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The Internet: History & How It Works

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The Internet: History & How It Works

Where the Internet came from and the TCP/IP machinery that moves data around the world.

The Internet: History & How It Works

History of the Internet

The Internet did not appear overnight. It grew in distinct eras, each one adding a capability that made the next possible.

Era	Milestone
1960s	ARPANET launched by the US Department of Defense — the first network connecting universities and research centres.
1970s	Email is invented; the TCP/IP protocol is developed to standardise communication across different networks.
1980s	The Internet expands beyond academia; Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web (1989).
1990s	The Mosaic browser launches; rapid public adoption; e-commerce and search engines emerge.
2000s	Social media boom (Myspace, Facebook); smartphones and the mobile Internet revolution.
2020s	AI, IoT, 5G, Web3, edge computing and large language models reshape the Internet.

The Internet: History & How It Works

How Does the Internet Work?

The Internet is a massive global network of computers and devices interconnected via TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol), enabling the exchange of data worldwide.

Every device on the Internet has a unique IP address — a numeric label used to route data between machines.

Scale in 2025: 5.4 billion+ users, and roughly 29 billion connected IoT devices.

How data travels

Request sent — you type a URL and your device sends a data request.
DNS lookup — DNS translates the domain name into an IP address.
Routing — routers direct packets across interconnected networks.
Server reply — the web server sends back the requested content.
Rendered — your browser assembles and displays the web page.

Modern connections increasingly use HTTP/3 over the QUIC protocol, and IPv6 addressing.