In the modern world, it's tough to go anywhere that isn't connected to the internet in some way or another. A network of devices creating networks all connected to a bigger network forming a massive web encompassing the globe. This is one of the most commonly used tools in our day to day lives, but do you know how it works? In this blog I will do my best to inform those of you who have no idea how your emails keep showing up each day. So if you're an internet whiz and know everything there is to know on the topic...this post might not be for you. Novices! Read on!
How do you connect?
We all have different ways that we connect to and use the internet. On any given day I could use anywhere from one to nine internet connected devices, and those are just the ones that I own. For the sake of this example though, let's just say you've got a smartphone, and you use facebook. You have friends on facebook that are seeing the same content as you are, and you are able to connect with those friends. Say you send a message to your best pal, Kevin. Now your devices have a connection, a network if you will. But other friends want to chat too! So now that first network joins your other friends network and they become an inter-network.
In order for these networks to join and mix together, they first need to agree to a set of rules to follow. This set of rules is known as the internet protocol. As long as a device can follow this protocol, then they can join the network of connected networks which we call the internet.
What's yo address?
Every internet connected device you own has it's own unique IP (internet protocol) address. When you send a message to another computer, your computer breaks down your message into tiny packets of data which then flow, broken up, through the web of networks until each packet reaches the destination IP address. Upon reaching the destination the recieving device knows (as per internet protocol) how to reassemble the data. One of the internets greatest strengths is that your packets of data will most likely find a way to their destination eventually regardless of route they take. There are so many paths for data to flow that breaking things up and scattering them down various paths all to reconverge at the destination can be much quicker than trying to force a big chunk of data down a small data stream.
I hope that this has helped you in understanding the basics of how the internet works. If you want to know more on the topic…ask the internet. There are literally millions of resources at your fingertips at any given second! Thanks for reading!
- Ricky