Today, the internet is like a modern system of interstate superhighways connecting large cities. Out from these large cities come smaller roads that link together small towns, whose residents travel on slower and smaller highways. The information superhighway or backbone of the internet consists of super computers that use a special system of transferring data at very high speeds. Connected to the backbone are computers for smaller networks serving particular geographic regions. Feeding off these in turn are even smaller networks or individual computers.
Nobody really knows how many computers and networks actually make up the internet.
Some estimates say there are now as many as 5,000 networks connecting over 2 million computers and more than 30 million people around the world. Whatever the actual numbers, it is clear that the internet is big and growing at exponential rates. In response, government and other users have tried in recent years to expand the Net itself. That proved too slow for the ever increasing amount of information being sent over it, and the maximum speed was increased to 45 million bits per second. Today, improvements are under way to pump data at speeds that would send the entire Encyclopedia Britannica across the country in one hot second.