Many people around the world connect the Internet to the World Wide Web or the famous WWW; those three magical letters that open the world of wonders on our computers and laptops. People automatically assume that the internet and the WWW (World Wide Web) are the same thing. However the Internet is hardware, while the World Wide Web is a kind of software.

The internet consists of a group of hardware machines connected together to create a massive World Wide Network. The connected network enables the surfer to read a newspaper from Australia or Madagascar or Mongolia—even whilst he/she is in Cairo.

The internet’s hardware consists of the components that you can physically touch, such as computers, cables, routers, telephone wires, high-speed communications devices and so on.

 A network is a group of computers and related devices that can communicate .The internet is thus an inter-linked collection of many smaller networks.

Technically this means that, the Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.  Source: (webopedia)

The web includes software. The information on the web is stored in individual files. A file contains information such as text, graphics, video, sound or animation that is stored on computer hardware. Each file on the web has a specific name. Web files are joined together somewhat like a giant spider web. That’s where the name “web” came from. These files are stored on special computers called web servers that send information along the internet’s hardware. The part of the internet we are most familiar with is the World Wide Web, often referred to as just the “web” (the reason that URL’s begin with www). The web is hence  a software...

To use the World Wide Web, you need access to a web browser, a program that lets the computer you're using communicate in the language of the web with other computers on the Internet.

 In other words, The World Wide Web (Web) is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the Web to share information. The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video. The Web is just one of the ways that information can be disseminated over the Internet. Source: (webopedia)

The Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail, which relies on SMTP, Usenet news groups, instant messaging and FTP. So the Web is just a portion of the Internet, albeit a large portion, but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused. 

The web is governed by means of a group of standards and Guidelines called W3C. W3C Develops Web Standards and Guidelines. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines. Since 1994, W3C has published more than ninety of such standards, called W3C Recommendations. W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software, and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web. In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together. W3C refers to this goal as “Web interoperability.” By publishing open (non-proprietary) standards for Web languages and protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus Web fragmentation. (Source: w3)