The first step to getting into this field is to understand how it works. Here are some questions that I have found many people simply don’t understand:
- How does the internet work?
- When I put up a website, where does it go?
- When I enter a website address into my browser, what is happening?
I have talked to people about this and the confusion is definitely rampant. Most people have never really thought about where a website comes from. Its just the mysterious “they” who do it, I guess. Also, contrary to what Senator Ted Stevens said, the internet is not really a “series of tubes”.
So, let’s take a look at how this all works.
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The Internet
The internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected networks. So, for example, you may have a home network in your home. You have a few computers set up to share files and share an internet connection. That is a network. Now, other people as well as companies also have their own networks. These networks range from small home networks to large corporate networks. The internet is basically the term used to refer to this large, worldwide collection of independent networks all joined together into a large (very large) network.
You can see, in the graphic to the right, the general appearance of the Internet. It expands almost infinitely into numerous branches. This represents the interconnected nature of the Internet and how it is made up of millions of smaller networks joined together. You can also see why this is often referred to as the “world wide web”. It indeed very much resembles a web.
The term “internet” refers typically to the physical nature of this large network. Looked at from the global scale, you have all of these computers and networks connected together via copper wires, fiber optic cables and wireless signals. Connecting all these networks are major infrastructures such as the phone line system, the electrical grid and other large network lines.
The internet is very large today, connecting millions of smaller networks and (by current estimates) about 1.1 billion people worldwide. It grew to this point through increasing the infrastructure and by companies forming contracts with one another to link up their networks. The individual efforts of companies and people caused the internet to grow and take on a life of it’s own. Today, the internet is so large that most people cannot really fathom the way it is really put together. The make-up of it is simple: networks connected to networks. But, multiply that by several million times and you are looking at the internet as it stands today.
The World Wide Web
To many people, the internet and the world wide web are synonymous. Technically, though, they are not the same thing. As stated above, the internet is the physical makeup of the hardware and network lines which connect everything to make it up. The world wide web, though, is the collection of interconnected documents that reside on the internet. All of these documents are connected to one another via hyperlinks. If you have ever been online, you will know that the one feature that connects pages to one another is the link. Usually a string of blue text with an underline, clicking a link will take you to another webpage. For example:
Above is a hyperlink to PCMech.com. That link, multiplied by many billions, makes up the nature of the world wide web. So, the web is an informational platform which resides on the internet, but it is not itself the internet.
According to a 2001 study, there are over 550 billion documents on the web. Not all of these documents are available to the public. Some of these documents are simply “out there” but are not available in search engines. This is sometimes referred to as the “invisible web”. About 11.5 billion documents are in the “visible web” which means they are linked to from other sites or available in search engines. If you are able to get to a website, then you are looking at the visible web. The invisible web is something that you could get to from your computer, however since no other pages link to it, you would need to know exactly where to look.
A collection of web documents that are related and usually operated by the same person or company is referred to as a “web site”. I have no doubt you have heard this term before. If you go to PCMech (www.pcmech.com) you will reach the homepage. You will find a lot of links to other pages and articles on the same site. All of these are independent documents on the world wide web, however being that they are all grouped together and operated by myself, it is a website.
The term “www” is short for world wide web. This is actually pretty ironic considering the acronym takes longer to say than the phrase itself. However, if I referred to my site as “world wide web pcmech dot com” you probably would do a double-take.
Domain Names
The domain name is what gives us all the methodology to refer to documents and websites on the web. Under the hood, any computer network (which is what the internet is) works by way of IP addresses. IP refers to internet protocol, and protocol is the term used to refer to a set of software-driven agreements to allow two or more computers to “talk” to each other.
To understand a protocol, you can take a look at two people from two different countries. They more than likely speak different languages and thus real communication will be difficult at best. However, a protocol in the computer world is similar to a language in the human world. If you provided a language that both people could speak, they could speak. Similarly, if two computers are set up with the same protocol, then those two computers will be able to speak to each other.
Internet protocol (IP) is the protocol used to make the internet work and allow networks and individual computers on the internet to “talk”. An IP address is similar to a street address in that it is a location on where to find a computer on the network. The physical location of the computer is not important, though. The address is a series of numbers separated by periods, such as 209.68.45.231. This address is how other computers on the network can find another computer.
An IP address, though, would be very difficult to remember for real people. The IP address 209.68.45.231 happens to be the IP address of PCMECH.COM. However, if you had to remember that in order to arrive at my site, it would be pretty difficult. It would be the equivalent of having to call everybody you know by their home phone number. A system, then, was created in order to be able to assign actual names to websites. That system is referred to as the domain name system (or DNS).
The domain name system is simply an online database of web site names and their respective IP addresses. It acts as a translation service. When you type in www.pcmech.com into your web browser, your internet service provider taps into the DNS system, finds that the IP address is 209.68.45.231, and then connects your computer to that IP address so that you can view the documents of my site on your computer.
The DNS system sits on a series of computers throughout the world. These computers are called servers (more on servers below). When you purchase a domain name, the company that you bought the domain name from registers the domain name in the DNS system. Being that the Internet is global in nature, so is the DNS system. For this reason, changes to the DNS records have to propagate around the world so that any internet-connected computer can use your domain name. For this reason, there is usually a short wait after buying a domain before that domain will actually function properly online.
URLs
A URL is a “uniform resource locater”. A URL is synonymous with a domain name or web address. It means the same thing. It is simply the address you type into your web browser to find a specific document on the Internet.
Servers
All web pages on the Internet consist of a single file. Any images on that web path are, themselves, separate files. All of these files have to BE somewhere. Well, in the physical world, these files reside on a hard drive inside of a computer. This computer is called a server.
A server, by nature, is really no different than the computer you are reading this page on right now. It is simply a computer with files on it. The only difference is that this computer is set up specifically to take incoming requests for documents and send those documents to the requesting computer.
To illustrate, let’s say you, again, point your browser to PCMECH.COM. Your computer will use your internet service provider to contact the DNS system. The DNS system will determine the IP address of the computer where PCMECH.COM is stored. Your computer will then connect to the PCMECH server (which happens to be located in Pennsylvania). The PCMECH server will process the request and deliver up the documents you asked for (determined by the web address). Your computer will then get the documents and render them on your computer screen for your enjoyment.
This is The Basic Layout
Obviously, the subject of Internet structure is a LOT more complicated than this. However, I have touched on the basics and I hope this provides a broad view of how this works.
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