Have you ever wondered how this blog got to your screen? The world wide web (not the same thing as the internet, we’ll get to it later) is used by hundreds of millions of people to read blogs, watch videos, chat with family and friends, buy and sell things, and even run businesses. It is used on desktops, laptops, smartphones, smartwatches, and even smart televisions.
The web is all around us all the time. But what exactly is it? How does it reach our device, and how does it all work?
This article is a beginner’s guide to some of the basics of networking, namely, the internet and the world wide web and how they work, along with related terms including intranet, extranet, deep web, and dark web.
This blog post answers the following questions about computer networking:
1. What Is The Internet?
The Internet, also referred to simply as the Net, is a system of interconnected computer networks that can communicate with each other as well as with the devices connected to the networks. As the name suggests, “inter-net” is a “network” spanning many nations, just as “inter-national” means a system spanning many “nations”.
The Internet consists of a multitude of networks including private, business, and government networks of various sizes. These networks are connected by ethernet cables, optical fiber cables, and wireless technologies. With every passing year, network technologies have seen drastic improvements in the speed and reliability of communication.
Before the internet existed, computers could not communicate or readily share information with each other. Even if two computers were connected and communicated using a common language, or protocol, there was no network spanning multiple devices. Today, the internet connects billions of computers, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, allowing them to seamlessly access information and communicate no matter their geographical location.
The high-speed communication and information sharing enabled by the internet have many uses such as emails, data transfer, video conferencing, etc. But the most important and revolutionary use has been accessing the World Wide Web, which we will talk about in the following sections.
2. How Does The Internet Work?
In the early days of the internet, communications between networks were carried by electrical signals over copper wires. Metal wires are slow and inefficient in transmitting data, especially at large distances, because they suffer from signal degradation, power loss and heating, and interference from electrical wiring. This made network communication over long distances, such as those between cities and countries, extremely difficult, slow, and inefficient.
But the advent of fiber optic cables solved this problem of inefficiency of data transmission over long distances. Compared to electrical signals over metal wires, optical signals transmitted over fiber cables barely degrade over great distances.
A single strand of optical fiber can carry many wavelengths of light, each a different channel of data. And each fiber optic cable contains hundreds of such strands, allowing for the transmission of incredibly large amounts of data at extremely high rates. These fiber optic cables crisscross the ocean floors connecting the networks across the different continents and forming the backbone of the Internet.
In addition to the fiber optic cables that connect the networks, the Internet relies on large computer servers housed in massive data centers that are often referred to as the Cloud. But the key technologies underpinning the Internet are the Internet Protocol address (IP address) and the Domain Name System (DNS) suite of protocols. These technologies make it possible to identify devices, services, and other resources connected to a network and facilitate communication among them.
The Internet is not controlled by anyone. It has no central authority or governance. Each network that connects to the “network of networks” can have its own policies governing access and usage. The standardization of the core protocols mentioned above is maintained and directed by private, non-government, and nonprofit corporations the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
3. Is The Internet And World Wide Web The Same Thing?
Although used interchangeably, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not the same.
The internet was created to make it easier to communicate and share information between networks and devices. In the beginning, the way information was organized on the Internet, while it did serve the intended purpose, was not efficient. The information was organized based on linear hierarchies. So you would often follow the steps down the hierarchy only to reach a device different from the one you were looking for and in that case, you would have to start from the very beginning all over again.
To fix this problem, Tim Berners Lee, who is considered the father of the World Wide Web, proposed a better way of organizing information on the web. He argued that linking pages within a website or even redirecting to external websites was far more useful than a fixed hierarchical system because it allowed users to expand on information or ideas immediately as they encountered them.
This proposed web system connecting information in a nonlinear fashion called hypertext already existed. But it was Tim Berners Lee who combined the ideas of hypertext and the internet to produce a worldwide web.
To truly appreciate the impact that this web system had, we can picture it using a chess analogy. In the linear hierarchical system, you were a pawn and could move in only one direction, one step at a time, but the web system turned you into a queen, allowing you to move in any direction and distance.
