Standards Are The Key To The Internet's Success

The force behind the success and power of the Internet is, quite simply, standards.

The standards that make the Internet so compelling and powerful include:

Common language and naming. All computers on the Internet speak the same language (TCP/IP) and resources are easily accessed through a common naming scheme using DNS (Domain Name Service) and URLs (Universal Resource Locators).

Common format and protocols. A significant amount of the content is stored in a common format (HTML) and files are transferred using standard protocols (HTTP, FTP, SMTP).

Consistent and powerful user model. All browsers on the WWW use URLs, hyperlinks, and in-frame navigation, providing an efficient user paradigm for traversing the world's largest library.

Server-side processing extensions. Through standard methods, such as CGI, WWW servers can be extended to communicate with back-end scripts, dynamically produce the content of a Web page, store information the user has provided, or purchase goods.

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