Internet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the worldwide computer network. For other uses, see
Internet (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with the
World Wide Web.
Internet users per 100 population members and
GDP per capita for selected countries.
Internet ![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Internet_map_1024_-_transparent%2C_inverted.png/150px-Internet_map_1024_-_transparent%2C_inverted.png)
An
Opte Project visualization of
routing paths through a portion of the Internet
Internet portal
The
Internet is the global system of interconnected
computer networks that use the
Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link billions of devices worldwide. It is a
network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked
hypertext documents and
applications of the
World Wide Web (WWW),
electronic mail,
newsgroups,
voice over IP telephony, and
peer-to-peer networks for
file sharing.
The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the
United States federal government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks.
[1] The primary precursor network, the
ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. The funding of the
National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks.
[2] The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marks the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet,
[3] and generated a
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet