The Internet, often described as the 'information superhighway', is a globe-spanning network of computer networks, a community of users, a collection of shared resources, and an increasingly important commercial, social, political, legal, and ethical phenomenon. The Internet now contains millions of computers used by tens of millions of people world-wide. The rate at which it has grown is staggering - from zero to a population larger than that of Spain or Poland in under three decades. The size of the Internet grows so rapidly that it is almost impossible to obtain reliable figures, but as of September 1999, it is estimated that there are over 40 million people with Internet access in 100,000 networks in 150 countries.
Daemons are agent programs running in the background waiting to act on requests from outside.
In terms of the Internet, daemons support protocols such as the Http, Pop, and Ftp. It was devised by Tim Berners-Lee as a protocol for linking a multiplicity of documents located on computers anywhere within the Internet. The Web is composed of millions of 'sites' around the world and each Web site is a hierarchical structure of linked documents. Just as the Web has evolved, so have the Web sites to which it is home. The original sites were developed for a basic information serving purpose and, while that remains true today, sites with an entertainment purpose are commonplace, as are those trying to solicit certain types of behaviour.