The Internet is now available on a vast range of technologies, such as mobile phones and pda's. It's now becoming difficult to define what you need to get started on the Internet. Therefore I will concentrate on the fact you are wanting to connect to the Internet using a personal computer. Below is a list of the things you will require,

• Phone line or digital phone line (ISDN and ADSL).
• Computer operating system that supports networking software.
• Modem - this changes the analog data from the phone line into digital data for the computer to understand.
• Networking / web browser application such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.
• An account on a Internet Service Provider such as Aol and BT.

When trying to connect to the Internet you may see there are various connections and speeds such as,

• Modem/Dial-Up connection
  
• Broadband Cable
  
• DSL
  
• Satellite Broadband
  
• ISDN and T-Line
  
• Wireless—The next step

The cheapest and most common type of connection in the UK was dialup. But broadband has now become the most popular, the UK government opened up more of the country so it could gain access and prices were considerable lowered.