INTERNET: Who owns it? How does it work?

 INTRODUCTION

                            As of January 2021 there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide - 59.5 percent of the global population. Of this total, 92.6 percent (4.32 billion) accessed the internet via mobile devices. Do you ever 🤔 thinked of who owns internet and how does it work. In this blog I will answer these questions.

What is internet?

Internet is a network that connects computers all over the world. 

People can share information communicte from anywhere with an internet connection and we can do much more with it. 

Who owns the internet?

Internet is not owned by a single person or an organisation. More of concept than an actual tangible entity internet relies on physical infrastructure that connects networks to other networks. In other words internet is owned by you and me and everybody who uses it.

Now let's come to the interesting part 🤠

How does the internet work???

The exact answer is complicated and it would take a while to explain. Let's see some of the important things you should know about the internet.

Internet is a global network of physical cables which can include telephone wires, TV cables and more importantly the fibre optic cables. 

Fiber optic cables are the backbone of the internet.

Optic fiber cables which is connected between the data center and your device. Your phone could be connected to internet via cellular data or any wifi router.

Now the problem is how to transfer the data from the data center to your device via complex network of optic fibres.

To know more about this we must know about the Internet Protocol (IP) address. IP address acts as a shipping address through which all the information reaches its destination. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) gives you the IP address which can be seen in your mobile phone or laptop.

To access the internet we always use domain names instead of complex IP address numbers. 

But from where does the internet get IP address corresponding to our domain name requests??

→ For this internet uses a huge phone book known as Domain Name System (DNS.). Your ISP provider can mange the DNS server.

Now I will tell you the full story of what is happening.

You enter the domain name

The browser sends a request to DNS 

To get the corresponding IP address

After getting the IP address your browser forwards the request to the data center more specifically to the server. Once a server gets a request to access the particular website the data flow starts.

The  data is transferred into digital format via optical fiber cables more specifically in the form of light pulses.

These light pulses have to travel thousands of miles such as hilly areas or under the sea. There are also   companies who lay and maintain these optical cable network. These light pulses are connected to the router stretched across the sea bed tou your doorstep. This router converts light signals to electrical signals. An Ethernet cable is then used to transmit electrical signals to your laptop. However if you are using cellular data, the optical signal has to be sent to a cell tower and from the tower to your phone in the from of electro magnetic waves.

Since internet has become a global network it's important to manage things like IP address assignments, domain name registration etc. This is all managed by an institution called Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) located in the USA. It helps to avoid a name which is already registered.

Conclusion

                    The popularity of internet is growing ever since it's evolution of 20 years ago. This will bring out

New standard protocol, international connections, Consumer civilization , data sharing in research and in various fields