What is the Internet?


The Internet is a global network of millions of computers connected together that allows continuous communication across the globe.

'Net' is short for 'Internet'.
'WWW' is short for 'World Wide Web'.



The Internet is a global network of smaller computer networks with a common communication protocol (TCP/IP) and naming system (IP), allowing any two of the millions of computers connected to it, to connect to each other. The Internet evolved from the ARPAnet of the late 60s, which was devised by the US military in order to ensure instant, secure communications between military bases, even if nuclear bombs were dropped.


Brief history

The Internet evolved from a 1960s US Defense Department experiment in computer networking called ARPAnet. Its goal was to allow different kinds of computers to interconnect so that researchers could share data.

While ARPAnet was growing in size, other networks were being developed. Soon the architects of ARPAnet recognized the need to communicate with these other networks. For these disparate computers and networks to communicate with one another, there had to be agreement on how that should occur. The agreements are called communication protocols, and the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite of protocols defined how Internet computers were to communicate.

By the close of the 1970s, links developed between ARPAnet and counterparts in other countries. The world was now tied together in a computer "web".

In the 1980s, this network of networks, which became known collectively as the Internet, expanded at a phenomenal rate. By 1985, approximately one hundred networks were connected. By 1987, the number had grown to two hundred; in 1989, it exceeded five hundred. According to tables kept at the Defense Data Net Network Information Center (DDN NIC), 2,218 networks were connected to the Internet as of January 1990.

In the 1990s, the Internet grew at exponential rates. With the popularity of the World Wide Web, the number of networks connected to the Internet jumped to a world wide total of more than 50,000 by the end of the decade.