The Basics

The Internet is a computer network, in fact a network of computer networks, upon which anyone who has access to a host computer can publish their own documents. The part of this network called the World Wide Web (or just the Web) allows Internet publishers to link to other documents on the network. The Internet allows transmission of a variety of file types, including non-written multimedia.

There are many kinds of Internet sites that you might find during the course of a search, sites created by different people or organizations with different objectives. The animation below illustrates some of the types of sites on the Web, using an example search for information about MP3 players. Click on each search result to watch a short movie — when each movie is done, click on the Back button (circled in red) to return to the main menu, or the Refresh button (circled in green) to watch the movie again.

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