The Internet has been called the "network of networks." Whenever you connect two computers or other devices, you've created a network. For example, the computers in your center may be linked together to create a local area network (LAN). People who subscribe to America Online become part of a network when they dial in to that service. The Internet is simply a way of connecting all of those networks and computers together so that people can communicate and collaborate. The phone lines and computers are merely the tools that make new forms of human communication possible.

A Little History

The Internet began as ARPANET, a way for the U.S. Department of Defense to share data with its staff and contractors. As a defense tool, ARPANET was designed to survive attacks, even nuclear attacks, by being geographically distributed and without a centralized structure. Later, ARPANET merged with a similar network that was built by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and was devoted to connecting research and educational institutions. Together, they formed the basis for what is now called the Internet. For many years, traffic on the network was restricted to government contractors, researchers and members of higher education institutions. Individuals and commercial business users were not permitted access to the Internet until the early 1990s.

Nobody owns or controls the Internet or the World Wide Web, although certain organizations have responsibility for setting technical standards. Governments also become involved in a variety of ways to control policy issues for Internet use within their borders. Today, the Internet is mostly supported by commercial infrastructure, and every company, organization and individual supports its own piece of the Internet when it adds a new network, computer or Web site.

How It All Works

The Internet enables many different kinds of communication, each of which needs a software application to make it work on your computer, like a Web browser or an email client. In fact, one of the mistakes many people make is thinking that the World Wide Web and the Internet are the same thing. They're not. The Internet is the backbone that connects computers and networks of computers to one another. The Web is one way to access specific content. It's much younger than the Internet and, in fact, the Web's ability to show graphics and animation is one of the key reasons why the Internet became so popular in the mid 1990s. Email is another main component and tool of the Internet.

The Internet is all about "many-to-many communication." What does that mean? A telephone is one-to-one communication (for the most part); you usually use it to talk to one other person in a direct dialogue. TV and radio, in contrast, are broadcast, or one-to-many communication; someone who owns a TV station can send one message to millions of people, but those people can't talk back in the same way. The power of the Internet is that any person can communicate to one person or millions of people at the same time, and they can all communicate back in the same way or to each other. That's many-to-many communication.

Think of the Internet as illustrated in this picture and as explained below.

• Computers and other hardware devices are connected by telephone lines and other telecommunication pipelines, such as cables, satellites, and fiber optic lines allowing any computer to pass messages, commands and files to any other computer that has the software to understand them.

• When you're online (meaning that you're connected to the network), you can request files from other computers, send them messages or even run applications that actually reside on another computer. The computer that holds the file you are trying to get is called a server, and you are referred to as a client or user. Because the Internet is all about interconnected communication, the same computer can be both a client and a server at different times. For example, if your computer hosts a Web site, it's a server, but when you use that same computer to go to someone else's Web site, it's a client.

• You need software on your computer to understand the different types of files that move between the computers, whether email, a Web page or anything else. The software on the server computer translates the file into a standard format that is shipped across the pipelines to your computer, and your client software interprets it. Happily, Web and email software is some of the easiest software to use and understand.

Using the Internet at Your Facility

Your center's network administrator is the technical staff member who can explain the specific steps or policies for connecting to the Internet at your facility. You may connect by "dialing in" through a modem in each computer (the same way people do it from home), or you may have a LAN that connects all computers in the center. Whether to create a LAN is an important decision for center directors to consider when first getting your center Internet ready. Either way, you connect to the Internet through an Internet service provider (ISP), which is a kind of utility company, like the telephone company, that provides the Internet access. You are actually connecting to the Internet by first connecting to the ISP's much bigger network.

Most of the Internet-based work you'll do will probably involve using the Web and using messaging applications, especially email, but be aware that other options exist. The Web lets you access many different types of files, from documents to graphics to videos. Internet software does a great job of hiding all the technical complexity that makes it work. Just make sure that you also understand Internet safety for you and your kids, and you'll find that using the Net is one of the easiest and most rewarding things you'll do with the computer. That's all there is to it, in a nutshell.