Ask an Internet engineer "What IS the Internet?" and you might get the following definition:

“The Internet is a global, decentralized, multi-routed network of computers based on the TCP/IP suite backbone.”

Most likely what you would do after hearing that is to say, "Okay, can you translate that into English, please?"

While understanding how the Internet really works can be fairly complicated, understanding the definition above isn't really as hard as it sounds, provided you look at it in pieces. To really understand what it means, let's take a brief, very simplified look back at the history of the Internet.

The Internet has been around longer than many people realize.

The groundwork for the Internet actually began in 1958, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill to create the Interstate Highway System. Developed as a byproduct of Cold War fears, the Interstate Highway System was designed for military transportation across the country over multiple possible routes. The idea was to make sure that no one route would be absolutely vital to get from one place to another. Ten years later, data communications between computers had become just as crucial as actual troop movements to the Department Of Defense.

The Department of Defense commissioned the Advanced Resource Projects Agency (ARPA, renamed to the Defense Advanced Resource Projects Agency, DARPA, in 1972, and, oddly enough, re-renamed ARPA in 1993) to develop an experimental computer network: ARPANET.

The Department of Defense commissioned the Advanced Resource Projects Agency (ARPA, renamed to the Defense Advanced Resource Projects Agency, DARPA, in 1972, and, oddly enough, re-renamed ARPA in 1993) to develop an experimental computer network: ARPANET.

ARPANET was designed to be a computer network that could continue to transmit data from place to place if any computer on the network, or any connection between computers, were damaged or destroyed.

As Cold War fears began to fade, the Department of Defense found itself wondering what else could be done with the network that had been developed. A decision was made to once again parallel what had been done with the Interstate Highway System: Make the network available for use by others outside of the military! At this point, the network was renamed the INTERnational NETwork, or INTERNET.

The first non-military entities to make use of the network were the major colleges and other higher learning associations. By the late 1980's, almost every college in the U.S. had been equipped with a high-speed Internet connection.

The next companies to take advantage of the access to the Internet were major businesses, particularly the high-tech companies who had a need to transfer large amounts of data from one location to another, such as GTE, Digital, Hewlett-Packard, and General Electric.

ARPA charged these companies for access to the network and used the money to further develop and maintain the network. Many of the technically-driven companies who used the network also worked with ARPA to develop new technologies to improve the network's capabilities and to expand the network to span the entire world.

Some time shortly thereafter, the decision was made to offer access to the Internet to the public. Some companies bought access to high-speed connections to the Internet and then resold portions of that access speed to the public. These companies were called ISP's (Internet Service Providers). TMLP Online is an ISP.

As the Internet developed, some companies decided to create their own networks for public access. These networks were separate from the Internet. Users of these networks could communicate with other users on the same network, but not with users on the Internet. These companies were called BBS's (Bulletin Board Services)

As the Internet became more popular, the largest of these BBS's also bought connections to the Internet, which they then resold to their users in addition to the resources from their own networks. The largest of these was America Online, also known as AOL.

Part of the problem with the early Internet was that it was difficult to use and not exactly very "attractive." Everything was displayed in nothing but plain text, and getting information on the Internet required the use of often maddeningly bizarre commands that only the computer-savvy could even comprehend, much less master the use of.

This problem was largely "solved" by the development of NCSA's (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) 1993 development of the so-called "World Wide Web" and programs called "browsers," which enabled computers to display Internet data in a graphical format that was easier to understand and use (not to mention much easier to look at.)

Over the past decade, public acceptance and use of the Internet has grown tremendously, thanks primarily to the development of the World Wide Web and also at least in part to the Clinton administration’s support of online communication and education.

Internet use by the public has increased by more than a hundred thousand fold over the past decade!

During the Clinton administration, the term "Information Superhighway" was coined to explain the Internet in simple terms, and indeed, the Internet does have many correlations to a physical highway: There are multiple routes you can use to get from one place to another Many different people can use the same route simultaneously to get to different places The speed of travel on a route depends on the amount of traffic on that particular route Different "exits" on the highway support different amounts of traffic

So, getting back to our Internet Engineer's definition:

“The Internet is a global, decentralized, multi-routed network of computers based on the TCP/IP suite backbone.”

Let's break that down into pieces:

"Global" = "Worldwide"

"Decentralized" = "No one computer on the network is absolutely vital."

"Multi-Routed" = "There are different paths between individual computers."

"TCP/IP Backbone" = Think of this as the actual highway you're travelling on. It's the technical term for the method the various computers on the Internet use to communicate with one another.

That wasn't so bad, was it?