Yes, you read it right. Both internet and Internet are different in some weird way and do the mistake by thinking they both are same.
I just discovered this fact while reading some text about network and thought I should share this amazing thing with all of you guys.
Let's begin.....
Internetwork
When two or more networks are connected, they make an internetwork, or internet. As an example, assume that an organization has two offices , one on the east coast and the other on the west coast. Each office has a LAN that allows all employees in the office to communicate to each other. To make the communication between employees at different offices possible, the management leases a point-to-point dedicated WAN from a service provider, such as a telephone company, and connects the two LANs. Now the company has an internetwork, or a private internet (with lowercase i) . Communication between offices is now possible.
Fig 1.1 shows this internet.
Fig 1.2 shows another internet with several LANs and WANs connected. One of the WANs is a switched WAN with four switches.
The Internet
As we discussed before, an internet (lowercase i ) is two or more networks that can communicate with each other. The most notable internet is called the Internet (uppercase I ) and is composed of thousands of interconnected networks. Fig 1.3 shows a conceptual (not geographical) view of the Internet.
The figure shows the Internet as several backbones, provider networks, and customer networks. At the top level, the backbones are large networks owned by some communication companies. The backbone networks are connected through some complex switching systems, called peering points. At the second level, there are smaller networks, called provider networks, that use the services of the backbone for a fee. The provider networks are connected to the backbones and sometimes to other provider networks. The customer networks are networks at the edge of the Internet that actually use the services provided by the Internet. They pay the fees to provider networks for receiving services.
Backbones and provider networks are also called Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The backbones are often referred to as international ISPs; the provider networks are often referred to as national or regional ISPs.