The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link billions of devices worldwide. It is a network of networks[1] that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as mobile apps including social media apps, the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, multiplayer online games, telephony, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks.[2] The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. The funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial backbones, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks.[3] The linking of commercial enterprises by the early 1990s marks the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet,[4] and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network.

Although the Internet has been widely used by academia since the 1980s, the commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2014, 38 percent of the world's human population has used the services of the Internet within the past year—over 100 times more people than were