How the Internet Works

Understanding the working of Internet is something you can not just go through in one day. You can say that one can’t explain the whole concept because no central authority is there to design and implement the functioning of Internet.

Knowing the basics of how Internet works is still important. If you own a website, it is important to have some knowledge about the complex methods, working and process of Internet. “Nodes” is the important element of Internet, which has a domain name and an IP address. Paths connect nodes to each other. Internet is the collection of all the nodes and paths.

Severs and clients are another viable parts of the Internet. Clients include desktop computers, PDAs, cell phones, laptops and other devices. Both these parts store program and information for making the data accessible. Behind all this are the two important components called hardware and software, for making the whole mesh more useful and possible.

All the computers are not equal, there is a certain hierarchy. No single authority, database or computer has been assigned the work of creating World Wide Web. The hierarchy system starts with domain name.

You must be well versed with designators like .org, .net, .com and more. All these are basic names that are stored inside some specialized systems for maintenance by non-profit organizations. First of all, Top Level Domains (TLD) are formed, after this company networks and other Second Level Domains are formed. Yahoo.com is an example of second level domain.

The name is further divided in www.yahoo.com, which is a sub domain but we mis-name it as a host or domain. A host is the name given to a specific computer. A domain is a name that does not have www in front. It is the individual host mostly server, that provides us an access to real information and liberty to share it.

The host, hardware and software form a network. It is the set of all these network, when taken together that forms the physical aspect of the Internet.

There are some other essential aspects in the whole process. When you click on a Uniform Resource Locater (URL) on web page, the browser will send your request through Internet to get the desired data. The returned request and data is wrapped in the form of routing and control information. And this is why your web page shows one section at a time on the screen.

The connection gets time out when the packets take too long to reach and deliver the information. If you request for a particular name that is stored in the database. The name will be stored in a certain order, but the packets for delivery can appear in any order at your system. After this, these packets are reassembled and displayed.

There is no way the packets will be delivered to a wrong place, because they have specified IP address. An IP address is a numeric identifier for the host computer. One can not remember the number therefore, it is given a specific domain name. Every domain name has an IP address. The users having domain name can send and receive packets containing news, information, images or any other data.