What Exactly Is The Internet?

The Internet's backbone is an interconnected series of wide-area networks (WANs). These are large computers linked together over a long distance via phone or wireless communication. These huge WANs link tens of thousands of smaller WANs and local-area networks (LANs, computers linked together in a central location, such as a business or government organization) around the world. In this sense, the Internet IS a network of computers. It just isn't a directly connected network; it's …

…understanding as to why the concept of "what is the Internet" is such a hard thing to explain. It's a computer network, but it's not. You dial in to the Internet, but you really don't. And no one really owns it or controls it, except for the supercomputers that form the "backbone." One thing's for sure, though: the Internet will change, and, to some extent, has already changed, the way we communicate with each other.