It seems that laptops, search engines have recently appeared, and yet we can already put a computer in our pocket! how the internet works – a technology that allows you to take with you a library, a music center or a dozen games? We talk about what is a domain, server, router and other complex phenomena in plain language.
The availability of computers and the ability to use the World Wide Web have become the best phenomena in the life of a modern person. Thanks to them, everything has become more efficient: we can work more productively and rest better. In the office, we look for business ideas, information on financial matters, and so on. At home, we watch movies or listen to music. But how did the Internet come about and what is your work based on?
What is the World Wide Web?
In short, this is a system that connects a large number of computers in different countries and is built on a database of IP addresses. Simply put, they are computers mounted on the same network using a remote connection. They can transmit information remotely. By computer in this case we mean any device capable of transmitting signals. Thanks to
4G and 5G among them are cell phones, tablets, TVs and sometimes even home appliances.
Read More: 4 of the Best url shorteners that pay off
If you dig deeper, you should think about what is the storage and transmission of information? Now by that they mean the communication of people on the network and the exchange of news. Also, this is the use of cloud storage, buying and selling something. Therefore, the World Wide Web is a unified device that exchanges and stores information.
Internet history
The first mention of the creation of the Internet appears in 1962, in the work “The Galactic Network” by Joseph Licklider, where he describes the idea of the World Wide Web. The American engineer Paul Baran, at about the same time, suggests in one of his reports that it is possible to create a confidential system of interconnected peer-to-peer devices.
It was the time of the Cold War, and the idea caught attention because it was possible to control troops even at the beginning of a nuclear war. The money was allocated to technology research, and a few years later Larry Roberts proposed creating an internal network, connecting organizations' computers to each other. This was done by the Universities of California, the Stanford Institute, the University of Utah. A cable was placed between them, and in 1969 the most important technical problems were resolved.
In the future, other scientists joined in the development of the network project. After 2 years, the first email appeared, and a few years later, a transatlantic cable was launched. In the 1970s, computers were used to exchange letters, receive news, and view advertisements.
In the meantime, there is a need to develop universal protocols according to certain standards: IP, TCP, FTP, etc. In the 1980s, when the use of the IP protocol expanded, the term “Internet” emerged. In 1989, Tim Berners Lee, a nuclear researcher, formulates and proposes the concept of the World Wide Web: HTTP, HTML and URI appear. In 1993, the NCSA browser was developed, making the Internet convenient. The number of users is growing
providers appear, the network becomes the primary means of exchanging information.
How does the network work?
In fact, the principles of the Internet are very simple and differ from other networks largely only in scale. The World Wide Web consists of communication channels that connect a client, a server, and network devices. The client is a device that can request network information and provide it in understandable form, the server is the storage medium that stores it in a database format that provides information to the client.
Network devices connect client and server. The scheme goes like this: the client sends a request to the server, it arrives through the network equipment. Therefore, the server processes and finds the response and sends it, using the same network equipment, to the client.
Network devices, ie modems, switches, routers and other communication channels must function continuously. First, the modem converts analog data to digital and vice versa. Second, the router stores addresses and packets of information. Third, the switch allows you to transfer data over the cable.
What are network nodes?
Devices that are part of a network and interconnected are called nodes. They can be universal, like computers or phones, and special, like routers.
The web server, i.e. the software and the computer on which it is installed, processes HTTP requests and responses from clients that may contain HTML, i.e. files, images and any other data. The server re-encodes domains into IP addresses, stores network data, and so on. The client, that is, a web browser and the device on which it runs, sends requests to the server to obtain URLs that indicate the desired resources. The exchange between them takes place using the HTTP protocol.
Routers, i.e. routers
These are devices that send data between different network segments using established rules. It opens the path from, for example, a computer to the website the user wants to see. Without a router, it would be impossible to combine networks with different structures and protocols.
protocols
A data transfer protocol is an interface convention. First, they define a system for exchanging data between different software. Second, they create a unified algorithm for messages and error correction when programs installed on different devices connected via a network interface come into contact.
Thus, the algorithms that allow you to connect devices and exchange data are called network protocols. Modern protocols are defined by the IETF, that is, the international developer community. The most common classification divides protocols into levels:
- Physical, characterizing the properties of the communication line
- Channel, which determines the algorithm to use the first level by network nodes
- Network and transport layers that regulate addressing and delivery of information
- Session, managing device software operation
- The presentation layer that converts the data into a readable format
- Application, creating a boundary between application software and other levels.
All seven layers make the network work. Today, among the main protocols are IP and FTP, HTTP and SMTP, etc.
address definition
Every second, many devices connect to the network, and each of them needs to be defined in some way. Each device connected to the Internet has its own unique IP address, which includes the domain address and the host address. The Network ID is assigned when registering a domain. In addition, there is also a host address, which is assigned by the person who manages the domain's operation.
This digital record is convenient for the equipment, but it is not perceived by people, so domains are given names written in letters. So, for example, the domain “doroga.com” can have an IP address of “123.33.305.69” and vice versa.
Also, programmers often use the concept of a domain zone, that is, a zone of responsibility in the DNS system – the domain name system. DNS is simply a system of devices that are joined together according to certain criteria. It can contain one or several devices. Let's say one server is enough to create a small website, but many other devices are called yandex.ru domain.
The domain system is based on a clear hierarchy and allows for the structure of the Internet. There are three levels of domains, and the 1st level domains are divided into geographic (ru, us), administrative (com, gov), thematic (today, bar).
DNS servers i.e. domain name service
Great, we know the address of the resource, it remains only to find it. It is worth mentioning that the difficulty is that a device will not be able to store such volumes of information. So DNS servers are used for lookups. They are located in different parts of the world and control different parts of the network. As a result, when a domain is created on one of your servers, a corresponding IP address book is developed.
The device with it is a DNS server, whose main task is to provide address information upon client request. If the desired address cannot be found immediately, the server sends a request to its counterparts and this continues until the address is found. This usually happens within a few seconds.
Check it out: Top 4 websites to CHECK what more you pay pretty much the truth
This happens so quickly because each resource on the Internet is also given a unique file location finder, a URL. It consists of the name of the protocol by which you can access the data, the address of the server, the name of the file on the server.
What is HTML language?
Based on the data we already have, we can roughly understand the information exchange system. However, how do we get an answer that we can perceive?
Tim Berners-Lee, who we talked about at the beginning, also developed the HTML language, which is used by browsers like Google Chrome or Opera. As a result, it is a language created according to certain standards for marking up Internet documents. So, most pages have an HTML version.
Conclusion
We briefly describe how the Internet works. Of course, there are more complex algorithms that are responsible for speed, information sorting, blocking, etc., but this is a much broader topic.