• The Internet grew out of the ARPANET, which was originally funded by the US government to support projects within the government as well as at universities and research laboratories in the United States, but has since expanded to include most of the world's major universities and the research arms of many technology companies. [When limits on the usage of the Internet to convey commercial traffic were loosened in 1995, a wider audience began to use it.]
• Most Internet access was provided via personal computers and workstations directly connected to local area networks (LANs) or dial-up connections utilising modems and analogue telephone lines in the early to mid-1980s. LANs typically ran at 10 megabits per second, whereas modem data rates increased from 1200 bits per second in the early 1980s to 56 kbits per second by the late 1990s.

Read More: Why is the Internet called 'the Internet'?