Approximately 1% of the global population was utilizing the internet in 1995. Today users comprise 49% with a steady pace of about 8% annually being added. About 75% of internet users are distributed among just 20 nations, and nearly 180 countries represent the remaining 25%.
Internet / intranet…
Internet
The Internet represents a community of various computing devices including desktops, handheld devices, laptops, iPads, and similar gadgets. Users have the ability to connect to one or more of these devices from any part of the world via the internet. The infrastructure enabling the connectivity is widespread, but the single factor that connects everything is the internet. Speed of access is truly dependent not only on Bandwidth but also on the route taken, server capacity, and other factors.
Intranet
In some sense, the intranet can be considered the father of the internet. The intranet is merely the restricted version of the internet. The intranet will provide access only to a chosen group of designated people.
Yahoo and Google were early entrants and gradually they started addressing multiple problems of the intranet to usher in the global internet revolution. With many of the issues having been addressed by software engineers, many organizations today have switched back to the intranet for exclusive in-house use. Access to modern-day intranets also remains restricted to authorized users.