Internet

The Internet consists of many wide-area networks that have been connected together to form one huge worldwide network. Even on this huge network, each computer must have a unique network address, called an IP address, much like each telephone in the world has a unique telephone number (including the country code and area code).

Here a typical IP address:

149.152.18.25

Typical IP addresses actually are 32 binary digits, which is what networking equipment uses. The above is the standard way of writing these bits in decimal. But even when written in decimal the address is not clear to humans. One of the features of the World Wide Web is that it allows humans to use computer names rather than numbers. Here is a typical computer name:

chortle.ccsu.edu

This computer name corresponds to the above IP address. When you use it in a Web browser it is converted into the 32 binary digits of the computer's IP address.