INTERNET USE

Now think about city streets - they're hard to navigate. Same with a computer network. It's like the same confusing street system, but the more you wander, the simpler it seems: every street is a data path, and every house in the system is a computer or other device connecting to the network. When you send an email to a friend or share a photo on a social network (such as Facebook or Instragram), your information travels along these virtual 'streets' to the right 'home', i.e. the recipient's device. Just like in the real world, on a computer, you can choose your neighbours or the people you interact with by creating several networks, such as a local area network (LAN), which is just your home internet network, with only the devices in your home connected to it, e.g. computers, smartphones, televisions, and limited to sharing information only between the people living in your home.
However, you often get tired of communicating only with your own people and want to know more and hear something new. That's when we connect to the World Wide Area Network (WAN), which allows us to extend the boundaries of communication created by our local network and connect to a much larger world. Let's go back to the street system and imagine that it is a highway that connects our city to many different towns or even countries and allows different information to travel beyond the walls of our homes.
These networks - our streets and motorways - eventually merge into one huge network called the Internet. It allows us to communicate, share and find information from any corner of the world. Just think, with the push of a button you can be anywhere in the world instantly. This is called the power of the internet. In this section, find out how groups of computers are connected by cables or other devices for transmitting information into a common network, and find out what services the internet provides.