This Internet thing???

[andrea81]

We all know that our computers and disk drives can only hold on to so much information... so... where on earth is the internet and all its information stored???

[vehelpfulguy]

The internet is a bit like the telephone system. If you think of the land line phone in your house (not your mobile) then if you dial any number in the world it will connect to a phone somewhere in the world.

Now replace phone with computer.

When you go on the internet you are part of a network of MILLIONS of computers all over the world, linked together rather like the telephone system.

And all the information on the internet is stored on those millions of computers, part of the internet on each one.

So suppose you find a web page for a company in Australia. When you go to their web site you are looking at web pages and images stored on a computer in Australia.

If you then find a web page for a company in Brazil, when you go to their web site you are looking at web pages and images stored on a computer in Brazil.

So the internet is not just one one huge computer but is spread across millions of computers.

[vehelpfulguy]

A little bit more info.

You may have heard the term Internet Protocol or I.P.

This is the technology that is used to run the internet.

Every computer on the internet (even yours) has a unique i.p. address. It is in the format 328.567.111.422

So it is bit like a telephone number.

Now even though you may know web site google as www.google.co.uk the internet knows it as 66.102.9.99.

When you select www.google.co.uk it "dials" 66.102.9.99 and connects to the google computer, so it is very like the telephone system.

In fact if you put the following in the address bar at the top of your browser it will go to the google web site:

http://66.102.9.99

So each computer on the internet has a number rather like a telephone number, and when you want to go to a remote web site it "connects to" or "dials" the remote computer rather like your home phone dials a remote telephone.

[vehelpfulguy]

One final thing.

Thousands of new computers are being connected to the internet every day so the "network" is growing.

Even though you probably use your computer at home for just LOOKING at the internet you could also set it up to be PART of the internet, with web pages stored on it.

Suppose you installed the correct software on your PC and then created a web site called www.fred.com on it.

If someone in Brazil wanted to look at www.fred.com then their computer in Brazil would connect to the little computer in your house and show them the web site www.fred.com.

So as you can see, anyone (if they know what they are doing) can become part of the internet and store a small part of the internet on their PC.

And that is all the interent is, millions of PCs all joined together, with a little bit of the internet on each of them.

[andrea81]

Cheers vehelpfelguy, I think it makes sense but like most things, they do go over my head. It's all a bit mistical to me!! ;-)

[andrea81]

Hi vehelpfulguy,

My husband totally understands that (as I have shown him now). He can see that it isn't as complicated as imagined, but...

If we had a wesite and was disconnected from the internet, does that mean that people couldn't view it as they couldn't access our computer? And on a more hypothetical note, if everyone turned off their computers, (or disconnected)would the internet vanish?

[vehelpfulguy]

Yes, if your computer WAS part of the internet, and you turned it of, then indeed nobody would be able to access the web pages on your PC.

And, yes, the internet relies on everybody keeping their computers on 24 hours a day to keep all the internet sites available to anyone, no matter where in the world they are.

So if everyone DID turn their computers off then indeed the internet would vanish.

It would be like everyone disconnecting their phone from the phone network, you would have nobody to ring up.

[vehelpfulguy]

Although I said that you could setup YOUR computer as part of the internet, most of the computers on the internet are not small home PCs but HUGE servers with loads of memory and thousands of hard disk.

Each of these servers would not just hold one web site but hundreds or even thousands.

So if you went to two totally different web sites they could BOTH be stored on the one computer, and the computer would "know" which web pages to show you.

To give you an idea how big the interent is, Google, the people who do millions of searches every second, have about 3000 large computers, or servers, all over the world, handling all the searches for you, and that is just ONE company.

[andrea81]

Waw thanks for getting back to us, we feel a bit silly, but glad we know now, it has been baffling us a lot!

I suppose it's a bit like the universe, it's a bit hard to accept how big it is... but it relies on a lot of little things to make it work. I do agree with something I read about it... It could very well be a modern wonder of the world!

Cheers from Wales!

[TeeGee]

Just a comment for vehelpfulguy, URL's have a range from 0 to 255 only.

[Dudley]

As a bystander just browsing, I found vehelpfulguy's answers very interesting. I often browse subjects I am interesting in and even at nearly 70 years of age, I find my thirst for knowledge is never satisfied, thanks to many of AB's knowledgeable contributors. I also answer questions where I am qualified to do so.