How Does The Internet Work
How Does The Internet Work
How Does The Internet Work
work?
Every computer connected to the Internet is a component of a network. For example, at home,
you may use a modem to connect to the Internet. At work, you may be part of a local area
network (LAN), which uses Ethernet connection. But you still connect to the Internet through an
Internet Service Provider (ISP). The ISP, in turn, may connect to a larger network such as a
Network Service Provider (NSP) that provides backbone services to the Internet service
provider. Thus, the Internet is simply a network of networks.
Internet backbone
These connections are collectively known as Internet Backbone. The backbones carry Internet
traffic around the world and meet at Network Access Points (NAPs). Internet Service Providers
(ISPs) connect either directly to a backbone, or they connect to a larger ISP with a connection to
a backbone. These network communications are provided by companies such as AT&T, GTE,
IBM, MCI, Netcom, Sprint, UUNET and consist of high-speed links such as T1, T3 lines.
Backbones typically consist of network routers and switches connected by fiber optic or Ethernet
cables. Computers normally do not connect to a backbone directly. Instead, the networks of
Internet service providers or large organizations connect to these backbones and computers
access the backbone indirectly. Thus, the Internet backbone is made up of many large networks
which interconnect with each other.
Web browser
Once connected, your computer uses a browser to find and access various types of information
on the Internet. A browser is a software A Web browser is a software program that interprets the
coding language of the World Wide Web in graphic form. Two well-known web browsers are
Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. There are other browsers such as Mozilla FireFor,
Opera, Apple Macintosh Browser etc.
Every computer connected to the Internet is assigned a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address.
When you point-and-click on a link, your browser sends out a request that is addressed to the
website that houses the content you want. Routers along the way read the data packet’s address
and relay it along the best route available.
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How do computers process data
1. Data is processed through web browser
The URL consists of (1) Web protocol (2) The domain name or the web server (3) the directory
or the folder on that server (4) the file name within that directory, perhaps with an extension as
htm or html. For example consider the following URL for a web site of National Park Service
for Yosemite National Park.
http://www.nps.gov/yose/index.htm