THE SECRET ABOUT THE INTERNET

If you haven’t used the internet before then you must be from the BC ages 😄. But seriously, I think it is something you must have used knowingly or unknowingly.

The Internet makes the world a small global village because of the great connectivity that comes with it. You visit a website, you are using the internet, you use a POS(point of sale) machine, your mobile app, getting access to something that is not technically stored in your phone or PC (personal computer), then you have used the internet. How does this internet work? Well, chill and let me take you down this journey!

Believe me you are not the only internet novice on the planet so dont be hard on yourself😃😀.

The truth is that the workings of the internet is not as complex as you think. It is a large network of computers which communicate all together including yours and mine. According to MDN, the journey began in the 1960s as a US-army-funded research project. From there it evolved into a public infrastructure in the 1980s with the support of many public companies and universities which led us to where we are today (a digitalized community).

If the internet is a way of connecting computers all together, then how does this happen? Well just like communications among humans, for two computers to communicate, you have to link them, either physically or wirelessly. Physically it is done using an Ethernet Cable and wirelessly it is done using Wi-fi or Bluetooth.

The connection (networking) of the internet is not limited to two computers alone, you can connect as many computers as you wish to. Each computer on a network is connected to a special tiny computer called a router. The job of this router is to make sure that data (message) sent by a computer gets to the right destination (computer). This is how it works: if computer A wants to send a message to computer B, it first of all sends it to the router and the router makes sure that it gets to computer B and not computer C. if you want to connect thousands or probably millions of computers together, you can use more than one router to achieve that. This is done by connecting computers to router and then router to router.

Although this is very close to what we call the internet, this connection is built for our own personal purpose. Imagine your friends, neighbors, relatives having this same kind of personal network also, how will you communicate with them? Obviously, routers, cables are not going to work here. You can’t possibly connect a cable to your neighbors or friends house or a relative who lives far away. In order for you to be able to do this connection you will need a modem, which is connected over a telecommunication network. To achieve this we will need an Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs are companies that manage some special routers that are linked together which can also access other ISP’s routers. So the message you sent from your computer is carried through your ISP network to the destination network.

Just the way your friends have a house address, every computer linked to the internet has an address also which is used to locate that specific computer. This address is called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. This IP address is made up of a series of four numbers which are separated by dots, example 127.0.0.1. With IP addresses, data transmission across the internet is reliable, no matter the device you are using or where you are using it.

When data is transferred over the internet, it is delivered in messages and packets. So technically, every data sent over the internet is called a message, although before messages get sent they are broken up into tinier parts called packets.

It will be difficult for we humans to remember these IP addresses, though it is perfectly fine for the computer. In order to make things easier IP address was mapped with a human readable and friendly name called domain name. As at the time I was writing this article, the IP address of Google is 192.168.76.51 and google.com is the domain name used on top of the IP address. If you type either of them on your browser they will lead you to Google’s page. But using the domain name (google.com) is more readable and easy for us to communicate with a computer over the internet.

So, do you think communication across the internet is complicated or super easy to understand? Please leave your comment below and don’t forget to share and like this post. Shallout✌️