Terminology

Internet is a short form of the technical term "internetwork", the result of interconnecting computer networks with special gateways (routers). The Internet is also often referred to as the net.
The term the Internet, when referring to the entire global system of IP networks, has traditionally been treated as a proper noun and written with an initial capital letter. In the media and popular culture a trend has developed to regard it as a generic term or common noun and thus write it as "the internet", without capitalization.
The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the same. The Internet is a global data communications system. It is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides connectivity between computers. In contrast, the Web is one of the services communicated via the Internet. It is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs.
In many technical illustrations when the precise location or interrelation of Internet resources is not important, extended networks such as the Internet are often depicted as a cloud. The verbal image has been formalized in the newer concept of cloud computing.