Journey Of Data Over The Internet
Nowadays, people of all ages use the internet either for work, study, entertainment or research purposes. In fact, many of the jobs are performed over the internet. Anyone is just one search away from getting information over the internet. One web search and you get it all. But how does it process the request and give the data we want? To understand that first of all we need to deep dive into computer networks.
What is a Computer network?
Computer network is a group of two or more devices that are interconnected with each other to transit information or resources, such as printers and scanners.
Why is the network important for computers?
Every person in the world has a network, it could be a small or large group of friends, families, colleagues or social media friends with whom they communicate on a day-to-day basis. Similarly, computers also have a network where different types of devices, for instance, computers, laptops, smartphones, etc are connected and transmit data over the network within a few milliseconds which saves a lot of time and boosts efficiency.
To establish a network connection with other machines, computers are either connected with a wire or wireless media (such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi etc.).
The following diagram depicts data transfer between two devices:
Types of Network
LAN, MAN and WAN are the three broadly used networks all around the globe. In this article we will be focusing on these three types of networks.
LAN – Local Area Network
LAN is used to interact with other devices that are at a close range like within a house or a building.
This type of network is fast and efficient and could use wire or wireless medium.
Example: You could visualize LAN as a road that is within our neighborhood or a small society which only covers a small, specific area.
MAN – Metropolitan Area Network
The geographical area of the MAN network is generally larger than LAN but smaller than WAN. As the name suggests, it usually covers metropolitan areas which includes a group of buildings, any area within a city or town.
Example: You could picture MAN as main roads or streets that connect different neighborhoods in a city.
WAN – Wide Area Network
WAN is the largest network among three of the discussed networks. It primarily uses routers to connect with different networks and may use switches to handle data traffic within individual local area networks (LAN).
This network could expand beyond a city or state and could stretch international regions.
It connects multiple LANs located at different geographical locations.
Most popular example of WAN is the Internet.
Example: You could imagine WAN as Highways that connect different cities, states, or even countries.
The following diagram represents LAN, MAN and WAN Network:
Now that we are aware of the computer network, its types and importance. Let’s move forward, and understand the inner workings of the internet.
To understand the internet workflow, let’s assume the Internet as a large spider’s web, where everything is connected with each other and you can retrieve any information from any part of the globe.
To send or receive anything on/from internet, three things plays a prominent role:
👉Software
👉Hardware
👉Protocol
Software
Software could be any application or medium such as Gmail, Whatsapp, any web browser etc.
Hardware
Hardware could be any device, such as, computer, tablet, server, etc.
Protocol
A protocol is a standardized set of rules that all devices follow to ensure smooth and efficient communication between them which facilitates transmission of information from source (from where packets are sent) to destination (where packets are received) like from computer to tablet and vice versa or from smartwatch to phone, etc. And the protocols that play a prominent role are TCP and IP.
TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)
It is responsible to establish a connection between two devices before exchanging the data.
Data is sent in small parts known as packets and TCP assigns a unique sequence number with each packet that helps the receiving machine to reassemble the packets in correct order.
It also ensures that data is delivered without any packet loss. In case the data is lost or gets corrupt then it retransmits the lost or corrupted packets.
IP (Internet Protocol)
It defines the rules for routing data between two devices.
It ensures that the data reaches the correct destination after travelling across the network.
Overview of how the internet works?
As mentioned above, when someone sends any data over the internet, it gets divided into packets. These packets are then converted into bits (0 and 1) and get routed through different networking devices like routers and switches that follow certain protocols for travelling depending on the content type. For example, if you want to send an email then SMTP protocol is used, when you do a video call, then it has a different Protocol.
Furthermore, the hardware or software of the sender or receiver machine could be the same or different. As we want these devices to communicate with each other regardless of the differences, the need for standardized rules emerges that all devices can follow to communicate. Think of it as we humans have the English language with the same rules across the globe that helps us to interact with people from different countries.
Then, once the data is delivered it gets combined and gets served as a one piece of information and ‘0s’ and ‘1s’ gets converted into human readable language so we can read the content without any problem.
The following diagram shows how does internet work:
World Wide Web (WWW)
Imagine, you want to read a book offline then what would you do? You would go to the library and get the book. Similarly you can think of WWW as a big online library on the Internet which has a collection of all sorts of data from websites to photos and videos that are publicly available that can be accessed globally.
You may have noticed that if you want to open a certain page or website let’s say Facebook or Google so you type www.facebook.com or google.com in your browser and within seconds you see that page. Where is this page coming from? Did you notice anything common in these two links? You are correct – notice the prefix ‘WWW’, that means both websites are coming from www library.
In a nutshell, WWW is a service at the top of the internet that provides us the requested information as shown in the above examples.