: While it started for government researchers, the official "birthday" of the modern Internet is considered to be January 1, 1983 , when it adopted standard networking protocols. It exploded into a global commercial network in the 1990s. Its Impact on Daily Life
The Internet is often described as a "network of networks"—a massive global collection of interconnected systems that allows computers to communicate and share data instantly. How It Functions The Internet
At its core, the Internet is a physical infrastructure consisting of hundreds of thousands of miles of underwater cables, satellites, and fiber optics. : While it started for government researchers, the