Have you ever wondered what the Internet really is? Well, I did for a long time because, in essence, it’s a pretty weird technology. The Internet is defined as a global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the set of standard protocols to provide access to billions of users around the world. This, of course, is a very shallow definition for my taste.

Generally speaking, computers that are connected in some way fall into two broad groups: WAN and LAN. LAN stands for local area network and WAN stands for wide area network. Local area networks are defined as two or more connected computers that share certain resources in a relatively small location. WAN is basically what we know as the Internet, or rather, the Internet is the largest WAN there is. Wide area networks are connected using telephone cables, optical cables, or wireless communication technologies.

With that said, we can now discuss how devices that are connected to a network communicate with each other. The Internet’s communications infrastructure consists of hardware that communicates through various layers of software that control the architecture of the network. The bare minimum description of these connections is as follows: You connect to your ISP’s (Internet Service Provider) network which then connects to a larger, sometimes non-commercial provider, and that, after a few more iterations of connections (mostly two more), connects to a NAP (network access point). NAPs are governed by tier one service providers who essentially “sell the Internet” to lower tier providers. Exchanges between NAPs, on the other hand, do not involve monetary transactions as they all adhere to peer agreements. These are the basics of routing technologies. Service providers and Internet users themselves communicate through protocols that are more difficult to explain (and understand). Despite the challenge, Mr. Brinkerhoff does a great job of explaining the protocols simply in his educational video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zyL1Fud1Z1c)

The Internet is often formally referred to as a highly complex and highly engineered heterogeneous system. Surprisingly, however, despite the complexity of the Internet, it is extraordinarily robust and that is very reassuring, since we as modern humanity depend on the seamless connection of billions of electronic devices independently receiving and transmitting packets. of data that is processed individually according to a set of protocols and then recorded on a massive network: the World Wide Web.