Edit: More about how two towers figure out which cellphones need to be connected to each other
In: Technology
By each hop in the process only worrying about where to send the call next.
Your phone doesn’t work out how to get the call all the way across the world. It just shouts at the local cell towers saying it wants to make a call.
The cell towers and your phone agree between them which tower your phone should send the call via.
The cell tower also doesn’t work out how to get the call to its destination. It just shouts at a computer that it is connected to somewhere in the cell company and tells it that it has a call to handle.
The computer at the cell company looks at the number and uses it to work out whether it is the number of one of their customers, a number for someone else in your country or a number for someone else in another country.
If it is for someone else in another country it will look the number up in a big table to work out which country and which phone company is going to take the call. It then shouts at a computer in that phone company and says it has a call for it.
The same process happens in reverse at the other end. The cell company keeps track of which cell tower everyone is connected to, by the cell towers telling the cell companies computers about it when they see a new phone shout at the tower.
At least that is roughly how it will work…
The Internet works *roughly* the same way.
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