The internet connectivity. It doesn’t make sense. What’s stopping me from “producing internet” from my own home?

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Where does it come from(the bandwidth GB etc) and why do companies pay telecom department for the data they give to customers?

Why is that if I didn’t renew my connection, internet is being cutoff from my end eventhough my phone is wireless and it can connect to satellite?

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

oh man. Great question.

The internet isn’t a resource as much as it is a network. Nobody is ‘producing’ it, it’s just a a ton of connections from millions of servers across the entire world.

Imagine your countries road system. Did someone just make it? Not really. at first they wanted a ‘main’ street from two locations that were hard to get to and from. For example they’d make a road in a town to connect the courthouse and the police station. Then hey, well there’s no road to the grocery store, let’s make that main road branch off to the grocery store. Oh hey there’s a new housing development, let’s connect that to the road that goes to the grocery store and the courthouse. After a long time and many connections, you have the complex road system that you drive on today.

Could you produce your own road system? Well….yes, but also not really. It’s possible, but not really feasible. You’d have to source a ton of labor and resources, you’d have to plan and get permission from different government institutions.

BUT, when a government does make a new road, is it added to the current network? It sure is! The equivalent would be you making your own website. You would essentially be creating another turn in the road that someone could travel down.

So with that analogy, concrete would be like servers, cars would be like PC’s, the laborers would be like IT networkers, the construction companies would be the cable company.

As far as bandwidth and stuff and the inaccessibility if you don’t pay for a subscription is the same as any societal thing we take part in. If we don’t pay in, we don’t get to use it. The companies that set up and took the brunt of the investing into infrastructure are now charging a premium for internet. Sure if you don’t pay them money, the internet is still THERE, but they’re not giving you access for free because it costs them time and money.

It’s akin to walking to a candy store and saying you’d like the chocolate bar but don’t want to pay for it. You could argue, well if I don’t buy it it’s still just sitting there, you might as well give it to me. It’s not in the owners best interest to just give out chocolate bars. If they don’t keep it behind a price tag, nobody would pay for them ever out of good will. This part is just economics. Basically, you don’t get something for nothing.

So yes your phone can still connect to a satellite, but the company that owns the satellite knows you aren’t paying, and won’t let you connect.

The internet is just our name for the massive collection of computer connections we’ve built up over the last 30 to 40 years. It’s not really a ‘thing’ in the same way philosophy isn’t a ‘thing’. I mean, it is, but it’s not lol. It’s an idea

Are you familiar with lan parties? Those are a small group of people creating their own ‘internet’ for a gaming session. That’s basically what the internet is except on a way way way way way smaller scale. You’re saying to all other pc’s in the room, “hey, this is my pc, let’s all connect to each other and make a network” and all the other pc’s also do the same. That connectivity is what the internet is.

I hope that helps

Anonymous 0 Comments

“The internet” is a big network of connected computers (a network of networks). Absolutely nothing stops you from making a network within your own home, lots of people do that. But if you want to connect to another computer far away, e.g. the Reddit servers, you need some way to talk to those computers. You don’t have a wire from your home network to Reddit’s server.

It’s entirely possible to run your own network cable (or, equivalently, a dedicated microwave or satellite link) between your house and Reddit, assuming you could get Reddit to agree to connect it on their end. That would let you bypass the internet entirely. It would also be ludicrously expensive.

The easiest way to connect to other computers is to pay somebody who already has connections to all the networks to piggyback on their network…and that’s what a telecom company does. They have wires/microwave links/fibers between most networks within their coverage area, and agreements & connections to other telecoms for other areas. Between them, they can connect any two networks on earth. So, rather than build your own telecom network from scratch (which you can totally do) and negotiate with every network you might want to connect to (which you can totally do), you just pay a small amount each month to access the network of somebody who already did all that work. This is *far* cheaper and more efficient.

Your phone is wireless. It’s probably not connecting to a satellite unless it’s a sat phone, virtually all consumer phones connect to terrestrial cell towers (big sticks with antennas at the top). But that just covers the wireless portion of the journey…in order to connect to anything interesting, the cell tower needs a connection to the internet, which is against down to wires/fibers/microwave/satellite links. And so you have to pay to get access to the telecom’s cellular network, which is in turn connected to their hardwire network that lets you connect to other computers, which is what you wanted in the first place.

It’s like saying “What’s to stop me from creating my own highway system?” You totally can. You’re allowed to build whatever roads you want on your own property (not counting building codes and such). But if you want to actually drive anywhere fun, you need roads between you and your destination. Rather than build all your own roads, which is at least theoretically possible, it’s a heck of a lot easier to share a road network that somebody else already built.