"Internet" refers to the global information system that...is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons....
-from the Federal Networking Council resolution of October 24, 1995 (emphasis added)

The Internet, or World Wide Web, evolved from technological innovations linking computer networks on campuses and at (mostly governmental) research institutions. Theoretical work underlying this breakthrough was done in the early 1960s and in 1969 the first network-to-network link was established. (Click here for an excellent historical overview of the development of the Internet, written by those who participated.)

Identifying the location of a given user on the Internet has always been a question of finding the address within this "globally unique address space." A system of numbered locations was established early on, followed shortly by a language-based "domain" system which relied on a centralized server to translate each domain name into its numeric (IP) address. By 1984 this no longer sufficed to meet the increasing volume of users, and the Domain Name System (DNS) was introduced. (See www.dns.net for details on the architecture and logic underlying the DNS.) The familiar three-letter "generic" .com and .net suffixes date from this time, as well as the 243 two-letter "country codes," such as .uk for the United Kingdom, .fr for France, and .jp for Japan. These dot-something suffixes are known as "top-level domains" or TLDs.

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