I know that we use radio waves to connect to the modem, but then do the wires run ALL THE WAY across the country, through the ocean, and to the country halfway around the world? And if so, how does that happen in 1-2 seconds?
In: Engineering
There are many thousands of wires that go hundreds or even thousands of kilometers around the world these have to connect to something. This is called a switch and works the same way to how different devices in your home work. The switch knows what’s connected to each port and it can ask each decide at the other end of each cable what it knows. These switches communicate directly with each other using MAC addresses and can only be used to communicate directly, whereas an ip can be used to identify anybody on the Internet
When you ask for a website let’s say www.google.com that’s fine but who is www.google.com how do I find them. You have to ask a domain name server like he one at the ip 1.1.1.1 so your computer sends a message to your network who has www.google.com tell me (in this case me will be 192.168.1.2 on your network likely nobody knows so you ask the domain name server the same question and it tells you it’s at 172.217.25.132.
Fantastic we know where we are going but how do we get there well that’s not your problem. You send a message to 172.217.25.132 saying I’d like to connect that’s gets sent to your router and your router says does anyone have 172.217.25.132. but this time we get a different type of response from a5:93:67:fa:6d:91 saying I can get it there so your router remembers this and sends the message there. This process repeats along every node until it reaches 172.217.25.132.
Then 172.217.25.132 sends a message to 192.168.1.2(you) saying yes. Then you say ok I’m connecting. Then you request http://www.google.com and the server sends a message full of text to you.( You can. Look at this text by clicking inspect element.) This text is read by your web browser is displayed on the screen. Around these paragraphs sould be <p> and </p> for paragraph your browser knows these are paragraphs
I’m no professional so this may not be 100% accurate and it brushes over a LOT but it is the general prodcess of how it works
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