How internet works

What is Internet?

The internet is a network of computers that communicate between them to exchange data and information.

Internet ≠ WEB

Internet is the technical infrastracture behind the web. On the other hand, the WEB provides a services built over the internet.

How does it work?

To undertand how internet works, we should first look into how networks work. A network is a collection of interconnected devices such as computers, smartphones, printers, and others.

From starting a simple network, let’s say two interconnected computers are communicating each other. What if we want to connect 100 computers together. For this scenario, we new a new device, called as Router which is helping us to create private networks. Modems in our houses can be considered as routers.

So we have private connection, meaning I can connect to my devices in my home network. But how I can connect to outside of my private network (Internet). To communicate to desired network, we need to connect network device (modem) to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs manage other routers that are all linked together and can also access other ISPs’ routers.

In order to connect Internet our devices needs special addresses. These addresses are called as IP addresses. Each ISP assigns public IP addresses to their clients. But then how we are reaching the websites. We never uses IP addresses directly as end users. Since it would be difficult to remember IP addresses of the websites, we have domain names. So, when we enter google.com on our browser address bar, we mean domain name. Then, our browser is making a request to Domain Name System (DNS) resolver to learn the targeted IP address.