What Is The Internet?

Date First Published: 13th February 2022

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Network Services

Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 1/10

Learn more about what the internet is in this article.

The internet, also known as the net or the web is a global computer network and the largest WAN that provides access to information, data and communication facilities consisting of interconnected networks and a collection of private, public, business, academic, and government networks, which link by networking technologies, such as Ethernet and Wi-Fi.In other words, it is the network that is used on a daily basis to perform all online tasks. Billions of webpages and millions of websites exist on the internet, making it an unlimited place for information, entertainment, services, and more. For example, if someone was accessing a website from a web browser, they would be using the internet.

Internet access is provided by the internet service provider and companies, such as IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) establish common protocols. The internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) is used to communicate between networks and devices.

Note:

The internet is considered the largest WAN as it is a wide network of computers and servers that are connected together using routers and switches on a global scale and it functions in a similar way to a home or office network, but with much more computers, routers, and switches.

Difference Between The Internet and The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is often mistaken for a synonym of the internet when it is not. The World Wide Web (WWW) is the service that is provided by the internet and the pages that a user sees when they are online or browsing the internet. In other words, the World Wide Web is a form of connectivity that uses HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and allows users to browse webpages and perform online tasks. Without the internet, it would be impossible to access the World Wide Web. The internet is the largest WAN (Wide Area Network) of connected computers and interconnected networks. It can also be known as a network of connected computers that the internet works on as well as what emails and files travel across.

The internet is used for accessing the World Wide Web and the World Wide Web is being accessed now, since this article is being read. There are lots of other services provided by the internet, so the internet and the World Wide Web are not the same things.

Popularity

Over time, the popularity of the internet has increased. As of now, there are over 5.1 billion internet users, more than 4.28 billion people use their mobile devices for going online, more than 4.3 billion active social media users, and over 47% of purchases made online. The graph above shows the percentage of users that have internet access by country.

Does The Word 'Internet' Need To Be Capitalised?

Capitalising the word 'Internet' is a matter of style as it is sometimes capitalised and sometimes not. Some style guides prefer the capitalisation of words, such as 'internet' and some decapitalise it and only capitalise the word when it is the first word of a sentence. Capitalising the word 'internet' is a personal choice and there is no right or wrong answer to this question.

History

The internet started to be developed in the late 1960s when ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency) started. It was originated with the US government and during that time period, a computer network was built. On 29th October 1963, the first message was transmitted. The NSF (US National Science Foundation) authorised the development of a university network backbone (a part of a computer network that interconnects networks and provides a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or subnetworks). In 1995, the internet had a much larger growth and the system was replaced by new networks that were operated by commercial internet service providers.

Over time, the internet has evolved to include other services, such as email, file sharing, gaming, social networking, online shopping, financial services, and messaging, which all require the internet in order for them to work, but the beginning of the internet as a publicly available service was a few years before 1995. On 6th August 1991, the first website was published by Tim Berners-Lee and it was a description of the internet and how to use it. The URL of the first website was http://info.cern.ch, which is still accessible now.