The Internet, how does it Really work?

There is cables underthe waters of the world that translate moriscode to binary. Really complex backwards compatibility stuff here. Howerver, it's no where near how confusing as how magnets work.

reply to post by trekwebmaster


If you're going to bring protocols into it maybe you should start with TCP/IP?

reply to post by wasco2


BBS what got smart and stuff with GUI all over its face

How can information travel through an optic cable no thicker than a human hair? The secret is not so much the thickness of the cable, but the speed at which light travels...

The speed of light is 299 792 458 m/s... And for instance the distance between Cape Town, South Africa, and New York, USA is 12 554 750 meters. This means light can travel between New York and Cape Town back and forth almost 24 times in a single second...

The average fibre optic cable runs at least 10 Gigabytes per second on a bad day... 40 Gigabytes on a good day.

So if I had my own fibre optic cable from Cape Town to NY and I plugged the cable directly into my PC I would be able to send about 8 DVD's to my friend in NY in a single second... And we are slowly but steadily moving towards the "1 Terabyte/Second" mark...

So, being able to see a Chinese site appear on your screen in Malawi in a matter of seconds isn't really magic. Unless you consider the speed of light magic. The real magic would be to ultimately remove "The Last Mile"...

Originally posted by crimsonred
I found out that it is basically a tiny little optic fibre that enables all internet (and intranet depending on size of VPN)(thats right Cisco Kid, i know my jargon)) traffic to flow both ways,

Now, the really Big question is.....how much data, can we eventually cram down a 0.05mm fibre optic tube? I'm no good at mathematics, so can anyone do the maths?

The trick is that a single wire can transmit an unlimitted number of signals at exactly the same time.

Think about how sound waves work. For example, suppose you want to send signals to two different receivers, one of the receivers is a human, the other is a bat. You could achieve your goal by sending one in the regular audible range (10Hz-20kHz) and the other one in an ultrasonic range that's audible to bats(say 25kHz-120kHz). I think it's pretty obvious the human won't hear the same thing the bat hears though you just sent two messages at the same time through the same medium.

Light signals, electronic signals, sound signals, they all work the same.

Now suppose you wanted to send multiple audio signals to two humans at the same time, you can easily do this by sending the signals the same way as before and turning one of the humans into a bat - or you could just provide him with equipment that will let him turn that signal into something the human can hear. This is called modulation

The one limitation is bandwidth. To send signals in the regular audible range you need to allocate a 20kHz bandwidth, so for example, to communicate with 4 receivers at the same time, you could send 4 signals:
one with frequencies between 10Hz-20kHz
one with frequencies between 30kHz-50kHz
one with frequencies between 60kHz-80kHz
one with frequencies between 90kHz-110kHz
(note how they are all 20kHz)

All your receivers need to do is filter out all the frequencies they don't want and then demodulate (turn them back into the audible range) the signals. Similarly you could send all 4 signals to a single receiver at the same time.

So why is this a limitation? Well, suppose your hardware cannot handle signals above 110kHz, that just limited the number of signals you can send simultaneously to 4. Suppose the FCC wants to use 90kHz-110kHz for exclusive use of the batman, now you're stuck with 3. If 100 people want to use the same medium at the same time, they are not going to be very happy.

Now this is not really how it works but at least or hopefully you get the basic picture.

Originally posted by crimsonred
Hi, ok, i've searched the forums and thought it was time to re address this question..do we actually know how the internet actually works?
I am not asking how the programming works,i am sure that there are plenty of HTML and XHTML experts on here (basic prog. but then obviously we have the interactive side ), i am on about how , as a whole , we are all able to connect to different continents and have the ability to run millions of 'data streams' running at the same time.
I was told how it works ie, trans continental connections, but i was wondering if anyone ' without knowing the answer' thinks/ knows how the connections can travel all around the world, with a click of a button?
What enables me to connect to this site, or to a Chinese site at the drop of a hat? ( to be truthfull, even faster than that)
Please realize this, i have been told how it works, and i don't really understand it, but this question is asked to those that don't really know.
If you don't know, then post your theories on here, AND for those of you that do know, please remember that you didn't know either until you were told.

