How does the Internet work?

As the previous post explained, the physical medium for the data transfer over the internet. Now it’s time to learn about protocols or how does the information reach from one device to another in a global network of computers.

Internet is network of networks which links billions of devices. If your device is connected through Wifi, then Wifi connection connects to an Internet Service Provider (ISP), and that ISP connects to other networks that are all interconnected. Internet is a design philosophy and an architecture expressed in a set of protocols.

Protocol - A well known set of rules and standards used to communicate between machines

All the different devices on the internet have Unique Addresses. For communication through Internet, protocols was made known as Internet Protocol. The Unique Address of the device is known as IP Address.

IP addresses are made up of binary values and drive the routing of all data over the Internet. IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long, and IPv6 addresses 128 bits long.

Visiting website is basically asking other computer for information. Your system send a message to other system and sends along its origin address, so that other system knows where to send the response.

What is DNS?

People can’t remember IP addresses, so a name is associates with these IPs which is easy to remember, this system is known as Domain Name System. Computer uses DNS to look up domain name and get the associated IP address which is used to connect your computer to the destination on the Internet.