behind which are lots of little white boxes with numbers. The rest of the internet is a series of PowerPoint slides labled "ROI" and "incredible growth" and "first mover."

Webster is fine

[John.P.Jones]

Internet (noun): an electronic communications network that connects computer networks and organizational computer facilities around the world.

I think this is a servicable, sucinct, definition. Of course, I would have split it in two as follows...

Internet (proper noun): the global internetwork based on the Internet Protocol.
internetwork (noun): an electronic communications network that connects computer networks and organizational computer facilities.

but I'm a bit pedantic.

Re:Pipes okay, but not tubes?

[coug_]

I'm no a fan of Stephens particularly, but he definitely got a bad rap for this one. The full quote is actually very well thought out and intelligent sounding, even if it is using layman's terms.

"They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."

I think Senator Stevens got a bad rap for that one. Techies often talk about "fat pipes" when they mean fast network connections, and evidently the image stuck in Stevens' head. I'd give him the benefit of assuming he was speaking metaphorically, since he must know that there's no actual tube connected to his computer.

Series of tubes is a good metaphor

[alienmole]

I know people joke about the series of tubes thing, but it seems to me that was the least wrong part of Stevens' totally confused statement.

Politics aside, I don't really see the technical problem with comparing the Internet to a series of tubes. Tubes have a predictable bandwidth, i.e. you can only pump a certain amount of liquid or gas through them in a given time; and they have predictable latency, i.e. you push something in one end, it takes some time to come out the other end. So far, a lot like a network connection.

What the "series of tubes" doesn't capture is the packetized nature of the internet, or the complexities of routing, and other such details. However, at the abstraction level at which Stevens was talking, I'm not sure any of that matters. If you're talking about things like "clogging up the Internet", it's true that that can happen, for the same reasons that tubes can get clogged: if you try to put too much stuff in, at too many entry points, your backbone tubes are going to become a bottleneck. So the metaphor holds up in this case, and predicts behavior that you can see on actual networks.

The fact that the email problem Stevens was describing had nothing to do with Internet congestion is a separate issue, which doesn't actually detract from "series of tubes" as a metaphor for the Internet at a certain level of abstraction.

I'd love to hear reasons why I'm wrong. Other than "Ignore the facts, we must excoriate politicians who are against network neutrality!" Ridiculing a perfectly good metaphor just because you don't agree with the guy using it is not the way to sensible public policy, although I admit it does seem to be how politics is often conducted.

Re:Series of tubes is a good metaphor

[dgatwood]

A roadway is a much better analogy. It isn't perfect, but it at least captures the fundamental notion that you have lots of pieces of data trying to get from different point As to different point Bs across a common, shared network of paths. The word "congestion" also means the same thing on the 'net as it does on the beltway.

Re:Series of tubes is a good metaphor

[seaturnip]

So it's like an "information superhighway"!?

Re:Series of tubes is a good metaphor

[alienmole]

I think the uproar came about because many people (including myself to some degree) thought that the Senator really thought the internet was some type of series of tubes.

I agree that this was what many people seem to think, but it's an error on their part which says more about the listener's assumptions or comprehension than about Stevens. Taken in context, it's quite clear that Stevens was intentionally using a metaphor. If anything, the fact that his language didn't explicitly say so (e.g. by using the word "like"), implies that he felt that the metaphorical nature of his statements were obvious and didn't need to be belabored. On this point, the facts compel me to rule in favor of Stevens.

His comments don't seem to be so confusing when you actually listen to them

Quite so. Yet many people jumped on him for the comments mainly because they saw someone else do it, on a blog or on TV. The criticism ended being a social thing, with the factual basis lost, to the point where people who ought to know better technically are ridiculing "series of tubes" as though it somehow has no merit.

but when you start to look at what he is actually saying it gets a little worse

Keep in mind that this was an unscripted statement in a bill markup discussion. Googling just now, I found that Ed Felten agrees with me:

I'll grant that Stevens sounds pretty confused on the recording. But's let's give the guy a break. He was speaking off the cuff in a meeting, and he sounds a bit agitated. Have you ever listened to a recording of yourself speaking in an unscripted setting? For most people, it's pretty depressing. We misspeak, drop words, repeat phrases, and mangle sentences all the time. Normally, listeners' brains edit out the errors.

