Individual personal computers at home are connected to the Internet either through telephone lines and modems or, increasingly, through special digital ISDN lines.

However, most of the Internet is connected by high-speed telecommunication lines, which are dedicated to transferring data between buildings or organisations.

Once your computer is connected, you can access information on virtually any other computer on the Internet for the price of a local phone call.

The World Wide Web (or WWW) is a network of computers on the Internet, which store information in a special format known as a 'web site'.

Each web site contains a number of electronic 'pages' containing text and pictures (and sometimes sound and moving pictures too).

These pages can also contain 'links', usually shown as blue, underlined or bold text. Sometimes you may find that images are also active links to other 'pages' on the web.

Clicking on a link takes you to another page, which could be on the same computer as the previous one, or it could come from thousands of miles away on any other computer on the Web.