Internet

Internet

The Internet is the global system ofinterconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP)to link billions of devices worldwide. It is a network of networks thatconsists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and governmentnetworks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic,wireless, and optical networking technologies. The internet carries anextensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linkedhypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronicmail, telephony, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back toresearch commissioned by the United States federal government in the 1960s tobuild robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks. The primary precursornetwork, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection ofregional academic and military networks in the 1980s. The funding of theNational Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well asprivate funding for other commercial extensions, led to worldwide participationin the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of manynetworks. The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990smarks the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated a sustainedexponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobilecomputers were connected to the network.