In this light, some of the ridicule of Stevens seems a bit unfair. He said the Internet is made up of "tubes". Taken literally, that's crazy. But experts talk about "pipes" all the time. Is the gap between "tubes" and "pipes" really so large? And when Stevens says that his staff sent him "an Internet" and it took several days to arrive, it sounds to me like he meant to say "an email" and just misspoke.

Felten goes on to try to interpret what Stevens was saying. I think he summarizes the whole thing well with this:

Why then the shock and ridicule from the Internet public? Partly because the recording was a perfect seed for a Net ridicule meme.

The problem is, picking on "series of tubes" specifically to ridicule ends up exposing a lack of knowledge or understanding in the person or group doing the ridiculing, and they start to appear irrational. This is a particular problem if they're using the ridicule to try to push a political agenda, like net neutrality. Who should we believe or trust - the guy who used a basically appropriate metaphor for the purpose, even if he was confused in other ways, or the people who are claiming counterfactually that the metaphor was wrong, for reasons that can only be guessed at? Incompetence is the most charitable explanation for the latter group, since otherwise the implication is that they're deliberately obfuscating the truth to undercut an opponent.

Re:Series of tubes is a good metaphor

[whterbt]

Saw this a long time ago, still appropriate today.

Think of the Internet as a highway

There it is again. Some clueless fool talking about the "Information Superhighway". They don't know didley about the Net. It's nothing like a superhighway. That's a rotten metaphor.

Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction. Suppose the highways were like the net...

A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on ramps at every intersection.

No signs. Wanna get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck to ask directions.

Ad hoc traffic laws. Some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant-vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 9:00. Other lanes would just shoot you without a trial for talking on a car phone.

AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of ebola victims on board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been assembled at home from kits. Some are built around 2.5 horsepower lawn mower engines with a top speed of nine miles an hour. Others burn nitroglycerin and idle at 120.

No license plates. World War II bomber nose art instead. Terrifying paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles. Bumper mounted machine guns. Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a white phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe. Flatbed trucks cruise around with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the traffic helicopter. Little kids on tricycles with squirt guns filled with hydrochloric acid switch lanes without warning.

NO OFFRAMPS. None.

Now that's the way to run an Interstate Highway system.

Ah, that's an easy one.

[Onan]

A friend of mine managed to cover this in four words over a decade ago:

"Many computers--all friends."

When in doubt, ask the inventor...

[Vexler]

... but you may find it an inconvenient truth.

No it's not. How do you think the web was born?

[roman_mir]

Internet is for porn - there, fixed for you.

Less of an array, more of a n-ary linked list but.

[Egnever]

So the internet like a hookah through which you can smoke data from all over the planet man. That's totally far out.

In context, Ted was nuts.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't know why people got on his case about it.

Because of the rest of the description wherein he believed that other people downloading movies somewhere were clogging the pipes and kept his "internet" (email) from arriving on time. If you watch it in context, it's clear that he doesn't know how the internet works. As far as anyone can tell, he believed the pipes are, well, literal pipes with "internets" flowing through them. Did you ever see the full speech? Only the first line gets widely quoted any more, but the Daily Show showed the whole thing. It was ridiculous.

Anyhow, the most succinct definition of "internet" I can give you is just one word: here.

Or if you need something with more technical accuracy, it's the giant network computers get connected to because almost everyone else is also connected to it. All the internet providers link to other providers, who eventually link with everyone else, because there's not much value in having a network isolated from the rest of the world in most cases.

The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.

[weston]

I've always been partial to statement #2 from the Searls & Weinberger piece World of Ends:

When we look at utility poles, we see networks as wires. And we see those wires as parts of systems: The phone system, the electric power system, the cable TV system.

