
How does the Internet work? - ColinWright
http://hwi.uni.be/hwi_uk.html
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petenixey
This is awesome!

To the folks complaining about Flash, you don't have a right to view it,
someone took the time to build it and it was easiest for them to use flash,
the flash is your problem, not the author's.

To the creators - thank you! So few people have any understanding about how
the internet works and things like this are wonderful ways for them to
mindlessly explore it. As an aside it would be awesome if you could do the
same thing for the web too and explain DNS and web servers too.

~~~
Retric
I liked it, my only issue is I think it would be more clear to have an icon
for routers vs using a computer for everything.

~~~
hackmiester
I rather like it this way. Routers are just computers, and in fact, any
computer could act as a router. If you have a machine connected to your phone
for Internet access and to your home network for printing, then it's a router,
so this isn't even uncommon.

~~~
cgh
I think it's useful to make the distinction because general-purpose computers
do not contain ASICs, while for example core and provider edge routers tend
to.

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buster
Not sure if this is really appropriate, it's only showing a very small part of
"Internet" namely TCP/IP and a little bit of routing.

Once you delve into the more low-level stuff (BGP, routing, AS, peerings, RIPE
and all that kind of stuff) you get to know that there is soooo much more
advanced, deeply technical stuff going on. It's just so much more then tcp/ip,
dns and http.. You just typically never have to care about that kind of stuff
if you don't happen to work in that area.

~~~
rtkwe
True, but BGP, AS, etc are largely there to deal with issues that come from
the separate networks we've built the internet out of not a fundamental need,
if that makes any sense. Basically we /could/ build an internet without BGP,
AS's, and a lot of the protocols that deal with interconnecting regional
networks, but TCP/IP, DNS, and HTTP are the basic building blocks of the
internet as we know it.

~~~
buster
Sure, but as you said: The internet is not only TCP/IP. I'd expect that in a
link titled "How does the Internet work?". The link doesn't come close to how
the internet _really_ works, in my opinion. The link merely shows how my LAN
works.

~~~
rtkwe
ARP is missing for a truer match to LANs. It's a decent primer on the high
level details of how the internet works.

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RyanMcGreal
The internet works better when content exists in resources with URLs, and not
bound inside clunky proprietary data formats like Flash.

~~~
stroboskop
Not a fan of Flash either, but the Internet is not the Web.

You say "The Internet works better" without formats like Flash. To my
knowledge the Internet does not discriminate between proprietary and non-
proprietary data fromats of its content whereas the basic functions of the Web
do (URLs, hyperlinks,...).

~~~
ptaipale
Yes, but the Web is in the Internet. What's in flash in Web is in flash in
Internet, and is often annoying.

~~~
luckystarr
The Web is an application running on the Internet. Flash is a plugin of the
Web (via the browser).

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MrBra
Is this a recent movie or is it 10 years old ? Not saying that in a negative
way! It's well done..

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joshaidan
I took a networking course in university, taught by a professor who has never
touched a router in his life. But it wasn't that bad of a course--it was more
of a theory and philosophy of networking course--so if you were expecting to
be able to come out of the course knowing how to configure a router, you were
probably in the wrong place.

There was one important thing I learned in the course though, and it forever
changed how I see the Internet. I see the internet now as an abstraction, or
an abstract communications network. It was created so that device or person A
could communicated with person or device E, without concern of what networking
technologies exist between A and E.

So take something like:

A ---- (PSTN) ----> B ---- (Microwave) ----> C ---- (Ethernet) ----> D ----
(Cable) ----> E

And the Internet does this:

A ---- (Internet) ----> E

The Internet makes end-to-end communication possible, without having to worry
about the underlining network technology.

~~~
zokier
That is very important thing about internet. Anything that can carry packets
of data can potentially carry internet, and anything that can packaged into
packets of data can be carried on internet all over the world.

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Locke1689
While I can see not including routing and peering among AS's, DNS is pretty
fundamental to the the Internet these days. I would consider any explanation
that doesn't mention it as pretty lacking.

CDN use has exploded and, from a 30,000 ft view, the Web tends to look a lot
like an overlay network on DNS.

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king-coconut
Internet didn't work, all I got was a Lego brick with a X on it.

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NetNinja
I love how they describe using the telephone or modem. How old is this

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richardwhiuk
The connection speed test is also far too small, so repeating the test gives
vastly too small, and probably doesn't ramp TCP up enough on most connections.

~~~
beering
This was written for the era of dial-up modems and ISDN, so 490KB would have
been an OK test (you didn't want dial-up users to have to wait very long).

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simpsn
I'll be honest, I was really hoping in the middle of looking through this that
it was going to burst into a game of Where in The World Is Carmen
Sandiego.....

