Network in computing is a method of connecting computers so that they can share data and peripheral devices, such as printers. The main types are classified by the pattern of the connections - star or ring network, for example - or by the degree of geographical spread allowed; for example, local area networks (LANs) for communication within a room or building, and wide area networks (WANs) for more remote systems. Internet is the computer network that connects major English-speaking institutions throughout the world, with around 12 million users. Janet (joint academic network), a variant of Internet, is used in Britain. SuperJanet, launched 1992, is an extension of this that can carry 1,000 million bits of information per second. One of the most common networking systems is Ethernet, developed in the 1970s (released 1980) at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, California, by Rich Seifert, Bob Printis, and Dave Redell.

Internet global, on-line computer network connecting governments, companies, universities, and many other networks and users. The service offers electronic mail, conferencing and chat services, as well as the ability to access remote computers and send and retrieve files. It began in 1984 and by late 1994 was estimated to have around 40 million users on 11,000 networks in 70 countries, with an estimated one million new users joining every month. The Internet began with funding from the US National Science Foundation as a means to allow American universities to share the resources of five national supercomputing centers. Its numbers of users quickly grew as access became cheap enough for domestic users to have their own links on personal computers. By the early 1990s the wealth of information made freely available on this network had increased so much that a host of indexing and search services sprang up to answer user demand. Such programs as Gopher, Archie, Veronic, and WAIS (Wide Area Information Service) provide such services through a menu-based interface; the World-Wide Web uses hypertext to allow browsing.