Internet geographic information systems (GIS) are network-based GIS that utilize the Internet to access, analyze, visualize, and distribute geographic information. It is a term closely related to web GIS and distributed GIS, but there are differences among these words. The Internet is a networking infrastructure that connects millions of devices globally. Through such connections, all devices form a network in which clients can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet.

Web is one of the services the Internet supports, and a system is web GIS if it uses only web technologies and no other Internet services. Distributed GIS emphasizes the network environment and includes both wired and wireless channels through which GIS services and operations are accessible by ...