The Internet

The earlier discussion of speed spoke casually about computers exchanging data over the Internet. Thus one might imagine that the Internet is a massive network similar to that used for telephone communications, except with computer-to-computer connections instead of telephone-to-telephone connections. Any two computers connected to the Internet can establish a communication link between them via telephone lines.
The Internet is more that a network of computers.It actually is a network of networks.Internet stands for internetworked networks.Computer networks have been around for decades. The first were geographically close to one another often within a single building and they were called local area network(LAN), these networks were used by large companies for in-house data processing long before the arrival of the Internet.
LANs were used for administrative, educational and research purposes.Libraries used LANs to hold their catalogs.In time, university research LANs and commercial LANs could share information.
Eventually, commercial networks were created for the sole purpose of giving consumers access to this rapidly expanding infrastructure, this Internet, of computer-based communication. The Internet now reaches into more than 185 countries, connects more that seventy thousand computer networks , ansd is used by over three hundred million people worlwide.