How Work In Internet

                       How Work In 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!

What is Internet

Global communication is easy now thanks to an intricately linked worldwide computer network that we call the Internet. In less than 20 years, the Internet has expanded to link up around 210 different nations. Even some of the world's poorest developing nations are now connected.

As modern online marketers who are totally in tune with everything that happens on the world wide web, we should -- undoubtedly -- be able to teach others how all of this “internet" stuff works.

The issue, of course, is that many of us can’t explain it … at least not accurately, or succinctly, or eloquently. And considering we rely on the internet so freakin’ much, I figured it was time we nail this one down.

As it turns out, explaining how the internet works in a way that even the most internet-agnostic person can understand is easier said than done. As Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, once observed: "The internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand."

How does the Internet Work?

Now that we have a (very) high level sense of what the internet is, how exactly does it work? This is where your browser comes into play.

Your browser is what we call a “client application” and what this simply means is that its a program that allows you to make requests to different web sites and respond to the data that those web sites send back. To best explain how this works, I’ll list out some of the steps involved with making a request to ESPN.com:

Packet Switching: Technology That Makes the Internet Possible

Developed in the mid-'60s, packet-switching technology brought communication into the digital age.
At the time, traditional communication networks -- like the nation's telephone system -- relied on analog, circuit-switching technology. (If you use a landline phone, you still rely on this technology, by the way.) With a circuit-switching system, a dedicated line allows for transmission of data from one point to another. It's a continuous connection, and data is always received in the order in which it's sent.

Circuit switching

Much of the Internet runs on the ordinary public telephone network—but there's a big difference between how a telephone call works and how the Internet carries data. If you ring a friend, your telephone opens a direct connection (or circuit) between your home and theirs. If you had a big map of the worldwide telephone system (and it would be a really big map!), you could theoretically mark a direct line, running along lots of miles of cable, all the way from your phone to the phone in your friend's house. For as long as you're on the phone, that circuit stays permanently open between your two phones. This way of linking phones together is called circuit switching. In the old days, when you made a call, someone sitting at a "switchboard" (literally, a board made of wood with wires and sockets all over it) pulled wires in and out to make a temporary circuits that connected one home to another. Now the circuit switching is done automatically by an electronic telephone exchange.
If you think about it, circuit switching is a really inefficient way to use a network. All the time you're connected to your friend's house, no-one else can get through to either of you by phone. (Imagine being on your computer, typing an email for an hour or more—and no-one being able to email you while you were doing so.) Suppose you talk very slowly on the phone, leave long gaps of silence, or go off to make a cup of coffee. Even though you're not actually sending information down the line, the circuit is still connected—and still blocking other people from using it.


In comparison, with packet-switching technology, data is first divided up into smaller chunks called "packets." In addition to carrying data, each packet contains destination information, so it knows where it's going. This means that packets can be transmitted individually, follow different routes (there's no dedicated line), but ultimately arrive at the proper destination. Once there, all of the packets can be recompiled to form the original data-set or message -- regardless of the order in which those packets arrive.

Summary

The Internet is the backbone of the Web, the technical infrastructure that makes the Web possible. At its most basic, the Internet is a large network of computers which communicate all together.
The history of the Internet is somewhat obscure. It began in the 1960s as a US-army-funded research project, then evolved into a public infrastructure in the 1980s with the support of many public universities and private companies. The various technologies that support the Internet have evolved over time, but the way it works hasn't changed that much: Internet is a way to connect computers all together and ensure that, whatever happens, they find a way to stay connected.