What is it?

Simply put, the Internet is a global network of computers. This bold statement does not do justice to the complexity, inter-connectivity and sheer size of the system, which had its beginnings in military computer applications in the United States during the 1960's, and was developed by a researcher at CERN in Switzerland during the early 1990's.

The Internet provides for various services, including e-mail, file transfer protocol, telnet, and the world wide web. It is this " web" which provides us with access to the Internet's information resources, and with which we are mainly concerned here.

It is through using a browser, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, that you "see" pages from servers anywhere in the world.