{"id":684,"date":"2006-08-12T09:26:33","date_gmt":"2006-08-12T17:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/archives\/2006\/08\/12\/what-is-the-internet\/"},"modified":"2006-08-12T09:34:27","modified_gmt":"2006-08-12T17:34:27","slug":"what-is-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/08\/12\/what-is-the-internet","title":{"rendered":"What Is The Internet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend<\/a> recent\u00adly asked me what the inter\u00adnet was. Evi\u00addent\u00adly there are some strange the\u00ado\u00adries float\u00ading around out there, such as the one Jon Stew\u00adart mocks in this clip:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

So I gave her an expla\u00adna\u00adtion and she said she thought some oth\u00ader non-tech\u00adni\u00adcal friends might appre\u00adci\u00adate it, so here it is.<\/p>\n

Your com\u00adput\u00ader has a few key com\u00adpo\u00adnents \u2014 a CPU, a hard dri\u00adve, RAM, and an Oper\u00adat\u00ading Sys\u00adtem. Every\u00adthing on your com\u00adput\u00ader is com\u00adplete\u00adly obe\u00addi\u00adent to your Oper\u00adat\u00ading Sys\u00adtem.<\/p>\n

If you have two or more com\u00adput\u00aders in your house, you can set up a net\u00adwork between them. When you set up a net\u00adwork, you\u2019re basi\u00adcal\u00adly adding addi\u00adtion\u00adal com\u00adpo\u00adnents to your com\u00adput\u00ader. But these addi\u00adtion\u00adal com\u00adpo\u00adnents are obe\u00addi\u00adent to dif\u00adfer\u00adent Oper\u00adat\u00ading Sys\u00adtems than your own.<\/p>\n

So your Oper\u00adat\u00ading Sys\u00adtem has to ask the oth\u00ader com\u00adput\u00ader\u2019s Oper\u00adat\u00ading Sys\u00adtem for per\u00admis\u00adsion before it does any\u00adthing like read a file from the oth\u00ader com\u00adput\u00ader\u2019s hard dri\u00adve.<\/p>\n

To set up a net\u00adwork, you need to tell the com\u00adput\u00aders two ground rules: what \u201clan\u00adguage\u201d to speak with one anoth\u00ader and how to find oth\u00ader com\u00adput\u00aders on the net\u00adwork.<\/p>\n

The Inter\u00adnet is the largest net\u00adwork of com\u00adput\u00aders ever cre\u00adat\u00aded. There is a stan\u00addard lan\u00adguage (TCP\/IP) and a stan\u00addard way to find oth\u00ader com\u00adput\u00aders (the unique IP address that every com\u00adput\u00ader on the inter\u00adnet is assigned). <\/p>\n

When\u00adev\u00ader you log in to a wire\u00adless net\u00adwork, for exam\u00adple, you are assigned a tem\u00adpo\u00adrary IP address that any com\u00adput\u00ader on the inter\u00adnet could use to talk to you. Per\u00adma\u00adnent\u00adly-con\u00adnect\u00aded com\u00adput\u00aders such as web\u00adservers get per\u00adma\u00adnent IP address\u00ades.<\/p>\n

So when we talk about the inter\u00adnet, we\u2019re real\u00adly talk\u00ading about every com\u00adput\u00ader in the world that has a legim\u00adi\u00adtate IP address and knows how to talk to oth\u00ader com\u00adput\u00aders using TCP\/IP.<\/p>\n

As a lan\u00adguage, TCP\/IP is too gener\u00adic to be use\u00adful for most of the tasks we are inter\u00adest\u00aded in. So there are addi\u00adtion\u00adal dialacts called \u201cpro\u00adto\u00adcols\u201d which com\u00adput\u00aders can use to do things like view web pages. <\/p>\n

To view web pages, com\u00adput\u00aders talk using HTTP \u2014 Hyper Text Trans\u00adfer Pro\u00adto\u00adcol. That\u2019s what the http:\/\/ in front of a web address is all about. To upload or down\u00adload files com\u00adput\u00aders use FTP \u2014 File Trans\u00adfer Pro\u00adto\u00adcol.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of dif\u00adfer\u00adent pro\u00adto\u00adcols.<\/p>\n

So when you type http:\/\/news.google.com\/index.html<\/i> into your brows\u00ader address bar, what\u2019s real\u00adly hap\u00adpen\u00ading is that your Oper\u00adat\u00ading Sys\u00adtem con\u00adnects to the Inter\u00adnet using TCP\/IP and asks a more sig\u00adnif\u00adi\u00adcant com\u00adput\u00ader what the IP address of news.google.com<\/i> is. <\/p>\n

Then it uses HTTP to talk to the Oper\u00adat\u00ading Sys\u00adtem of the com\u00adput\u00ader at that IP address and asks for per\u00admis\u00adsion to read the file index.html<\/i>. The remote Oper\u00adat\u00ading Sys\u00adtem uses HTTP to answer \u201cSure\u201d and then pass\u00ades the file along. Your com\u00adput\u00ader then dis\u00adplays the file in your brows\u00ader.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s essen\u00adtial\u00adly what the inter\u00adnet is and how it works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend recent\u00adly asked me what the inter\u00adnet was. Evi\u00addent\u00adly there are some strange the\u00ado\u00adries float\u00ading around out there, such as the one Jon Stew\u00adart mocks in this clip: So I gave her an expla\u00adna\u00adtion and she said she thought some oth\u00ader non-tech\u00adni\u00ad\u00adcal friends might appre\u00adci\u00adate it, so here it is. Your com\u00adput\u00ader has a \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cWhat Is The Inter\u00adnet?\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-of-random-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-b2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}