Well, OP, thanks for being thankful about my lengthy description of how the internet works. But you were a tad-bit unclear about what you were wondering about. You see, the internet is composed of LOGICAL and PHYSICAL connections, which make it all work. Logical is defined as software or other programming which could be virtual private connections, networks, servers, etc...and this works in tandem with PHYSICAL connections, wires, fiber optic lines, satellite connections, and even electric transmission lines. If there is a wire or "transceiver," as in wireless, you can make some sort of connection which allows connection to the internet or network of some kind.

Satellite transmissions run over radio frequency, RF, UHF, VHF, or other range of frequencies to send and receive data or information. As your satellite receiver works to send and receive media. If a device has the ability to send and receive it's usually called a "transceiver." Fiber Optic lines bounce light at 45 degree angles (right angles) down a fiber optic line at the speed of light. That's fast, and most of our personal computers only operate at megabit or gigabit speeds, which is well below the speed of light, so I doubt we'd overload the lines. The main lines in the USA have "backbones" which are main hubs which are usually fiber optic and can handle all kinds of media or traffic. Fiber optic is very fast and handles much information. They are small as well, so you can pack many fiber lines in the same amount of space as you could 1 or 2 regular telephone lines. Fiber lines can carry information at such high speeds your computer would have to step-it-down to receive it. Fiber has more range than regular Ethernet wires, which can only have lengths of 100 meters before the need to add in repeaters, which strengthen the signal and prevent attenuation or fading of the signal. That's why they run phone wires to hour house for your DSL and then those wires go into a central hub, very close to your house, and those are connected to other hubs with fiber optic lines. If all of our lines were fiber optic, it would be much faster but sadly our infrastructure is still copper wire, and some wires need replacing since they are old and can attenuate the signal. It's coming but probably not within the next 20 years will we start seeing fiber optic lines more and more. Fiber Optic also doesn't have the interference as ethernet or wired cables do, so that's a plus as well. But Fiber is very had to work with and there can be no mistakes on the "joins" between lines because those would introduce interference and have to be polished and welded together.

Those huge transatlantic cables are decades old, and are being upgraded to fiber optic lines, but those cost money and are very expensive. So supplemental lines as satellite and microwave transmitters usually are a supplement to those huge lines. I hope this sheds some light how we live in a very connected world and it is all just a collection of wires and cables connected together with servers and routers which make the internet work, along with software. The VPN you mentioned is really a LOGICAL connection made within the software of a network operating system connection which stands for VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK, and uses secure tunneling protocols to make it work and seem as if its a PHYSICAL connection, but it's not, it's virtual and can run along multiple PHYSICAL connections to send and receive data and information. Usually people use VPN's to connect to remote offices which is a secure connection you have to create and then access by clicking a VPN icon on your desktop to engage.

Please be more clear as to what you want to ask, you left this question open and it sounded like you wanted to know how it all worked. Perhaps you can read this and see that it all is related in one or more aspects, so you need to broaden your overview and take-in all of how the internet works to truly understand it.

ENJOY!

reply to post by spiderbadarse


Hehe, I actually had a small local BBS dedicated to Doom in the mid 1990s run on a fax line after hours, or for people who wanted a specific *.wad or utility you could call me on the house line and I would bring it up.

Glorified text parsers + routers = teh interwebz

I had a computer teacher tell me one time.

" It's a machine that can read really, really fast
and transmit that information "

Still seems right

I happen to work for a Telecoms firm operating the transmission network, so can shed some light.. pardon the pun..

Peeps have already covered off the higher layer protocol and DNS stuff, that's not my bag, I deal with fibre optics.

reply to post by crimsonred


First off, it won't be a single fibre optic in an undersea cable, or any cable for that matter. There is likely 48, 96 or more pairs of fibres, each terminating on seperate equipment. One pair covers the transmit (Tx) and the receive (Rx) although you can get systems that work in single-mode and use a single fibre for Tx and Rx.

