In the early days of the cold war the American Department of Defence (DOD) wanted to find a way of keeping communications open in the event of a nuclear attack. A system was required that if one computer or a link between computers was damaged all the other computers connected to the network would still be able to communicate with each other. In 1969 United States department of Defence’s research projects agency (DARPA) funded a small agency called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (APRA). In the beginning APRANET consisted of a network of four computers, linked together with a packet switched network. These were in the University of California at Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Stanford Research Institute, and the University of Utah. By 1971, ARPANET had expanded to 23 sites, by 1981, to over 200.

The solutions that APRANET arrived at were - many routes of communication were needed, communication should be between two computers, any of the computers on the network would know where to send and transmit data and all the computers would use the same set of rules when communicating with each other.

Although the original purpose of ARPANET was restricted to Defence Department projects, it quickly became a way for academics to communicate on a myriad of non-defence topics. Scientists without Defence Department clearance were denied access to ARPANET, so in 1979 an academic network, Usenet News, began; its nodes eventually connected with those of ARPANET. Down through the years there have been various other networks such as USENET, MILNET, NSFNET and many others.

In the late 1980s the National Science Foundation (NSF) built five supercomputer centres to give any academic researcher access to high-power computers. The NSF built its own network, based on IP technology, to connect the five centres, and individual university networks were linked to the closest one. Soon the connections were also being used for purposes such as electronic mail (e-mail), and Internet traffic is now routed through a loose consortium of network providers.

The Internet is a network of computers from all over the world connected to each other through the telephone line via a modem. A modem can either be external or as is usually the case nowadays already built in to the computer. The job of a modem is to convert digital signals from your computer to analogue signals that can be transmitted through the telephone line, when the signal gets to the receiving computer the information is then converted back from analogue to digital signal through the receiving modem.

The Internet is a way of transferring information from one place to another. Just as we can talk to each other on the telephone, with the Internet we can send and receive a whole manner of information. Programs, documents, email, download files for instance. It can also be used to browse for information on almost any subject you like, chat online, find out all the latest news world-wide, play games, the list goes on. The language used for the Internet is called Transmission Control Protocol\Internet

Protocol, TCP\IP for short. TCP\IP allows any kind of computer communicate with other kinds of computers. This is in the public domain so no one company owns the right to the Internet.