The Internet is a vast network that connects computers around the world through more than 750,000 miles (1,200,000 kilometers) of cable stretching under land and sea, according to the University of Colorado Boulder.
It is the fastest communication method in the world and allows data to be sent from London, UK, to Sydney, Australia, in just 250 milliseconds, for example. Building and maintaining the Internet has been a monumental feat of ingenuity.
What is the Internet?
The Internet is a giant computer network linking billions of machines via underground and undersea fiber optic cables. These wires connect continents and islandseverywhere except Antarctica
Each cable contains glass threads that transmit data as pulses of light, according to the magazine. Science. Those strands are wrapped in layers of insulation and buried under the seabed by ships carrying specialized plows. This helps protect them from everything from corrosion to shark bites
When you use it, your computer or device sends messages through these cables requesting access to data stored on other machines. When accessing the Internet, most people will use the World Wide Web.
When was the Internet invented?
It was originally created by the United States government during the Cold War. In 1958, President Eisenhower founded the Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARP) to give a boost to the country’s military technology, according to the Cyber Policy Review. Scientists and engineers developed a network of links computers called ARPANET.
The original goal of the ARPANET was to connect two computers in different places, allowing them to share data. That dream came true in 1969, according to Historian. jeremy norman. In the years that followed, the team connected dozens of computers, and by the late 1980s the network contained more than 30,000 machines, according to the UK. Science and Media Museum.
how the internet works
Most computers connect to the Internet wirelessly, using Wifi, through a physical modem. It connects via a cable to a socket on the wall, which plugs into a box outside. That box connects via even more wires to a network of wires underground. Together they become radio waves for electrical signals to fiber optic pulses, and vice versa.
At each connection point of the underground network, there are junction boxes called routers. Your job is to figure out the best way to get data from your computer to the computer you’re trying to connect to. According to the IEEE International Conference on Communications, they use their IP addresses to determine where the data should go. Latency is the technical word that describes how long it takes for data to get from one place to another, depending on Border.
Each router is only connected to its local network. If a message arrives at a computer that the router does not recognize, it passes it to a higher router on the local network. Each of them maintains an address book called routing table. According to the Internet Protocol Magazineshows the routes through the network to all local IP addresses.
The Internet sends data all over the world, by land and sea, as shown in Fig. submarine cable map. Data passes between networks until it reaches the one closest to its destination. It then goes through local routers until it reaches the computer with the corresponding IP address.
The Internet is based on two connected computers that speak the same digital language. To achieve this, there is a set of rules called Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), according to the web infrastructure and website security company. cloud flare.
TCP/IP makes the Internet work a bit like a postal system. There is an address book containing the identity of each device on the network, and a set of standard envelopes for packaging data. Envelopes must bear the sender’s address, the recipient’s address and details about the information contained inside. IP explains how the addressing system works, while TCP explains how to pack and send data.
How do the websites work?
Click on the numbers in the interactive image below to find out what happens when you type www.livescience.com into your browser:
Internet speed and bandwidth
When it comes to internet speed, the amount of data you can download in a second – bandwidth. According tom guideFor surfing the web, checking your email and updating your social networks, 25 megabits per second is enough. But, if you want to watch 4K movies, stream live video, or play online multiplayer games, you may need speeds of up to 100-200 megabits per second.
Your download speed depends on one main factor: the quality of the underground cables that connect you to the rest of the world. Fiber optic cables send data much faster than their copper counterparts, according to the cable testing company. BASECand your home Internet is limited by the infrastructure available in your area.
Jersey has the highest average bandwidth in the world, according to Cable.es. The tiny British island off the coast of France boasts average download speeds of more than 274 megabits per second. Turkmenistan has the lowest, with download speeds as low as 0.5 megabits per second.
Additional Resources
You can read more about the history of the Internet at internet society website. To find out how the Internet has changed our daily lives, read this article from Informatics Australia.
