I remember accessing university sites in the 70’s via the old phone modems, and continually upgraded modems and chatted all over the world and had email, via a university server, in the early 90’s. All of my work for took place via phones and either interfaced with local BBS types or university for newsgroups and emails.
I don’t actually remember being assigned an IP address until much later.
The first browser I used in the early 90’s stored the graphic symbols on my computer rather and the what was transmitted was instructions and text. I remember the upgrades of loading additional graphics files / symbols. I wish I could remember the name of the “browser”.
What amazes me is how “simple” it all turned out. At the time I started using this and implementing this stuff it was very hard to do reliably.
My university had an intranet by 1977, with email and chat capabilities. Many of us students received homework assignments, studied graphic presentations of subject matter, communicated with our professors, or submitted assignments through this system. In retrospect it was not all that clunky. Being able to dial up the university from one's home-brew computer and work from the home office was a great convenience and a real thrill.