Most people know how to access and use the internet, whether from their phone at work on their home Wi-Fi. But what is the internet? How does the internet actually work?
Undoubtedly, if you’re reading this article, you’re familiar with the internet. You’ve seen how it’s changed your life – enabling instant communication and putting a world of information at your fingertips. But have you ever wondered how it all works? In this article, I give a simple explanation of how the internet works.
What is the Internet?
The Internet is a global computer network for communication – actually nothing more than a basic computer network. The Internet simply moves data from one place to another, so that we can chat, browse and share.
The name Internet comes from the English words Interconnected Networks, which means "interconnected networks".
The Internet is a global network of billions of computers and other electronic devices. With the Internet, it's possible to access almost any information, communicate with anyone else in the world, and do much more.
When we talk about the Internet, what we’re actually referring to is an interconnected network of computers (hence, internet).
When you chat to somebody on the Net or send them an E-mail, do you ever stop to think how many different computers you are using in the process? There's the computer on your own desk, of course, and another one at the other end where the other person is sitting, ready to communicate with you. But in between your two machines, making communication between them possible, there are probably about a dozen other computers bridging the gap. Collectively, all the world's linked-up computers are called the Internet. How do they talk to one another? Let's take a closer look!
You can do all of this by connecting a computer to the Internet, which is also called going online. When someone says a computer is online, it's just another way of saying it's connected to the Internet.
Lots of people use the word "Internet" to mean going online. Actually, the "Internet" is nothing more than the basic computer network.
The internet is notable for its decentralization. No one owns the internet or controls who can connect to it. Instead, thousands of different organizations operate their own networks and negotiate voluntary interconnection agreements.
What does the Internet do?
The Internet has one very simple job: to move computerized information (known as data) from one place to another. That's it!
Most people access internet content using a web browser. Indeed, the web has become so popular that many people incorrectly treat the internet and the web as synonymous. But in reality, the web is just one of many internet applications. Other popular Internet application include Email.
How does the Internet work?
At this point you may be wondering, how does the Internet work? The exact answer is pretty complicated and would take a while to explain. Instead, let's look at some of the most important things you should know.
It's important to realize that the Internet is a global network of physical cables, which can include copper telephone wires, TV cables, and fiber optic cables. Even wireless connections like Wi-Fi and 3G/4G rely on these physical cables to access the Internet.
When you visit a website, your computer sends a request over these wires to a server. A server is where websites are stored, and it works a lot like your computer's hard drive. Once the request arrives, the server retrieves the website and sends the correct data back to your computer. A computer that gets information from a server is called a client. What's amazing is that this all happens in just a few seconds!
To better understand, Let's take a concrete case. Let say you want to access certain data on the internet from a phone or a laptop that is connected to the internet through a cable, router or Wi-Fi. The data you want to access for example a video on YouTube is stored in a data central on an SSD of a server. But how does this data get to you?
Any device connected to the internet is identified by a unique group of numbers called the IP address and the IP address of your phone or laptop for example is given by your Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) also the server where the data you wants to access also has an IP address. So through the IP, the information has a sender and a recipient.
More so, if you want to access google.com, for example, it also have an IP address hidden under a domain name to be easier to use because for us human, it is much easier to remember google.com than to remember numbers like 105.39.4.284. This is where DNS technology comes in which works like a phonebook specifically DNS associates a name for each website IP address in the world from here this data request that you made is transmitted to the respective server and the data transfer to you start. The data flows through the fiber optic cable system in the form of light pulses and that reaches your router, from here the data is transmitted by the router in the form of electrical signals, the internet cable or the Wi-Fi. But what if you use the internet through mobile data. Well, the signal is transmitted to the same optical cables to a cell tower and from here the internet is transmitted to you in the form of electromagnetic waves.
Other things you can do on the Internet
One of the best features of the Internet is the ability to communicate almost instantly with anyone in the world. Email is one of the oldest and most universal ways to communicate and share information on the Internet, and billions of people use it. Social media allows people to connect in a variety of ways and build communities online.
There are many other things you can do on the Internet. There are thousands of ways to keep up with news or shop for anything online. You can pay your bills, manage your bank accounts, meet new people, watch TV, or learn new skills. You can learn or do almost anything online.
What is the Web?
The World Wide Web—usually called the Web for short—is a collection of different websites you can access through the Internet. A website is made up of related text, images, and other resources. Websites can resemble other forms of media—like newspaper articles or television programs—or they can be interactive in a way that's unique to computers.
The purpose of a website can be almost anything: a news platform, an advertisement, an online library, a forum for sharing images, or an educational site like us!
Once you are connected to the Internet, you can access and view websites using a type of application called a web browser. Just keep in mind that the web browser itself is not the Internet; it only displays websites that are stored on the Internet.
That is it for this month. Thanks for reading and hope you have learnt something new. If you like this content you can kindly check my website at kaytechit.herokuapp.com
