To understand how the Internet works you must first understand what it isn't. It is not a centrally controlled infrastructure or a database that is looked after by one organisation. What it is, is a decentralised collection of international networks connected by an even larger network.
The Internet was designed to have an abundance or routes and connections for data to travel on. Data that is sent over the Internet is chopped up into small little packets of data before being sent. There are times when these packets of data are lost, corrupted or received in the wrong order. When this happens the data is resent by the sender and will more than likely take a different rout to its destination.
The Internet is made up of Internet servers, these are large computers that provide services to the smaller PC's that connect to the Internet as well. The servers are known as hosts and the PC's are known as clients. When a packet of data is sent on the net, it needs to be told where to go, each packet of data has been given an IP address, which is an individual number that will resolve to a particular host on the Internet somewhere, the IP stands for Internet Protocol. Because as a human we are not designed to be good with remembering long numbers the hosts are given a name that we remember like www.microsoft.com. There are large servers that hold lists of these names and what IP address matches with the name. They are known as DNS Domain name servers, and they are fundamental to the way the Internet work, with out them the packets of data would be endlessly searching the net looking for the right server. |
