What is Internet ? The Internet is a worldwide network of networks. This was the next step of ARPAN ET and NSFNET.

It can be defined as a global network of over million of smaller heterogeneous computer networks. The internet is the common language whereby dis similar computers with various operating systems, are able to communicate with e ach other, using a standard set of protocols. There is nobody who owns Internet or no company called the Internet . Think of the Internet as the Universe and your computer as a planet, which is a part of that Universe. The protocol used by the Internet for getting messages from one machine to anoth er is called the Internet Protocol (IP). The Internet Protocol is a network prot ocol, and its job is to manage the logistics of getting a message from the sendi ng machine to the receiving machine. Messages delivered by the Internet protocol are called packets, and they are qui te small, fifteen hundred or fewer bytes. Since this is much smaller than many o f the messages and files that are transmitted over the Internet, it is common fo r a transmission to require multiple packets. Collecting related packets, putting them in the proper order, and verifying that none are garbled are all tasks outside the scope of the Internet Protocol itsel f. The Internet has two transport protocols that deal with the integrity network transmissions (particularly those that span multiple packets), the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol. If you're like most new Internet users, the first thing you probably want to kno w is what the Internet will enable you to do. There's a basic chicken-and-egg pr oblem here: it's difficult to explain what you can do on the Internet without fi rst explaining some things about how the internet works and how you get connecte d to it. On the other hand, if you don t know what you can do with the internet, w hy should you bother to get connected to it in the first place? Some people compare the internet to a highway system. To others the networks and connections that make up the Internet seem more like a cloud. Describing what y ou do on the Internet is no easier. To say that the Internet provides informatio n access and communication does not begin to describe the breadth of what it off ers. The Internet is the world's largest computer network, a distinction it has earne d by virtue of being a "network of networks." The Internet is an outgrowth of a network (ARPANET) established roughly a quarter-century ago to meet the needs of researchers working in the defense industry in the United States and a few of t heir colleagues in other countries. The ARPANET grew slowly, from a handful of computers in 1971 to more than 1000 i n 1984. Working with the ARPANET researchers came to regard high-speed computer networks as an indispensable tool for academic research in all fields, and in 19 86 the US National Science Foundation established NSFNET to provide network conn ections to more research institutions and improve international network cooperat ion. in 1987, the Internet served more than 10,000 computers. By 1989 the networ k had grown to more than 100,000. In 1990, the ARPANET ceased to exist, but the Internet continued to grow: 1 mill ion computers in 1992, 2 million in 1993.The Internet has now spilled out of the academic world to offer both information access and a fast, inexpensive means o f communication to the general public. It will be the next public utility; It is the reality behind the "Information Superhighway" buzzword.

The Internet most basic component is a physical network The Internet behaves as though all the computers in all the participating networks were joined by a gian t cable. In fact, all the computers on the Internet are joined by connectors-not by one cable, but by thousands. All these connectors are coordinated to work li ke a single cable linking all the computers on the Internet. Many features of th e Internet can be attributed directly to this physical network, the cabling that holds it all together.