When we listen to radio or watch TV, we're told during every break that networks are sources of programming being beamed through the air or through cables.

But the Internet is different. It isn't wiring. It isn't a system. And it isn't a source of programming.

The Internet is a way for all the things that call themselves networks to coexist and work together. It's an inter-network. Literally.

What makes the Net inter is the fact that it's just a protocol -- the Internet Protocol, to be exact. A protocol is an agreement about how things work together.

This protocol doesn't specify what people can do with the network, what they can build on its edges, what they can say, who gets to talk. The protocol simply says: If you want to swap bits with others, here's how. If you want to put a computer -- or a cell phone or a refrigerator -- on the network, you have to agree to the agreement that is the Internet.

The Internet is no single piece of technology. It is an agreement about how to have different networks and technologies talk to each other and work together.

It's a bit heady, maybe even a bit airy-fairy, but the essay captures some of the essence of why the Internet is different and proves to be so valuable.

I also think it's a good lead in for discussing why net neutrality is essential. A non-neutral policy essentially throws away the agreement, likely fracturing the network into pieces between which there'd be ongoing maybe-we'll-talk-maybe-we-won't negotiations. Pieces get balkanized, even walled off, and resources that used to go to developing services that anyone who was part of the agreement could use now have to be devoted to the negotiation.

With the Internet agreement, you don't have to concentrate on that. Just follow the guidelines on how to talk to one edge of the net, and you can talk to the whole world. That's the revolution.

That's cause IT IS like the mail system

[brunes69]

IN fact that's where the terminology game from. Why do you think a bunch of data is called a packet? Its cause packets are what you send through the mail, at least in the 50's thats what they were called (nowadays everyting is a "package" but that's more because the term "packet" is now more widely used electronically.

If you want to explain the internet to people, use the analogies that the original terms were modeled after!

Server - A server is like a waiter or customer service person. You ask it for something and get get sir for you. The ony difference is the server is a computer that is handling the requests.

Client - A client is like a patron or business client; he is the person asking the server for things. In the case of the internet the client is another computer, who is asking the server for something.

Packet - A bundle of information, with an address, that needs to be delivered. The packet could be going from the client to the server, in which case it is how the client is asking the server for something. If it is going from the server to the client, it is the information the server asked for.

Server, Client, Packet. Three simple words any layperson SHOULD ALREADY KNOW. It's not really hard to explain.

Think of the Internet as a Highway . . .

[Agripa]

A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on ramps at every intersection.

No signs. Wanna get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck to ask directions.

Ad hoc traffic laws. Some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant-vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 9:00. Other lanes would just shoot you without a trial for talking on a car phone.

AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of ebola victims on board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been assembled at home from kits. Some are built around 2.5 horsepower lawn mower engines with a top speed of nine miles an hour. Others burn nitroglycerin and idle at 120.

No license plates. World War II bomber nose art instead. Terrifying paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles. Bumper mounted machine guns. Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a white phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe. Flatbed trucks cruise around with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the traffic helicopter. Little kids on tricycles with squirt guns filled with hydrochloric acid switch lanes without warning.

No off ramps. None.

Author (maybe, it's hard to track down sources on the Net): Jim Wiedman

My definition

[Archangel Michael]

Internet is a collection of independent communication networks, connected to form a much bigger communication network through mutually shared collaborative connection agreements; a General Purpose Communication System.

People describing IP, TCP, Web, Usenet, VOIP all miss out on what the internet REALLY is, communication. The means, methods, routing and all of that is what makes it work, but not the purpose. Purpose is ONLY communication, nothing more, nothing less.

Webopedia

[dcollins]

I like to use Webopedia for succinct definitions like this.

"A global network connecting millions of computers. More than 100 countries are linked into exchanges of data, news and opinions..."
http://webopedia.com/TERM/I/Internet.html

Re:Many really don't know...

[DougWebb]

The fashion industry folks wouldn't know what a hammer is, either.