4. How Does The World Wide Web Work?
The first component of a basic world wide web model is a web server, which is a computer designed to store and share information and is always connected to the Internet. When someone wants to create a website, they rent space on web servers from companies called web hosts who own those web servers.
The rented webspace is then filled with information linked together in an organized way so that people on the web can access it. The information stored on the webspace or website is written in web languages such as HTML and Javascript. The web browser on our device converts all of the codes on the website into words, images, and videos so that we can understand the information without having to learn the computer language.
Another important element of the world wide web is DNS. We access resources over the Internet using domain names such as google.com. But the browsers use IP addresses to connect to devices on the internet. So the DNS functions as a human-friendly phonebook of the Internet by translating the domain names to IP addresses so that the browser can load the correct resource. Without DNS we would be lost in the virtual landscape of the world wide web.
Just as no one owns the internet, no one owns the world wide web. Although we do have to pay an internet service provider (ISP) to gain access to the Internet, a hosting company to rent webspace, and a registrar to reserve our web address, they are merely service providers. Anyone with the right equipment and a bit of know-how can set up their own web server.
5. What Is The Deep Web?
The deep web refers to the hidden part of the web that is not visible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. It includes web pages that are not indexed by search engines, private sites, and intranets. Most of the content on the deep web is innocuous content hidden behind paywalls, password-protected content, or dynamically created web pages. But sites found on the dark web are also part of the deep web.
As we learned earlier, a key part of the web is the interlinking of pages. Search engines find new pages from previously indexed sites. Without such links, search engines cannot find and index the pages.
The information available on sites such as Wikipedia is readily available via search engines and is said to be part of the “surface web”. Beyond what can be readily accessed by everyone, there is content hidden behind login forms, restricted social media pages and profiles, and some web forums. Even a site like Netflix, which is visible via search engines, has most of its content hidden behind password-protected accounts and therefore is part of the deep web.
This hidden part of the web is much larger than the surface web. Roughly 80 percent of the entire World Wide Web is believed to be part of the deep web.
6. What Is The Dark Web?
The dark web is part of the deep web built on the darknet. It is accessible only through special anonymizing software such as Tor. Unlike the web browsers we generally use, the Tor Browser provides private browsing by using onion routing that encrypts and routes traffic through multiple servers to hide the IP address.
The sharing of information on the dark web is anonymous and is used by those who want to evade corporate or government interference. The dark web is used for defending the digital rights of privacy, anonymity, and freedom from censorship but is also used for illegal activities.
7. What Is Intranet?
An intranet is a private network usually created and controlled by an organization. The primary goal of such an intranet is to help employees securely access company resources. Generally, an intranet is part of the internal Local Area Network (LAN) of an organization, and access to it is restricted to authorized users through a username-password combination. Intranets generally use IP protocol and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and at least one web server to provide users access to the corporate resources.
8. What Is Extranet?
An extranet is similar to an intranet in that it is also created and controlled by a single organization but allows limited access to entities outside the organization. Extranet offers a way for organizations to give customers, partners, and vendors access to specific company resources such as catalogs, training materials, etc. without giving access to the organization's entire internal network.
Extranets are usually created using wide area network (WAN) technology and access to it is restricted through authentication mechanisms such as username-password combination.
Conclusion
The Internet and the world wide web have come a long way since their origins. If you would like to experience the humble beginnings of the world wide web, I recommend you to check out this page https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/
While we do know our tech history, we are better acquainted with the latest technologies and requirements of modern businesses. Click the button below to reach out to us and learn how we can help you make the most of your investment in technology.
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About The Author
Hari SubediMarketing Manager at Jones IT
Hari is an online marketing professional with a focus on content marketing. He writes on topics related to IT, Security, Small Business, and Mindfulness. He is also the founder and managing director of Girivar Kft., a business services company located in Budapest, Hungary.