ELi5: How do cable companies produce/provide internet service for customers?
In: Other
You’ve been into an office, possibly a computer room. Maybe you’ve seen a network switch. It’s the device that all the cables from the office’s computers attach. Each computer has its own address, like a street address. When one computer wants to talk to another, say to send a file, it packages up the info and puts the other computers address on the label. Sends it to the switch which reads the label and sends it on its way over to the correct computer.
The internet works the same way. All cables go to network switches which route the traffic so packages find their intended address. All traffic has that address label to tell switches where they want to go. And, yes it’s all wired.
Ah, wireless devices…. this is something like air mail, the plane takes off and lands somewhere. The package leaves your phone flys through the air and lands at the Access Point where it is routed to the next switch, over wires, which then directs it onto the next until the package reaches its address.
Enter the cable companies. They are paid to manage the cables and switches. They do not create, provide, or produce the internet. The internet is all the traffic, the packages.
Of course there is more equipment than switches and access points but then I’ll have to write that response in ELi10.
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