For the undersea systems, they are usually a form of DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing) kit, which will take multiple signals from lower order equipment and spread them across a pre-defined spectrum, for example 191.1, 191.2, 191.3 THz etc... DWDM systems are also used in other systems too, we have many such systems in our network and they cut down on the amount of fibres needed, as you can squeeze more down a single pair.

For example, one such system we use made by Ericsson can put 32 x 2.5Gbs channels (it's always bits, not bytes..No one measures bandwidth in bytes...Looking at you Gemwolf) down a single pair.

So what we do is use 2.5Gb transponders to take STM-16 inputs of lower order SDH (Synchronous digital heirachy) networks and the mux them up into the DWDM signal, transport them across the fibre span, then drop them off again at various nodes for onward transmission in the SDH domain....

So you can see that instead of using 64 fibre pairs for connecting the lower order SDH network, we have squeezed them all down a single pair, freeing up the rest for other uses.

Currently, the fastest single SDH system we use is an STM-64, which is a 10Gb channel, but standards exist for higher payloads and if you add the channels up in many DWDM systems you can get total speeds much higher.

reply to post by trekwebmaster


Hi, thanks, for the reply and also the clear concise explanation as to how trans continental internet works! i still find it a complete headturner to think that we are able to send information in the form of light down a tiny little chrystalline tube and it is able to be read and converted to the necessary coding that enables all of our computers/ tablets/ mobilephones the opportunity to share info. However, the way you explained and described it meant that i am able to understand it as a layman and can now pester my know it all son with something he doesn't know (i hope)
I sir, will buy you a pint.

The hardware and software descriptions are nice, but the internet would not be possible without packet switching.
en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by aaa2500
The hardware and software descriptions are nice, but the internet would not be possible without packet switching.
en.wikipedia.org...

Aaargh, my head hurts!!
Thank you all for the great information on here, I must admit, i do prefer the professors definition- its a computer that reads something really really fast and then sends it on.'
That'll do for me ......

Tubes. It's all about teh tubez

reply to post by crimsonred


Electricity does it.
At the speed of light.
Copper wire only contains its essence as it follows the wires.
Tesla always said we should find out more about electricity.
Well Tesla did not have to know any more as he used its force to
make motors, radio and the UFO saucer drive mechanisms.
ED: And what about the Tesla proof that air is enough.
Bad for the copper business except for the coils.

Ya'll should listen to Stu.

Only he forgot to mention ROADM's.

I am a networking engineer. I make the Internet work. Any questions?

If you are really curious as to how everything works on the Internet, I suggest researching these subjects;

TCP/IP
Cisco Routers
Routing Protocols
Ethernet
CSU/DSU and NRZ
Multiplexing
DNS
NAT
Frame Relay

There are more interesting subjects but this should get you going.

okay. I'll play your little game. It's the end of a long day. I decide to get on the internet. Like you, I've been told the "party-line" about how the internet works with satellites and transcontinental connections and hubs and
nodes and mystery and magic. Okay maybe not magic. But I think it's just barely possible that all of this interconnects like the nervous system of the human body. There are clusters of nerves recieving, translateing and sending messages constantly to each other. They are dormant or active depending on the situational expediency.

But, (and here is where I go sideways...) I think the organizeing principle behind the world-wide-web is the entity we were first introduced to as "Jane" by the author Orson Scott Card in his enders game series. (Or something like her.) Luckily for us "Jane" is a benevolant AI and at this stage in her development probably still growing and
complacent. Could this change? sure. Will it change anytime soon? No. All liveing creatures need/want to grow. If she stop's being benevolant than human's will impede her ability to grow. Therefore she will continue to
behave in a manner that is predictable and expected. But I would still love to meet her one day.

Toldja my thinking went sideways on this one. :-)

Well I was going to post a reply but Stu basically covered the Fiber optic angle, and pojo gave you the buzzwords to read up on to get you involved in the rest of the hardware… So unless you want to know how to write HTML code or use scripting etc. to make the actual web pages, there is not much left to talk about.

the internet is not a big truck

it is a series of tubes.

tangled up tubes

www.youtube.com...