What the internet actually is
Computer Science · Key Stage 1 · The School
Wires, not clouds
The internet is millions of computers connected by real cables — including cables lying on the sea floor between continents — plus radio links to phones. "The cloud" is not in the sky; it is somebody's computer in a building, connected to those cables. Knowing that makes the whole thing far less mysterious.
What happens when you visit a page
You type an address. Your device asks a name server "where is this?" and gets a number back (an IP address). It then asks that computer for the page. The page comes back in small pieces called packets, which may travel by different routes and are reassembled at your end. All of it takes a fraction of a second.
Internet vs Web
The INTERNET is the network of connected computers. The WORLD WIDE WEB is one thing that runs on it — pages linked together. Email, video calls and game servers also run on the internet but are not the Web. It is like the difference between the road network and buses.
You type a web address. (1) Your computer asks a DNS server what number that name goes with. (2) It sends a request to that number, split into small packets. (3) The packets travel through your router, your provider's network and undersea cables to the server. (4) The server sends the page back, in packets, which your browser reassembles and draws. All of it in under a second — and steps 2 to 4 are the internet, while the page itself is the web.