Claim: The main precursor to the internet was the ARPANET.

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite -LRB- TCP/IP -RRB- to link devices worldwide . It is a network of networks that consists 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 the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web -LRB- WWW -RRB- , electronic mail , telephony , and file sharing .   The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States federal government in the 1960s to build robust , fault-tolerant communication via computer networks . 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 the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s , as well as private funding for other commercial extensions , led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies , and the merger of many networks . The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marks the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet , and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional , personal , and mobile computers were connected to the network . Although the Internet was widely used by academia since the 1980s , the commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life .   Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world . In the two decades since then , Internet use has grown 100-times , measured for the period of one year , to over one third of the world population . Most traditional communications media , including telephony , radio , television , paper mail and newspapers are being reshaped or redefined by the Internet , giving birth to new services such as email , Internet telephony , Internet television , online music , digital newspapers , and video streaming websites . Newspaper , book , and other print publishing are adapting to website technology , or are reshaped into blogging , web feeds and online news aggregators . The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging , Internet forums , and social networking . Online shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers and small businesses and entrepreneurs , as it enables firms to extend their `` brick and mortar '' presence to serve a larger market or even sell goods and services entirely online . Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries .   The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage ; each constituent network sets its own policies . Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet , the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System -LRB- DNS -RRB- , are directed by a maintainer organization , the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -LRB- ICANN -RRB- . The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force -LRB- IETF -RRB- , a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise .