The Internet, intranets and reproductive medicine.

The Internet (net) is an ever-expanding, worldwide, computer network connecting millions of computers providing many services, the most notable of which is the world wide web (web, www or W3). The web provides an exciting way to navigate (surf) between documents, incorporating multimedia, held on computers throughout the world. Although open access to information provided by the Internet is one of its greatest strengths, often security of access to information is essential, thus many organizations employ internet technology in closed networks termed intranets. Intranets may be completely separated from the Internet or connected to the Internet through security systems called firewalls. Already this technology is being applied in reproductive medicine and the use is likely to increase substantially in the future. The Internet In the late 1960s the US Department of Defense funded the Advanced Research Projects Agency to design a network, which allowed computers on different types of networks to communicate with each other (Coiera, 1997). In the event of war the strategic importance of communication was recognized, and prior to this project there were many incompatible networking technologies that could hinder communication. The Internet addressed this problem using special computers called routers to connect between the different networks, and a set of rules describing how to transmit data: the Transfer Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). Each computer connects to the Internet by a unique numerical address (IP address), which routers use to guide the information packets from source to destination. A system also exists to register the numeric IP address as a text address such as 'http://www.nominet.org.uk'. The router computers select the best route to transfer information at any time. In the event of a nuclear strike wiping out a large part of the US network, communication would thus remain intact as the router computers would automatically redirect communication channels. Not only did the Internet thus satisfy the principal goal of this project, the Internet opened the door for many other possibilities. World wide web In 1990, to keep track of large research projects the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland produced a document management system incorporating hyper-text, which when introduced to the Internet formed the web. Computers termed 'servers' make documents accessible on the network, to be viewed by other computers using computer programs termed 'browsers' Hypertext permits a link to be inserted anywhere in a body of text to other …