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Internet 101

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What is the Internet?

The World Wide Web

When most people think of the Internet, the first thing they think about is the World Wide Web. Nowadays, the terms "Internet" and "World Wide Web" are often used interchangeably—but they're actually not the same thing.

  • The Internet is the physical network of computers all over the world.
  • The World Wide Web is a virtual network of websites connected by hyperlinks (or "links"). Websites are stored on servers on the Internet, so the World Wide Web is a part of the Internet.

HTML

The backbone of the World Wide Web is made of HTML files, which are specially formatted documents that can contain links, as well as images and other media. All web browsers can read HTML files. In addition to HTML, it's common for websites to use technologies like CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript to do more advanced things.

HTML codeHTML code

URL

To get to a webpage, you can type the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) into a browser. The URL, also known as the web address, tells the browser exactly where to find the page. However, most of the time, people get to a webpage by following a link from a different page or by searching for the page using a search engine.

Example of a URLAn example of a URL

The World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee, a software engineer. Before then, computers could communicate over the Internet, but there were no webpages.

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