← 💻 Technology · usually met in Std 6-12
A network of networks that agree on how to pass messages. Nobody owns it, and that was a design decision.
Data is broken into packets, each labelled with where it is going, and each packet finds its own way through whatever route is available. If part of the network fails, packets go round it. Protocols — agreed rules such as TCP/IP — are what let machines built by different people in different decades talk to each other at all.
The web is not the internet; it is one service running on it, alongside email, video calls and much else. A domain name is translated to a numeric address by the DNS, which works like an enormous distributed phone book. HTTPS encrypts the conversation between your device and a site, which is why the padlock matters when you are typing anything you would not shout across a room.
Want to see it moving? Search YouTube for “The internet” ↗ — we send you to the search rather than to one video, because a link to one video eventually rots.
This entry was written for Star Student in our own words — it is a summary, not a source. Here is where the people who actually hold these facts keep them. Go and check.
Your own textbook ↗Balbharati publishes the textbooks free to read online. Your chapter is the thing to check first — an encyclopedia is a summary, and the syllabus is the syllabus.Last gone through: 1 October 2026 · How these entries are written
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