some background: clients and servers

A network is a group of computers connected together. The Internet is a group of networks connected together. Communication among different kinds of computers is possible because they all agree to speak a common language, or protocol.

The World Wide Web is a popular Internet service that allows local client computer users to use browser software to access specially formatted files from remote Web servers. Again, the client and server computers agree to "speak the same language" so the files can be transferred from the server to the client. The files are created in hypertext markup language (html), which the browser software displays as a Web page.

Your browser software (e.g. Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer) can display any html file on any Web server connected to the Internet. Your browser software can also display any html file stored on your local network or your hard drive.