How Does the Internet Work?

Have you tried answering the question, "How does the internet work?" Are you baffled by all that information out there that you can not seem to make heads or tails off? Is the information found on the internet too complicated and too technical? Then how about letting me explain how the internet works in very simple terms.

Just like your home address, each computer that is connected via the internet has a unique address called the internet protocol address or the IP address. This address is a 12 digit number, wherein every three digits are separated by a full-stop. Thus every IP address has 4 sets of three digit numbers, where each set could range anywhere between 0 and 255. Just like your mailman knows where your home address is, the internet knows where to find your computer by its IP address.

When you choose a particular service provider for your internet, you computer is given a temporary IP address. This address is yours, usually as long as your with the same service provider. The internet then knows that in order to find your computer, it goes to your internet service provider and then follows their cables or fiber optics to your IP address where your computer is located. Now that you know the two most important things about the internet, lets move on to further answer our question, "How Does the Internet Work".

Usually when your computer is connected over the internet, it tries communicating with other computers or servers based upon your request. So what your computer does is it sends out the information, including the IP address of the website you are trying to visit, in the form of packets (tiny pieces). Regardless of whether you are using a dial-up or broad band connection, these packets are converted into electronic signals that are transmitted through cables. The packets are also used to send information about what items you click on, what you have typed into forms, etc. Once these packets reach the other computer, the user can view them easily, since the computer converts the electronic information into alphabetic information. The information that comes back to your computer to display web pages, show videos, etc. is sent in the same manner, in small chunks rather than all at once.

Now that you know how the information is sent over the internet, let us look at a more detailed answer to, “How Does the Internet Work?" It should be quite easy for you to understand how the information is sent from your computer to your telephone line or cable, but what happens after that?

Your service provider has a lot of modems at their hub. The modems in the hub are controlled by a series of super computers that send the information to a line router that is dedicated. From there on, the information that was sent to your service provider would be sent through other dedicated lines and routers to the destined computer system. If you are looking for particular information over the internet or looking at a particular website, then this is how it works. In other words, your computer doesn't speak directly to the other computers on the web. Your information goes to the hub at your service provider and the site your looking at sends its information to it own hub or its service provider. Then the hubs shift the data back and forth between each other and the two computers (yours and the website's).

You computer sends information across the internet to look for the website address that you have requested. This request is sent over the world through routers and dedicated lines. Once the address is located, information is sent back to you in the form of packets to your computer system which is then displayed on your monitor. This particular process is also called the “ping”, wherein your computer “pings” various servers to get the needed information.

If you have been trying to understand, "How Does the Internet Work?", then I hope that this article was easy and simple enough for you to understand.

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