The Internet is a vast network of many different computers
that are able to talk to each other in spite of the fact
that they may be separated by large distances, may be very
different computers built by different manufacturers, and
may be running many different kinds of operating systems.
This is similar to people in (say) Israel, Brazil, Japan,
the United States, and Norway, each normally speaking a
different language, being able to converse almost instantaneously
with each other on very broad ranges of topics!
The computers of the Internet exchange packets of information
using addresses that have much in common with ordinary mail
addresses. These addresses are called Internet Protocol
(IP) addresses.