Glance About Internet

Glance About Internet

Let see how internet works, how data reaches to you ?

Internet - What is it ?

The core feature of internet is to communicate or transfer or trade data between two or more computers. So how is it possible to communicate with one another. It all started with ARPAnet or Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. In 1960s, researchers had a sender computer at UCLA and a receiver computer at Stanford interconnected with other computers.

"node-to-node" communication is the first start for internet

ARPAnet.jpeg

They successfully sent a message "Login" from one point to another even though only first two letters were received. This made the idea of "network of networks" and now it is a global system of interconnected computer networks.

Internet_map_1024_-_transparent,_inverted.png

After that further improvements like the formation of Transfer Control Protocol (TCP) / Internet Protocol (IP) on how to send data and how to receive between interconnected network devices were created.

How we get data when we search something in internet

As we all our devices have its own Internet Protocol (IP) address. This will be the postal address of our device. Now if we started to reach google.com or any other website, they have their own server with it's IP address and data to send based on our request.

Our request is taken by our Internet Service Provider (ISP) like Jio, AT&T which converts "google.com" into server's IP address after reaching through several networks. The data from the website's server is now splitted into bite-sized chunks with instructions like order numbers by protocols and sent to our device.

Multiple Internet Service Providers (ISP) will have a common Internet Exchange Points (IXP)

These chunks are sent into packets through networks. Here the interesting parts are packets doesn't use single route which can increase the traffic, it travels through various routes where there is leff traffic and we don't know which packets we received first. Those protocols which splitted the data into chunks now play an important role of recreation of data as in original form using the instructions.

Video Calls, Live Online games follow User Datagram Protocol(UDP) which doesn't wait for every packet to receive. This causes tiny loss of data or lags.

To know how many networks it took to process the data which is sent to you try this website TraceRoute Website. Just open terminal and use the command based on the operating system of your computer.

// Linux
traceroute google.com

// Mac
traceroute google.com

// Windows
tracert google.com

Then paste these address things into the website and hit map. It will give you a clear idea.

With that I could end this blog by saying internet can be compared to roads which lead us to particular home through one way or another route. In this case instead of house we have computer/server and for roads we have wires buried deep underground. All others are taken care by protocols from how they communicate to how they transfer. There is more about networks like how google.com is reserved to Google LLC, which are taken care by Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).