The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) are terms that to most people mean about the same thing. While they are related, their definitions are different.
What Is The Internet?
The Internet is at its most basic definition an electronic communications network. It is the structure on which the World Wide Web is based. Think of the Internet as a bus, and the Web as the people within the bus....grumpy passengers, screaming babies, and people talking too loud (actually, that's a pretty good representation of a lot of the Web!).What is the World Wide Web?
The World Wide Web is a part of the Internet "designed to allow easier navigation through the use of graphical user interfaces and hypertext links between different addresses" (source:Websters).The World Wide Web was created in 1992 by Tim Berners-Lee, and continues to change and expand rapidly. The Web is the user part of the Internet, based on TCP/IP protocol technology to swap information back and forth. People use the Web to communicate, access information, for business, and recreational purposes.
The Web and the Internet - Not The Same Thing
The Internet and the Web work together, but they are not the same thing. Think of the bus analogy again - the Internet provides the structure, and the Web provides the dynamic networks that we use via a variety of different methodologies and protocols. For a really good, technical explanation of how this all works, check out Are "Internet" and "World Wide Web" the same thing?
