2. What is the Internet?

The internet is made up of millions upon millions of small computer networks all brought together to form the vast "Inter-Network". That word never caught on, so it was shortened to the much easier-to-say "Internet".

A large part of the Internet is the 'World Wide Web" (WWW).

This is made up of web sites that have one or more web pages. This is the part of the Internet that you probably use most of the time.

But the Internet isn't just web pages.

It also includes other services such as:

• Instant messaging
• Chat rooms
• Email
• File transfers
• News groups
• Peer to peer networks
• Forums

Note that no-one 'owns' the Internet. This is because each part of it is made up of individual networks that someone has put together and then linked to the Internet.

However, each network has to obey Internet standards in order to connect. For example IANA is an international group responsible for organising web addresses - every web address has to be unique.