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A loose confederation of computer communication networks around the world. The networks that make up the Internet are connected through several backbone networks. The Internet grew out of the US Government ARPAnet project and was designed to facilitate information exchange.

(Note: capital "I"). The Internet is the largestinternet (with a small "i") in the world. It is a threelevel hierarchy composed of backbone networks, mid-levelnetworks, and stub networks. These include commercial (.com or .co), university (.ac or .edu) and other researchnetworks (.org, .net) and military (.mil) networks and spanmany different physical networks around the world with variousprotocols, chiefly the Internet Protocol.Until the advent of the World-Wide Web in 1990, the Internetwas almost entirely unknown outside universities and corporateresearch departments and was accessed mostly via commandline interfaces such as telnet and FTP. Since then ithas grown to become an almost-ubiquitous aspect of moderninformation systems, becoming highly commercial and a widelyaccepted medium for all sort of customer relations such asadvertising, brand building, and online sales and services.Its original spirit of cooperation and freedom have, to agreat extent, survived this explosive transformation with theresult that the vast majority of information available on theInternet is free of charge.While the web (primarily in the form of HTML and HTTP) isthe best known aspect of the Internet, there are many otherprotocols in use, supporting applications such aselectronic mail, Usenet, chat, remote login, and filetransfer.There were 20,242 unique commercial domains registered withInterNIC in September 1994, 10% more than in August 1994.In 1996 there were over 100 Internet access providers in theUS and a few in the UK (e.g. the BBC Networking Club,Demon, PIPEX).There are several bodies associated with the running of theInternet, including the Internet Architecture Board, theInternet Assigned Numbers Authority, the InternetEngineering and Planning Group, Internet EngineeringSteering Group, and the Internet Society.See also NYsernet, EUNet.The Internet Index (http://openmarket.com/intindex) -statistics about the Internet.