The foundation of the Internet is of course its technology. Readers who already have some understanding of how it works might like to use a primer on Internet technology . The origins of the Internet lie in an experiment. The U.S. defense establishment sought a network architecture that would be robust in the face of nuclear attack. As a result, multiple failures would have to occur before the service seriously degraded or ceased to function.
Internet architecture is therefore inherently non-centralised.
Reflecting that style, no single authority exists that 'runs' the Internet. Internet governance is in fact quite complex, participative and consensual. Governments, primarily to date the U.S.government, influence it, but do not dominate it. This is not used in the sense of 'chaos' or 'disorder', but simply in the political sense of the absence of direct or coercive authority. The history of the Internet since 1969 is increasingly well-documented, whereas the history of the Internet in Australia , which stretches back to the early 1970s, but commenced in earnest in 1989 for research use, and in 1992 for more general community use, is, as yet, remarkably poorly documented.