Understanding - Understanding e-business - The Internet explained

The Internet is a world-wide communications system that connects computers and networks of computers to each other. It has sets of technical rules which govern how information is sent and received within the system. 

The Internet (or Net) had its origins in a communications project called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) which was established in 1969 by the U.S. Department of Defence. Its aim was to ensure that those businesses engaged in defence-related research could share data with each other securely via a robust communications network. It was devised to ensure that should one or more link in the network go down then the network as a whole would still survive and function. The fact that the network's more famous offspring, the Internet, does not universally crash, despite constant instances of  hacking and unleashing of viruses, is testament to the foresight and ingenuity of its inventors.

It was not long before researchers and academics outside the defence area began using ARPANET to communicate with each other through email and to transfer computer files from one computer to another. This was a great advance on having to mail or carry disks or computer program cards in order to share programs and data.  

The Internet itself emerged in the early 1980s when the set of transmission control protocols (TCP) that had been devised for ARPANET were extended to provide users with more functionality. These were called Internet protocols (IP). The new functionality and the set of rules that governed it was, and still is, labelled TCP/IP.  This was a significant development and meant that far more businesses could join the world-wide network of computers that constituted the Internet.