For the pedants, an internet (lower case "i") is a "network of networks". The InterNet (capital "I") refers to the largest internet in the world.

You are using the Internet now to read this wiki.

Originally known as ArpaNet, it was created so that in the event of catastrophic communication failure, the US Department of Defence could remotely administer their machinery.

Until the WorldWideWeb came about in 1990, the Internet was almost entirely unknown outside universities and corporate research departments and was accessed mostly via CommandLine interfaces such as Telnet and FTP. Since then it has grown to become an almost-ubiquitous aspect of modern information systems, becoming highly commercial and a widely accepted medium for all sort of customer relations such as advertising, brand building, and online sales and services. Its original spirit of cooperation and freedom have, to a great extent, survived this explosive transformation with the result that the vast majority of information available on the Internet is free of charge.

The best known asepcts of the Internet are the WorldWideWeb and ElectronicMail?. Other facilities include UseNet, the global 'news' service (largely Deprecated in favour of web based forums and MailingLists?, IRC, FileSharing, etc. Anything you can do on a network, you can do (albeit probably slower) on the InterNet.

The internet runs on the TCP/IP protocol, although there are gateways onto it for other networking Protocols. In order to convert IP addresses to names, it offers the DNS.

The 'governing bodies' of the Internet include the IETF and the IANA.