How does the Internet work?

Internet is the jargon word used in this present world and do you ever wonder what and how the internet works.

In Simple words, the Internet is a large network of computers that communicate altogether.

Now, let’s start understanding how exactly the internet started and grew all the way to this huge network.

Simple network

The idea behind the internet is to connect two computers and be able to communicate between those two machines as below.

Such type of communication is never limited to only two, we can connect as many computers to each other to communicate between them using different physical cables and wireless technology.

As computers grew physical infrastructure grows exponentially and this becomes a nightmare to maintain the proper connections between computers, below is the sample diagram which depicts the large number of computers connected via cables.

To rectify the above problem now a tiny computer was introduced called a router, as the name says it basically routes the information between the computers to which it is connected.

The below diagram shows how a router is connected to the other computers centrally.

Here, now the router’s job is to send/route the information from one computer to other. Now, consider that if computer B wants to send the message to computer G then B signals the router with proper information, and the router gets notified that B wants to send and it also notifies to which destination computer needs to be sent, once it receives notification it properly sends the message to computer G.

As you see now from two systems the network is growing huge and eventually. So, to manage thousands and billions of computers will be difficult to maintain and route the information using one router.

This is where the network of networks came into existence connecting more networks via routers as shown below.

Such a network of computers that communicate came very close to how today’s internet works and this is something let’s say we created our communication, but we have so many such types of networks which are created or maintained by other people in the world.

To maintain such huge connections between other people’s networks it is not possible to have direct cables to the network, then special routers came into existence which are provided by Internet Service Providers. They maintain a special type of routers that are connected and have access to other ISP’s.

Using these entire ISP networks messages are transferred from one network to another network and reach their respective destination computers, below diagram depicts the same.

This is how entire communication works and messages are sent from one system to other systems easily.

I hope, you enjoyed reading about the concept of the internet and its communication.

If you like the article please follow for more technical articles.

~MV

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