How can things travel through the internet so fast?

How does all of this data on the internet travel so quickly and instantly? How can an email get from here to the other side of the world instantly? Does the data go through cables embedded on the ocean floors or do they travel through satellites in space? and how fast does this data travel does anybody know? and when i say data i mean all of it...imagine how much data is being instantly sent back and forth 24 hours a day 7 days a week. the internet is filled to the brim with information so much that i cant really grasp the situation.....and the speed at which aaallll of this data travels instantly and constantly leaves me speechless. how does it work and how fast is this being done is my question.

It's all electrical and electricity moves at the speed of light... It isn't as complicated as it seems

It's moving at 186,000 miles per second..

You've answered your own question. Yes there are cables under the ocean and also satellites overhead. The internet use to not be as fast as it is today mostly because computers are much faster now and because better use of fiber optics, etc. I remember when my brand new 28.8kps modem was top of the line.

reply to post by janon


Ahh the good ole days

Yep, seems we are getting close and even do have systems close to no latency from light speed.. not everywhere of course...

I remember in the early '80's downloading a 1024x768 frog picture that took about 8 hours at 9600 baud

Fiber-optic cables are used as well, and preferred over copper wire.

The internet is a series of tubes. As long as the tubes aren't too full it works pretty well but when they fill up you run into problems. But it also depends which internet your using. Some peoples' internets are faster than others and don't fill up as fast.

www.howstuffworks.com...

second line

Tho satalites are not great at doing TCP connections due to the time it takes to send data up and then back down,

UDP is not so much a prob but Internet via Tru satalite connection would be slower then 56k for sure

Fibre optics Prefered for the Core cableing due to as some one above me said u can fit more in the pipe

This may enlight you:

Hrm. Imagine that! Very interesting stuff indeed...

Now I feel kind of guilty that I've been sacrificing virgins to the dark Lord for all these years because I thought that's how all these magic pictures and words ended up on this screen. Who knew???

My bad....

reply to post by cushycrux




hehe bit old that ! but still the same, not sure what they mean by a Router Swtich tho, cause at the time of Novel packets on ya lan you wouldnt of had Switchs with Layer 3 support ^_^ so ignore that a Router and a Swtich are 2 VERY diffren things

Taking your question of how long it takes literally, if you feel like doing some very simple math here is the basic idea of packet transfer delay: en.wikipedia.org...

i guess whats so amazing to me is it's taken us just 10 years or so to go from nothing to light speed data transfer for the whole planet. how the hell did that happen so fast? just completely amazing to me. thats like going from ape man to time traveler in just 10 years. crazy.

reply to post by Phage


Haha, caught that one. At least former Senator Ted Stevens was good for something. Alaskan politics, can they blame it on brain-freeze?

And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

-Former United States Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

Perry Mason never had to worry about computers and the internets, why should Stevens.

Originally posted by Funkydung
i guess whats so amazing to me is it's taken us just 10 years or so to go from nothing to light speed data transfer for the whole planet. how the hell did that happen so fast? just completely amazing to me. thats like going from ape man to time traveler in just 10 years. crazy.

Heh, light speed my ass

Alot of of us in supposed 1st world countries are still forced to use bandwidth speeds that those in America were getting 6+ years back, and where still stuck to data caps and download/up load speed restrictions and huge monthly fee costs... then again some places in America are just as backward as the rest of us in whats available for the net.

And when our governments and telecoms are asked 'why?' we get brushed of with... 'it'll cost to much and to much time to upgrade our 60 year old systems' or 'We'll loose money upgrading, but we'll start in 5+ years for big business only and they'll get what we should be getting now, for twice the price and in 10 years time you'll all get that uber speed thats now well out classed by other countries. Oh and if you live in that 50% of the country that unfortunately cant be worked into the new system (even in alot of cases one half of a street can be while the other half across the road cant) then well too bad, we'll get around to you latter' ... pardon the run on sentence but it really ticks me and lots of others off when in a 1st world country we're held to ransom by corporate fat cats and politicians that put profit over everything else.

So yes while the tech has advanced at a rapid speed, its application and release to the public has been like a hand drawn stone wheeled cart.